War of the White Death: Finland Against the Soviet Union 1939-40 by Bair...
The author, Bair Irincheev, is readily forthcoming in what this book encompasses and leaves out. Unfortunately for those hoping for a single volume history of the Winter War, they will be disappointed....
View ArticleSecrets of Warfare: Exposing the Myths and Hidden History of Weapons and...
This book is truly the definition of 'popular history'. It is a quick read, with limited source material, and attempts to tackle a multitude of events, personalities, and time periods without giving...
View ArticleCataclysm: The War on the Eastern Front 1941-45 by Keith Cumins
In “Cataclysm: The War on the Eastern Front, 1941-1945” Keith Cumins assembles an operational history of the Eastern Front from the perspective of both the Soviet Union and Germany, which he rightfully...
View ArticleLearning from Foreign Wars: Russian Miltiary Thinking 1859-1873 by Gudrun...
Too often the Russian state and, inherently, the Russian army are presented as "backward" or "exceptional". Up to and through the First World War the deficiencies of the Russian state and military are...
View ArticleWhy Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World...
In his latest monograph, Roger Reese offers an analysis of “Why Stalin’s Soldiers fought.” In attempting to locate an answer, he engages in dialogue with historians from both the Cold War and...
View ArticleKiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East by David Stahel
In “Kiev, 1941” historian David Stahel once more takes on the myths and legends that have been built up around the Wehrmacht’s Barbarossa campaign against the Soviet Union. In his previous volume...
View ArticleDemolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An...
Valeriy Zamulin’s ”Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative” is the quintessential representation of what Eastern Front literature is all too...
View ArticleOstkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East by Stephen G. Fritz
While newly crafted monographs based on the latest research are a welcome sight when it comes to the Second World War, and more specifically the Eastern Front, what Stephen Fritz has compiled here is a...
View ArticleStalin's Genocides by Norman Naimark
The idea behind this book is, perhaps if not 'good', at the very least interesting. But this book should have been entitled 'Stalin's Genocides?' as it does a better job asking the question of whether...
View ArticleStalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov by Geoffrey Roberts
While there are multiple biographies of German generals Zhukov seems to be the only figure that western historians concentrate on when looking at the Soviet Union and the Eastern Front. In this case,...
View ArticleBarbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941...
David Glantz has been the foremost expert on the Eastern Front of the Second World War for years. While his books are not always free of controversy, there is no doubt that he has single-handedly...
View ArticleUNDER HIMMLER'S COMMAND: The Personal Recollections of Oberst Hans-Georg...
The last year of the war for Germany is comparable to the first year of the war for the Soviet Union. The chaos and destruction is hard to describe and keep track of but more importantly any new piece...
View ArticleBarbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941:...
Volume 2 of 'Barbarossa Derailed' picks up pretty much where the first volume left off. Throughout both volumes Glantz's goals have been the following: to show that the Wehrmacht was suffering before...
View ArticleThe Abyss by Niall Ferguson
Coming up on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, Penguin has decided to release the first five chapters of Niall Ferguson's The War of the World as a separate ebook to mark the...
View ArticleOn the Precipice: Stalin, the Red Army Leadership and the Road to Stalingrad,...
As Stuart Britton, the translator, explains, Peter Mezhiritsky doesn’t so much tell a story as engage in a dialog with the reader. In general this is something that’s rather more common in Russian...
View ArticleThe Generals by Thomas E. Ricks
My amazon review for this book was entitled "Far from perfect, but perfect from afar." The reason I consider 'The Generals' perfect from afar is because it does what any polemical text should do,...
View ArticleThe Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman - John and Carol Garrard
This book is the second edition of "Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman." Although much of Grossman's life and thoughts we will never know with precise detail, the authors were...
View ArticleIsrael/Palestine by Alan Dowty
I'm more of a 'casual' reader when it comes to the Middle East and questions of Israel. I have a wide interest in the topic and have read quite a few books on it. I'm no expert, but I've read enough to...
View ArticleThe Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do...
"The Great Divergence" aims to explain where our economy and society are today compared to various points throughout the last century. In many ways this book is an excellent introduction into a variety...
View ArticleHitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power by Andrew Nagorski
It's somewhat hard to know where to categorize this latest effort on the part of Nagorski. His previous book on the Battle for Moscow was a clearer history of the clash between Nazi Germany and the...
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