What are you reading right now?

From 2003 comes Jutland 1916 by Nigel Steel and Peter Hart. The author's have paired up writing books on other anglophile Great War subjects including the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele.

http://www.amazon.com/Jutland-1916-C...1717294&sr=1-1

Melodramatically subtitled Death in the Grey Wastes, the book is well written and relies almost exclusively on first-hand narratives, many culled from Public Records Office primary sources. If you like your history purely anecdotal you should find Jutland 1916 riveting.

On the other hand if you are looking for fresh insights or new ideas relating to the Battle of Jutland itself you might do better elsewhere, Andrew Gordon's Rules of the Game or Keith Yates' Jutland, 1916 come to mind immediately as superior contextual one-volume histories.

That said, if your history is best told in first-person stories and have only room for one Jutland book, the offering from Prof's Hart and Steel is probably a suitable choice.

[Lionclaw]

At the moment I'm reading Jackie Stewart's autobiography "Winning Is Not Enough".

Jackie Stewart is a triple Formula 1 World Champion: 1969, 1971 and 1973.

[_dgn_]

Holidays ? The best moment for having freetime.

Freetime ? Playing with a good PC simulator (SH III) and some related readings.

Particulary, a little worn book from my library, but a "must have" ...

Herbert Werner - Dix-huit secondes pour survivre (Die Eisernen Särge / Eighteen seconds to survive) - 1969 - 494 pages




Cheers.

[sublynx]

Just started Field Marshall Erich von Manstein's memoirs Lost victories. The last book I've finished was Walter Schuck's Abschuss! Von der Me 109 zur Me 262 Erinnerungen an die Luftkämpfe beim Jagdgeschwader 5 und 7.

I read this book in Finnish, I don't know if it is published in English. This is by far the most interesting book about air war I've ever read and I've read quite a few. After reading this book I decided to buy an addon (Ostfront: Decisive Battles in the East) to Il-2 that lets me play in the same Petsamo - Murmansk area that Schuck tells about.

[sharkbit]

Finished "The Ultra Secret".

Curently reading "Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park"
It has stories by various people who were involved with decoding German and Japanese messages(not just Enigma, but some of the lesser codes as well-pretty unsafe to put an enigma machine on a harbor tug but even messages to the little boats had to be coded as well) at Bletchley and out in the field. A lot of personal rememberances. My eyes glassed over a couple of times when a couple of the people got a little too technical but overall a pretty good read.

Neither book goes into too much detail about the naval enigma though.

One thing I've gotten out of both books was how much a factor in breaking the codes influenced the outcome of the war and how so many strategic decisions were made based on the information the Allies were getting from Ultra.

[Osmium Steele]

The U-Boat Wars
1916 - 1945
by John Terraine

[Flaxpants]

Just started reading Iron Coffins by Herbert A. Werner.

I'm only up to the 5th chapter or so but I have to say I'm totally glued to this book. Riveting.

[STEED]

Finished reading..

Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
(Cambridge Military Histories)
By David Stahel

This was a deep book, good account on the crucial Jun-Aug 1941, Barbarossa was lost at the Battle of Smolensk which derailed the operation, Barbarossa was far from a walk over for the Germans with a number of errors.


Now reading a less heavy one on the same subject.

War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942
By Robert Kershaw

Recently finished:

Antony Beevor - The War in Spain, a very readable account of the Spanish Civil War with a distinctly pro-Republican bias.

Edward Lengel - To Conquer Hell, about the 1918 Meuse-Argonne offensive, the mostly forgotten and yet bloodiest single offensive in U.S. military history. Excellent!

Reading now:

Neil Hanson - First Blitz about the efforts of the German air force to burn London to the ground; in 1917-18! Fascinating look at the early days of strategic bombing before the theories of Douhet, Trenchard and Mitchell existed.

