Books


Tom Clancy’s A Guided Tour Series

Tom Clancy is of course best known for his Jack Ryan series of novels. He also published a number of non-fiction books describing US military units: Nuclear submarines, Air Force fighter wings, an Armored Cavalry Regiment, a Marine Expeditionary Force, an Airborne division, an aircraft carrier, and Special Forces. I […]


Review: The Age of Airpower

In The Age of Airpower, Martin van Creveld writes about the history and development of airpower. The book is divided into five parts: The beginnings, World War II, the Cold War, smaller wars from 1945 on, and what he calls “war amongst the people”, i.e. counterinsurgency warfare. As such, it […]


Thrawn trilogy revisited

The Star Wars universe was somewhat dormant in the early 1990s. It had been eight years since Return of the Jedi, with new material being mostly limited to the source books published by West End Games for the Star Wars roleplaying game. Then, in 1991, came Heir to the Empire, […]


Street without Joy

In Street without Joy, Bernard Fall describes and analyses France’s failure in the First Indochina War, focusing on the second half (1950-1954). Based on his personal experiences and thorough research both in French and Vietnamese archives (he met and interviewed Ho Chi Minh during one of his visits to North […]


Mosquitoes to Wolves

The use of Forward Air Controllers is an interesting aspect of aerial and ground warfare. Mosquitoes to Wolves by G.R. Lester describes how airborne FACs matured during the Korean War. Flying the T-6, the “Mosquitoes”  directed close air support strikes and interdiction near the front line. Sadly, lessons learned in […]


The coming of the Third Reich

I have recently finished reading The coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. The book is the first in a trilogy covering the rise and and fall of the Third Reich. This first book covers the period from 1871 (the beginning of the second German empire) to the […]


Intelligence in War

I have just finished reading Intelligence in War by John Keegan. The book covers the effect of intelligence on warfare from Napoleonic times to today. This is achieved by covering a number of campaigns that serve as an example: Nelson’s pursuit of the French fleet in the Mediterranean Stonewall Jackson’s […]


Barsoom

I’ve recently finished reading the first three books of the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Barsoom books are early 20th century pulp science fiction stories. The first three books center around John Carter, a man from Virginia who one day miraculously awakes on Mars. The books are full […]