"Recommend 3 books to get someone to understand a period" Topic

Okay, the challenge:

You have someone who knows very little about a particular historical period, other than what can be expected from school, movies and video games.

They want to start gaming that period but they have no idea where to start.

Pick three books to give them.

Go!

Russo-Japanese War (land): The Tide at Sunrise, A Staff Office's Scrap-book during the Russo-Japanese War, The War of the Rising Sun and the Tumbling Bear.

Russo-Japanese War (naval): The Tide at Sunrise, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War 1904-05, the Fleet that Had to Die.

Only three? That's almost impossible, but here's a try:

The Buffalo War by James L. Haley

Carbine and Lance by Col. W. S. Nye

Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier by Ernest Wallace

Of course my big challenge is to convince any gamer that the Indian Wars of the last half of the 19th century is much more interesting than just focusing on the Little Big Horn.

Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War
Lewis: Sparta and Persia
Kagan: The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.

Hammers slammers
Starship troopers
[Insert Honor Harrington book here]

I'll leave the other two to others to recommend, but 'The Military Experience in the Age of Reason,, by Christopher Duffy, is IMHO the best all-round introduction to the 18th century.

Gilgamesh

The Enuma Elish

M. Hilgert, Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, Volume 1: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Shulgi.

link

18th Century is the period.

Patrick Duffy, "The Military Experience in the Age of Reason." The reason is obvious.
Reed Browning, "The War of the Austrian Succession." This really is the defining war of the 18th Century in it's complexity and depth. Compared it the Seven Years War is merely a "Kill Frederick" affair.
Frank McLynn, "1759 The Year that Britain became ruler of the world." This book, dealing only with the "annus mirabilis" of 1759, however has long discursive essays at the start of each chapter which epitomize and encapsulate the art, culture, and thought of the 18th century and show how it related to the war.

Classical Greece

Heroditus, "The Histories."
Thucydides," The Peloponnesian War"
Victor Davis Hanson- "The Art of War in the Western World."
The first two are obvious. Heroditus for the sweep of history in the ancient world. Thucydides for the speeches and address' for they represent what WAS said, or a synopsis of the same, or what might have been said, or what OUUGHT to have been said and in so doing cover all the commentary of the war and the nature of war. Finally Hanson for the key element as to why the Greeks beat the Persians.

The Renaissance.

No short way through the Maze to the Cheese here.

Jakob Burkhardt 2 Vol "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.
Jan Huizinga "The Waning of the Middle Ages."
Charles Oman "The Art of War in the Renaissance."

Unless you read the first two you have no hope of ever understanding the Renaissance. Oman, for all his faults will get you the overview and a lot of the details of the military side so you can hack along. But the key is the first two, unless you understand how the Renaissance mind worked and how different the age was from our own you haven't a hope of understanding it.

American Civil War

Shelby Foote "The Civil War."
James McPherson "Battle Cry of Freedom: America in the Civil War Era."
Eugene Genovese: "Roll Jordan Roll: The world the Slaves built."

What can I say, the literature on this is titanic, but you need theses for first -- "The War"- the second for "the country(s) that fought the war" and the third for What the war was all about.

World War One

Robert Massie "Dreadnought."
Barbara Tuchman "The Proud Tower."
Barbara Tuchman "The Guns of August."
Miranda Carter "George, Nicky and Wilhelm."
Barrie Pitt "1918 the Final Act."

The war is nothing but a gruesome hell of slaughter What is important is the "why" of the war, and what comes after. Massie gives you the vital connection of "Arms and the man" the arms of Europe and the men who created and used them. The proud Tower of the culture and society of an age of hope and technological progress, but behind the elegance a neroism and fatality. "The Guns of August" is a classic, and you have to read it to understand the sheer horror of the coming of the war, like a monster no one can resist. Carters work explores the most disastrously disfunction family ever, and Barrie Pitt wraps it all up and sets the stage for the next. What comes in between is merely a sterile account of a muddy, bloody, gassed over hell.

The Middle Ages

Again, how can you do it in three.

Oh well.

