The Book Thread. **Updated***

[Sardaukar]

*bump*

[John 3rd]

Racing the Sunrise MUST be added to the list. It provides a wealth of information regarding reinforcements sent throughout the Pacific. For a Modder it is a must have I would say...

[IS2m]

Bump

[jeffs]

> The book has some quiet surprises appended, including an overview of Allied code breaking efforts, as well as a peculiar chapter entittled 'Pearl Harbor - Warning or Decision?' The chapter discusses the controversial 'conspiracy' elements which we are so familiar with, nowadays.

That was quite good. And interesting....And one wonders what we don`t know!

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: mikkey

I would like to ask on some good books about Guadalcanal. I think about Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle and Neptune's Inferno and Midway's Shattered Sword. Any other tips for a good books? Thanks.

Bloody Ridge: The Battle That Saved Guadalcanal
Great book, read the reviews on Amazon. The title is a little confusing because it's more than the Bloody Ridge battle. I felt the way Smith portrays the battles in combination with the maps it was easy for me to visualize the movements of forces. I did struggle a little with that in Franks book , being fair I read Smith after Frank... It's right up there with the best books I've read on Guadalcanal. [:)]

[mdiehl]

I would like to ask on some good books about Guadalcanal.

Lundstrom's The First Team at Guadalcanal is a critical read vis the air campaign in the Solomons in 1942 and it's very well written.

[mikkey]

thanks for suggestion SuluSea and mdiehl

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: mikkey

I would like to ask on some good books about Guadalcanal. I think about Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle and Neptune's Inferno and Midway's Shattered Sword. Any other tips for a good books? Thanks.

Warspite1

I am reading - and almost finished - Frank's Guadalcanal. This is an excellent, balanced book on a most interesting subject. It looks at the whole campaign, air, sea and land, and deals with each important battle in sufficient detail.

Not a fan of Neptune's Inferno. Could not get along with the author's writing style.

Shattered Sword needs no further comment. Quite. Simply. Brilliant.

[Gunner98]

Just finished ' Fire in the sky' - excellent depth and detail. Decidedly one sided - but he admits that, and in desperate need of a good editing to smooth the edges and remove the repeated elements - but a good read all round.

Has anyone see 'Oil on the Water' yet?

B

[mikkey]

thanks for suggestion, I was given Frank's Guadalcanal, Fire in the Sky and Shattered Sword as Christmas gift. Looks amazing, especially Guadalcanal and Shattered Sword. I have reading for a looooong time[;)].

[sdevault]

Kindle version of this book releasing Feb. 14th, 2012: Enterprise: by Barrett Tillman

My personal favorites are the Morison series. I bought a set in the late 80's and still love to thumb through them. Thanks to this forum I have found many gems. Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway is now on my Kindle, as well as Given Up for Dead: America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island and others.

Thanks everyone!

[zuluhour]

received "The First Team and Guadalcanal Campaign" today.[:)] I guess its OK to play WITP-AE with the resident Ayatolla.[:D]

[LowCommand]

The Burma Campaign by Frank McLynn

This is a Political History. It includes all the “dirt” on the various generals and high political figures etc. It explains why General X hated General Y. The silly reasons for many odd personnel decisions are explained, as well as some unsound strategy. It is decidedly written from the British point of view. The actual combat is mostly only covered at a high level. I highly recommend it for the advanced student of the war. It probably should not be your first book on the subject. If you read it, be sure to scan the notes. The author buried some of the most interesting stuff (at least to AE readers) deep in the fine print at the back, such as pg 474 “The corruption on the Hump and the Burma Road was egregious even by Kuomintang standards. Sixteen different Chinese agencies supervised the arriving Lend-Lease materiel, all the directors of which had been appointed by nepotism. Much of the supplies simply did not arrive, being appropriated by the KMT ‘rake-off’. One estimate was that for every 14,000 tons that left India and Burma, only 5,000 tons reached China…”

Warning, Warning, Will Robinson, the personal views of the author are to be taken with about a ton of salt. He is very often wrong. For example, the way to react when suddenly facing a tiger in the jungle does NOT involve running away. Nor was the invasion of Ceylon necessarily the best possible strategy for Japan. General Slim was very, very good, but probably not the best General in the whole world, ever. He might not have even been the best British General of WWII (I’m thinking about O’Connor NOT Montgomery.) Also be warned, McLynn gives the dirt on lots of people, even including his favorite Slim (he made some bad personnel decisions among other things.) McLynn is much less nice to everybody else. All the standard heroes of the war except Marshal get raked over the coals, including Churchill, Roosevelt, Stillwell, Chang etc. In places this book reads more like a gossip column rather than a history. (Yes, it does include some of who was sleeping with whom.) Again, I recommend the book but be very, very careful of the author’s conclusions.