[sharkbit]

Recently:
"Panzer Aces II" by Franz Kurowski. Numerous accounts about some well decorated panzer commanders. A little uneven at times, but a couple of the accounts are excellent. The Kindle edition is a pretty piss poor transfer though. A lot of mistakes. I would hope the print version is better.
Definitely made me want to get some of his other "Aces" titles, even if the Kindle versions may be a little iffy.

"Black Edelweiss" by Johannes Voss. A young SS soldiers experience in Finland late in the war. A theater I know very little about. The conditions they fought in were amazing.

Currently:
"Tigers in the Mud" by Otto Carius. About the career of panzer commander Otto Carius. So far, a little meh, but not too bad.

On Deck:
"At Leningrads Gates" by William Lubbeck
And a monster book (896 pages ) "Armegeddon in Stalingrad-September to November 1942" Volume 2 of the Stalingrad trilogy by David M. Glantz.

The above two ought to keep me busy at least through the rest of the year(and probably until spring as well 0.

[Subnuts]

I'm just about finished with Richard O'Kane's Wahoo, and while it's interesting in places, and I commend Mr. O'Kane for his mad Executive Officering skillz, writing was not his strong suit. Every torpedo launches with a "zing," every attack is described in virtually the same manner, and if my Kindle word search is to believed, he refers to the General Quarters alarm as the "Bells of St. Mary's" 29 times during the book!

Of my new Kindle books, I still have to read Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions, and Steel Boat, Iron Hearts. Also, I just downloaded Black Hawk Down for $2.99, so if you've never read it, and own a Kindle, I'd suggest now would be a good time to do so, before the publisher jacks up the price.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Subnuts

Steel Boat, Iron Hearts.

Ooooh is that the "first person" memoir of the guy who served on U-505? I read that last year, really enjoyed it.

[Ace1973]

Currently half way through Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin. Worth the 6 or 7 year wait so far. After that I think I'll re-read Wahoo.

Finished choking down Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. This is a rather gruesome account of the Congo Free State; a private fiefdom of Belgium's King Leopold II where literally millions of people (minimum estimates are in the vicinity of 5-million) died to fill the King's personal coffers with money from ivory and rubber in the last decade of the 19th Century and the first years of the 20th. Included is the story of the first successful international human rights campaign that resulted in the formal annexation of the Congo by Belgium and the end of Leopold's direct rule. Disturbing reading, even in a world jaded by humanitarian disasters like Darfur, Rwanda, the Holocaust and the Gulag. Well written and worth a look by anyone interested in Africa, Imperialism or human rights advocacy.

Just started The Madman and the Butcher by Tim Cook; about the conflict between Canada's Great War military leaders' Sam Hughes and Arthur Currie.

[Subnuts]

Just about to finish up Alan Zimm's The Attack On Pearl Harbor. It's a little choppy, and repetitive in places, but it's still fascinating reading. The author is a former naval officer, and the bulk of the book is an extremely critical examination of every aspect of the Japanese attack, using modern-day Operations research methods and Naval War College rules of the time to analyze what went down on the morning of December 7, 1941. Based on his conclusions, the attack was badly planned, badly executed, and many of the "what-ifs" (a third wave could have wiped out the tank farms, Japanese pilots were superhuman, a midget submarine attacked the Arizona, sinking a ship in the channel would have prevented ships from entering and leaving, etc.) are pretty much BS.

Really, it's amazing how much the Japanese dropped the ball at Pearl Harbor. The author includes a "laundry list" of Japanese failures near the end, such as Fuchida's flare-gun fumble, the 60% dud rate attributed to the 800-kg AP bumbs, the utter lack of combined-arms tactics or operational flexibility built into the plan, the lack of SEAD tactics and poor use of the A6Ms, the mutually-interfering routes assigned to the torpedo bombers, ineffective communications, an inexcusably poor showing from the second-wave dive bombers, and the hair-brained use of General-Purpose bombs against battleships. Seriously, that's just scratching the surface of what this book covers. For all the hand-wringing, finger-pointing, and scapegoating you see in discussions of the American side, this is the first time I've ever seen a serious, in depth criticisms of the strategy, tactics, and planning used by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.