"great waterloo book recommendation?" Topic

Hello,

I read Alessandro BARBERO's The battle, a new history of Waterloo and tremendously enjoyed it.

Do you have a recommendation for a very good Waterloo book? Let me know why it is a good read as well if you can.

thank you

Get Keegans Face of Battle, skip the academic beginning and jump right into the Waterloo section. Not a history, but an incredible examination of men under fire that you won't find anywhere else.
A bit odd, but that is my recommendation.

Alessandro Barbero --"The Battle"

Regards
Russ Dunaway

Could you and Russ repost those suggestions? Also, compare and contrast them to A. Barbero's "The Battle"?

"Sharpe's Waterloo"?

If not that, A Barbero….
Oh wait a minute.

Seriously. Do you have any preferences for how you want the story told? Do you want it to be All British, with some minor allies carrying the baggage?
Do you want it to be about the Prussians pulling the perfidious British chestnuts out of the fire?
Or, how about the French really winning the battle?
I've seen all variations on the above seriously reviewed here on TMP.

'The Hundred Days' by Antony Brett James, all eyewitness accounts.

thank you for the few suggestions. Somebody else suggested:

Siborne's 1815 Campaign: Volume 2-The Fields of Waterloo, the Battle of the 18th June
and

Waterloo: The French Perspective
Field, Andrew W.

that I have just ordered

We just finished reading Cornwell's "Waterloo" which is excellent.

Very approachable read

My friend, have you visit the Napoleonic Media Forum?

There are plenty of books there to see and even to read free…

TMP link

Amicalement
Armand

Please ignore Siborne ! He was unfortunately depending on donations and wrote "history" so the tales of paying officers were accepted as "truth".

The Waterloo Companion by Mark Adkin. Colour prints, orders of battle colour photos of the battlefield to day with overlays of where the troops were and a very good description. link

I enjoyed John Sutherland's 'Men of Waterloo', which is a good, solid, readable account and if you are interested in knowing about the arrival of the British in Brussels in the build up then 'Dancing into Battle – A Social History of the Battle of Waterloo' by Nick Foulkes is a fascinating read.

A couple of books on the subject that I rather regret buying are 'Waterloo – Napoleon's Last Gamble' by Andrew Roberts – which feels pretty prosaic compared to Barbero's work – and 'The Battle of Waterloo – A New History' by Jeremy Black – which reads like a series of lectures, some of them only tangentially connected with the battle, that were typed up and cobbled together into a book.

Waterloo Companion and Waterloo: The French Perspective are my favorites after the Barbero book.

Keegans Face of Battle is excellent, but as noted, only about a third of the book is on Waterloo. Since the above works are fully engaged in the subject, they get my vote.

David Howarth's "A Near Run Thing" is still the best written battle account I have read. I read it as a young man and it inspired me through years of playing Empire, which cost me a considerable number of brain cells.

Coppens, Bernard : Waterloo – Les mensonges

Shows why Napol้on created so many lies about this battle, for me the best book to understand the battle

Gareth Glover : Waterloo – myth and reality

Discussing some entreched myths and discussing them

Another for Adkin.

What about…

link

link

Amicalement
Armand

+1 for Adkin.

Also Andrew Fields' books on the French perspective are good – one on Quatre Bras and one on Waterloo. You can get them cheap on kindle.

Adkin is the other one I have. I am sad to say that after reading the book from Barbero, I started to look at the Companion as if it were a stylized Hollywood version of the battle (think Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Bulge with or w/o CGIs).

Again, I am not expert on the battle but I can follow an analysis and Barbero's hits where Adkin totally missed the mark. The artillery part is simply appalling. There are other parts that got me to raise an eyebrow.

It was basically reading Adkin, then Barbero then Adkin and it didn't feel right anymore. Pretty book anyway.

I have read Siborne, and while it is an interesting read, some have called it a "crime against history."

Nice finds and easy to read Armand.

I have read Siborne, and while it is an interesting read, some have called it a "crime against history."

what do they recommend instead?

A votre service mon ami!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Waterloo by Tim Clayton. One of the best books I've read on the battle.

Pete

Adkin has great maps though. I have struggled to find topographic maps otherwise of a suitable scale/clarity

French perspective adds some nice colour

Adkin is indispensable. I have two copies. One is disintegrating…….. from being carried around the field.

Tim Clayton's book surprised me. I only bought it on a whim. What more was there to say? But if you only bought one book…..

As good as Barbero….and that is good!

Spin off books, such as French Perspective, or that daft title about "The Lie…" were well worth a read too. Even the story of how the message got back, "The News from etc" was brilliant I thought.

And another one for the Clayton book – some great maps showing the final dispositions in the evening. Very interesting

Of course, what I remain waiting for is something from the Prussian perspective, as their entry in two places creates some great game dynamics. Not getting into who won the battle, but just that I find this part of the battle the most interesting from a wargamer's perspective – which is why I keep painting Prussians…

Mark Adkin's book is THE comprehensive work. It's also a beautiful big coffee table type tome.

Two books which supplement it well are:
Quatre Bras by Mike Robinson

and

Waterloo: The French Perspective by Andrew Field

both are well-written and feature interesting new primary research.

I can't believe there are STILL more Waterloo books published every year which contain absolutely zero new research and simply rehash the same old Kinkaid, Mercer, Kennedy, Lawrence, etc. If I read one more ****** account which mentions Mercer's ubiqitous account of the Brunswick squares looking a bit shaky, I'll scream.