"Bismarck's First War (1864)" Topic

Michael Embree's book on the Second Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864 has finally been published by Helion Books ( helion.co.uk ) .

At 473 pages, with an index, several tables, OBs and maps, it is definintely worth the price ( 31.45 Pounds ) . Only 500 copies have been published so I recommend buying a copy immediately.

Great – just ordered mine – check out Amazon though, they have it for £23.00 GBP instead.

I will not hesitate to name this the authoritative work in English (and thus available to a global audience) on this war. The long wait has definitely been worth it. In fact, it's superior to most books about the subject published in German and Danish – and there are many!

For any serious student of 19th century European wars this book is a must, and if you're looking for a new period it's a good read with a huge amount of background info, and a presentation of a very interesting corner of military history during a time of transition. This was the Prussian warm-up exercise for 1866 and 1870!

From a wargamer's perspective: if you have FPW Prussian and ACW Union armies you already have quite acceptable representations of the armies needed to game this conflict.

For general or wargames related info about the Schleswig Wars (1848-51 and 1864) I must humbly recommend the SchleswigWars Yahoo! group dedicated to this subject, and co-hosted by yours truly:
link

And Eureka make Danes for this particular conflict.

I'd like to add my recommendation as well. This is a superb and authoratative book. I've been building armies for this conflict for some time and everything I could possibly need to know about the historical background is in here!

An excellent book! Very well written and researched. I only started reading it a couple of days ago and I am finding it difficult to put down. Rumour has it that the author is planning on writing another detailed book on the "Risorgimento". That will definately be high on my buying list.

A real military history for the military historian. This is a one-stop book for the War of 1864, all the OOBs you could wish, plus eye witness accounts, maps, casualty lists. There are enough potential wargame scenarios in here to keep you busy for a decade. Given the dearth of good books on the wars of the 1860s and 70s available in English this should be on every fanatic's Christmas list!

I will also support all of the glowing comments regarding this book…it's both an instant classic and a worthy addition to any military history library.

Though, I must admit, all of my Colonial India and Africa books are looking askance at Mike's book and are openly wondering where the bloody 'ell it's going to be placed on my already over-flowing bookshelves.

A very fine book which is vlearly a labour of love. My one major complaint are the maps. Not only are all the maps in the book 19th century black and white maps but the reproductions are so small that it's hardo to read the details on the maps. On several maps it's virutally impssible to distinguis Danish and German units or to fully get a grip on the terrain. The decisions to reduce the size of the maps was a bad one which reduces the value of the book. In an upcoming review I'll give th ebook 4 stars ratehr than 5 because of the poor maps.

Just resurrecting an old post.
I've just started to read this book which looks very comprehensive. I must agree that the maps are way too small to follow the progress of the campaign easily with lots of villages / towns mentioned.
Can anybody who has read the book let me know how they followed the campaign or suggest any alternative map(s) which would help with this please?