"What books should every wargamer have in his/her library?" Topic

Name your genre or historical period and your books. Here are my selections for the AWI.

AWI:
Almost A Miracle – John Ferling
The War of The Revolution – Christopher Ward
The Winter Soldiers – Richard Ketchum
Saratoga – Richard Ketchum
Soldiers of the Revolution – Troiani/Kochan
With Zeal and With Bayonets Only – Spring
The Road to Guilford Courthouse – Buchanan
Osprey uniform books
Standards and Colors – Richardson
Uniforms of the Revolution – Mollo/McGregor

The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler, a foundation work for any Napoleonic collection. Probably add the Esposito & Elting Atlas and Colonel Elting's Swords around a Throne.

Some years ago, I listed my bookshelves on my blog. Partly as a bibliography for others (perhaps staring a new period) and partly so that I could look it up if I saw something in a second hand book shop (to prevent replication of purchase). I did several lists, mainly by period, and I included a personal 'one line review' in some cases.

Sometimes I do a book review of greater length and I file these under these labels too. E.g. The 16thC list has two book reviews before the full list.

Note that these books are ones that I have bought, own and kept; it is not a list of books I've read. Consequently, some lists only have books for certain sub periods: A case in point is the WW2 list, where my interest lies in the Western Desert Campaign pre-Montgomery – so you will not find much on the Eastern Front, or NW Europe, or even Tunisia there. Likewise, my Napoleonic list only really covers the Peninsular War.

16th C
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17th C
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18th C
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Aviation
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Crusades
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Napoleonic
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Naval
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Punic Wars
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Wargames
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Wars of the Roses
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WW2
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Campaigns of Napoleon was one of my first big books.

On a slightly different tack, to everyone suggesting history reference books, I suggest Donald Featherstone's War Games.

Washing of the spears. (well what did you expect from me. LOL)

John Keegan
The Mask of Command
The Face of Battle

For East Front and specifically Stalingrad:
Island of Fire and Death of a Leaping Horseman both by Jason Mark.

For ACW gamers The Army of the Potomac triology by Catton

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses Grant is a favourite of mine

Landscape Turned Red is another great ACW book by Sears on Antietam

Duffy's A Military Life is a great way to see the SYW via Freddy the Great

If you want to go all classical The History by Heroditus and the Pelopennesian War by Thucydides is great, as is the Annabanis – "the march up country" by Xenophon (one of my first classical reads)

Finally Von Krieg by von Clausewitz and the Art of War by Sun Tzu

Uniforms of the World (Knotel)
Covers 1600-1939

The Art of War – Sun Tsu

I also recommend Grant's memoir. It is rare to find a memoir that is not a self-serving puff piece or axe grinder.

Face of Battle – John Keegan
Price of Admiralty – John Keegan
Art of War in the Western World – Archer Jones
Art of Maneuver – Robert Leonhard

Ancients/Fantasy: John Warry's Warfare in the Classical World (illustrated edition)

Fantasy:
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien..
The Atlas of Middle-Earth by Karen Fonstad
Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia (or insert your own favorite edition).
The Battle of Five Armies rules by Games Workshop. Best Tabletop Fantasy Game Ever, IMHBCO. (Warmaster variant.)

Science Fiction:
Traveller LBBs, 1981 editions.
Dune by Frank Herbert
Space Viking by H. Beam Piper
The Spaceflight Handbook by Mallove and Matloff.

I agree with Prince Rupert:

The War Game and Wargame Tactics, Charles Grant
Charge! or How to play Wargames, BRIG Peter Young DSO, MC**
Wargames and The Complete Book of Wargaming, Donald Featherstone

Plus a few The Wargamers' Annuals and some of the gaming magazines, new or old (Battle for Wargamers, Courier, etc).

Good reads and a reminder that the hobby is about enjoying playing games with miniatures, not about getting a history PhD.

Cheers.

I would second "The Atlas of Middle-Earth" by Karen Fonstad if you wargame LOTR. Great resource book of the various battles and numbers of troops.

Achtung Schweinhund, the Best Book Ever Written.

"Hue 1968" by Mark Bowden. A really great book on the air war over Vietnam is "Clashes" by Marshall Michel.

Another fan of Keegan's Face of Battle, but would add Anne Curry's Agincourt: A New History for another look at that battle. If you're devoted to the HYW, Jonathan Sumption's history is breathtaking.

OC has a great list of AWI books, but don't overlook the incomplete trilogy by Rick Atkinson.

James Hornfischer's books on naval war in the Pacific WWII are wonderful reads. Probably the most useful is Neptune's Inferno on the naval battles around Guadalcanal.

Any Robert Canney book on ACW naval is a great get. The Old Steam Navy and The Confederate Steam Navy are indispensable. I still think Philip Van Doren Stern's The Confederate Navy-A Pictorial History is a worthwhile overview of the ACW war at sea.

I always appreciated Dupuy & Dupuy, The Encyclopedia of Military History from 3500 BC to the present, but I've never owned a copy.

If you're interested in the Franco-Prussian War I'd buy in this order:
The Franco Prussian War – Michael Howard
Sedan 1870 & France at Bay – Douglas Fermer
The Battle of Spicheren & The Battle of Worth – G.F.R. Henderson
The pile of books from Quintin Barry (The Campaign of Sedan, After Sedan, The Somme 1870-1871, The Last Throw of the Dice, Scapegoat of a Nation)
The Catalytic Wars – Philip Howes
After that in no particular order – The Last Gaiter Button, The Siege of Strasbourg, The Wars of German Unification, The Fall of the Third Napoleon, Touring the Sedan Campaign, The Betrayal of Metz, A Day of Battle, The Franco-German War (Moltke), The Franco-Prussian War (Badsey), The Reality of War, The Moltke Myth, Moltke and the German Wars, The Franco-German War (General Staff), First Reich, Cavalry in the Franco-Prussian War, Franco-German War source book, The Franco-Prussian War in a nutshell, The Franco-Prussian War (Wawro)

By the way if there are other English language books on the FPW that I don't have (see list above) I'd like to hear about them!

Hmph. For the miniature wargamer as such--Featherstone, Grant, Young--and Wessencraft. Possibly Wells.

For the period-specific, the great battle-generators are Oman for the Peninsular War, Duffy's Prussian, Austrian and Russian volumes for the Age of Reason and Carrington's Battles of the American Revolution for the AWI, together with Fred Eugene Ray's volumes for the classical world--maps and OOB, all in one place.

For the medieval world--or for the fantasy gamer--Phillip Warner's British Battlefields and AH Burne's The Battlefields of England each contain dozens of maps with situations and guesstimates of forces.

For the "moderns" gamer (in the sense of post-1914) I'd advise a look at something more obscure--the Infantry Journal's Infantry in Battle (1939). It contains dozens of scaled maps of battlefields, mostly battalion to brigade-size actions, and largely northwestern France in WWI. They just cry out to be fought over with 1940 or 1944 armies. I did an entire campaigning season a few years ago, and I could do another without duplicating a battlefield.

Appropriate issues of All the World's Fighting Ships (both Jane's and Conway's) and The Naval Annual (Brassey's) for your chosen period.

Weapons, Tunis
Campaigns of Napoleon, Chandler
The Wargame, Grant
Programmed Wargames Scenarios, Grant
Achtung Schweinhund
Catapult: Harry and I Build a Siege Weapon
The Art of War
The Refighting History Series
History of the Peloponnesian War
History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, Oman
Armies of … Series, Wargames Research Group
Battles with Model Soldiers, Featherstone