Norman Cantor "The Civilization of the Middle Ages."
Sir Charles Oman "The Art of War in the Middle Ages."
J.R.R. Tolkein "The Lord of the Rings." Cantors work is probably in your bookshelf already having been a book of the month club $1 USD each, but it's by far and away the best one volume work on the Middle Ages in a century. Period. Oman's work does the military side well enough for starters and it's excellent. One might wonder at putting in Lord of the Rings. However remember that J.R.R. was an Oxford Don and specialist in the Middle Ages. His whole point in making Lord of the Rings was not to create a fantasy story but to provide for the sustenance of his wife and family. His methodology was to form the story in the very mediaeval idea of "the quest", where a hero or a person perceives that something has gone out of kilter in the universe and he must fix it by taking an object somewhere or slaying a dragon. The whole book is the best I've ever found, not for battles or military data, but to translate the medieval world view into modern terms where we can understand "bravery," "goodness," "evil," "heroism" and the everyday as the medieval saw it. It is far from perfect-- we, knowing the medieval, is in a real sense impossible, but it does a good job. Purists may disdain a book which has so much magic and mystical and mythical creatures in it, but remember the mediaeval world was packed full with magic, and magical and mystical creatures.

impossible since an era was not mentioned most people would recommend different books based on the era…WW2, ACW, napoleonics, American rev.

The Sound and the Fury
Finnegan's Wake
Ulysses

Start reading any of them and you'll be begging for a period in short order.

Wait, that's not what you meant?

For the American Revolution I eould start with Fischer's Washington's Crosding. It has much more going on than just the Trenton Princeton consign. He goes into detail analyzing all the participants. Continentals , British, mitia and Hessians. He shows how the campaign developed and it's aftermath.

Next I would recommend the American Heritage study.

After that… I have at least a dozen more.

Dark Age Arthur

"Sword at Sunset," by Rosemary Sutcliff
"Roman Britain: Outpost of the Empire," by H.H. Scullard
"The Discovery of King Arthur," by Geoffrey Ashe

There are many others, of course, but these are a solid start.

Rudy – List the ones for YOUR favourite period :)

OSchmidt – sorry if this seems picky but for anyone coming along and seeking the book – it is Christopher Duffy vice Patrick who wrote "The Military Experience in the Age of Reason."
But an excellent choice.

Is there an echo in here… in here?

Sir Charles Oman "The Art of War in the Middle Ages."

I'm going out on a limb here as this is only internet heresay.

But from the few blogs I've read, Oman is a major reason for many of the common myths about medieval warfare.

like undisiplined knights, usless infantry ect.

Again, based mostly this blog.

link

The original poster said for a beginner. That means the sources have to be open, accessible and mostly popular. The simple fact is that for most of the period infantry was useless and knights were undisciplined.

So where's your three?

Easy to criticize other people. Hard to do.

Again, only acording to to Oman(acording to the blog), is it really smart to let people start with a book that has major flaws?

Again I don't know how valid those critisim are as I have not read oman, but I have red books and the blog that critize him.

This is a descussion forum? is it not, why get defencive I did not critize you, I asked a question about one of the books mentioned here.

I have read Oman so that means I know if it has major flaws or not and I don't take someone else's word for it. So you have taken criticism of others and made them your own. OK.

There is not one question mark on any of your sentences. You didn't ask a question.

No source is going to be without faults. You make the best bargain you can. We can't sign up the newbie for a grad course in the Military History of the Middle Ages and even if we did we could do a grad course on the sources for the grad course alone. As I said, Oman is good enough to start with.

My favorite era? hard to do. But there are common denominators.
The premise is that you want to get someone who has a novice interest in war and get them to want to wargame.

For me it was to improve the interest in the war and was done by exposing myself to board games and magazine articles.
Step two was to develop an interest in painting (or in the case of current preferences model building> While in this stage I loved the Blandford/ McMillian/Hippocrene books and they were my primary source until the Osprey collection increased. The WRG books for painting ancients were key too. My first Prussian force ( using Tricolor) was destroyed to a man. So I decided that I could do better than that. Then started in napoleonics.

"Patrick Duffy, "The Military Experience in the Age of Reason." The reason is obvious"

That would be Christopher Duffy who has a new book out on Culloden in September.

Anyone interested in the Williamite War in Ireland could do no better than read:

Wauchope- Patrick Sarsfield and the Williamite War
McNally- Aughrim
McNally- The Battle of the Boyne