Mephisto2

If you can get past the anachronistic concepts, poor writing and unlikely plot twists, then I guess you could say Pressfield's books are a good historical introduction into ancient Greek history.

Dreadnaught is superb. He recently wrote a "sequel" that actually deals with the naval conflict during WWI itself; Dreadnaught was about the arms-race prior to the war. It's called Castles of Steel - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...897367-4327301

I loved it, but it's certainly "old school" style. If you are interested in the subject, you could try 1914 by Lyn Macdonald - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books. Macdonald has made a career from writing about the First World War and her books are dotted with extracts from letters, memoirs and interviews with the real protaganists; a refreshing change from the high level strategic overview we often get in military histories. She has published a whole range of books, covering everything from specific battles They Called It Passchendaele and Somme) to a history of each year of the war (1914, 1915... 1918 etc) to a history of the nurses and medical staff of the campaigns (The roses of no man's land). Whilst her references and extracts have a predominance of English and French voices (in that order), she does not ignore the German side. Her books come with a strong recommendation from Mr Mephisto.

Also very much worth considering is The Lions of July by William Jannen. It tells the fascinating story of the days leading up to the war and concentrates on the personalities involved on each side (politicians, generals, kings and kaisers). Highly recommended. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

If you are interested in WWI, let me know and I have some more recommendations.

Boy oh boy...

There are literally thousands of books on Napoleon; and I'm not kidding. If you are interested in his military campaigns, as opposed to his politics, then you have some obvious choices. Of course, my opinion is that one can't be divorced from the other (as Napoleon's contemporary Clausewitz reminds us), but nevertheless the following works are recommended.

The canonical work is Raymond Chandler's sweeping, huge and all-inclusive The Campaigns of Napoleon. This is an amazing book, and very large, book. I've never succeeded in reading the whole thing end to end, but have dipped in and researched certain battles. If there's only one book on Napoleon's military career, then this is it.

At the other end of the scale, there is a nice introductory, colourful (lovely maps) and short book on the history of the Napoleonic wars in the Cassell History of Warfare series. I'm not near my home library at present so I can't remember the exact title or author, but it's a very good introduction.

There's a full section in Amazon about the military history of the Napoleonic wars; with sub-sections on general Napoleonic military history, naval, Waterloo and Napoleon himself also with their own sub-sections. You may also want to look there. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...897367-4327301

However, you can't go wrong with Chandler!


Any more requests? Did I say history was my favourite subject?


Mr Mephisto