[MaB1708]

Fantastic thread, looking forward to both retirement and a long life.
Can we have this thread stickied, pls?
Thanks for all the work, Yankee!
Here comes more btw: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3109451

[LowCommand]

Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War by Eric Lacroix and Linton Wells II

Why you might want the book, “Not only is this the best work by far on Japanese cruisers, it is also invaluable for the insights it provides into the Japanese navy as a whole,” dust jacket quote from Norman Friedman, author of the roughly comparable series of books on US, well, pretty much every class of Navy ships and boats. I pretty well agree.

Why you might not want it, Amazon wants somewhere between $200 and $300 used for it.

There is a vast quantity of information here, everything from the usual, guns, speed, armor, lots of drawings, service history, etc. to the unusual, like the launch speed attained by one cruiser. There is a detailed breakdown of which cruiser had what funnel identification bands when. There is lots of detail not usually found in this type of book, like detailed stability figures, hull weight distribution, space devoted to habitability, engine room layout, engine details, etc. There is some very interesting data like hit percentages at various ranges during practice and ammunition usage during various surface actions, so some idea can be gathered of actual combat accuracy.

What isn’t there. There isn’t much discussion over the design process, probably because there doesn’t seem to have been that much discussion. In Friedman’s books, lots of space is devoted to long, detailed arguments between the various authorities over what should get built and why the ships came out the way they did. In Japan, the admirals decreed and the designer produced. There were some discussions over some ships, but nothing like the long fights in the US or the fights aren’t in the book. That probably has something to do with the way many of the ships came out. { My opinion, The book’s authors’ do mention, in passing, that the designer of the later cruisers didn’t fight the admirals the way the previous one did. } The book does have a discussion on the overweigh problem and how it seems to have been (pre treaty abrogation) a massive design error not evil planning. After treaty abrogation the treaty 10,000 ton cruisers ended up displacing over 15,000 tons.

What is unfortunately missing. There is a detailed discussion on where some ships got hit and how much damage was caused, including drawings and pictures. With others there isn’t much. For example one cruiser survived three torpedo hits and came home by itself, but there isn’t much info, probably because of war related document destruction (the authors don’t say much about such things.) There also isn’t much discussion about what worked and what didn’t. The authors do discuss the controversial practice of centerline bulkheads (they tend to led to very severe danger of capsizing.) In their opinion the provision of extensive counter flooding equipment etc. was mostly sufficient. (I disagree, but I’m not an expert.)

Again, I think this is a great book for anybody really intrested in the gritty details of WWII cruisers.

[LowCommand]

Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War by Eric Lacroix and Linton Wells II

Why you might want the book, “Not only is this the best work by far on Japanese cruisers, it is also invaluable for the insights it provides into the Japanese navy as a whole,” dust jacket quote from Norman Friedman, author of the roughly comparable series of books on US, well, pretty much every class of Navy ships and boats. I pretty well agree.

Why you might not want it, Amazon wants somewhere between $200 and $300 used for it.

There is a vast quantity of information here, everything from the usual, guns, speed, armor, lots of drawings, service history, etc. to the unusual, like the launch speed attained by one cruiser. There is a detailed breakdown of which cruiser had what funnel identification bands when. There is lots of detail not usually found in this type of book, like detailed stability figures, hull weight distribution, space devoted to habitability, engine room layout, engine details, etc. There is some very interesting data like hit percentages at various ranges during practice and ammunition usage during various surface actions, so some idea can be gathered of actual combat accuracy.

What isn’t there. There isn’t much discussion over the design process, probably because there doesn’t seem to have been that much discussion. In Friedman’s books, lots of space is devoted to long, detailed arguments between the various authorities over what should get built and why the ships came out the way they did. In Japan, the admirals decreed and the designer produced. There were some discussions over some ships, but nothing like the long fights in the US or the fights aren’t in the book. That probably has something to do with the way many of the ships came out. { My opinion, The book’s authors’ do mention, in passing, that the designer of the later cruisers didn’t fight the admirals the way the previous one did. } The book does have a discussion on the overweigh problem and how it seems to have been (pre treaty abrogation) a massive design error not evil planning. After treaty abrogation the treaty 10,000 ton cruisers ended up displacing over 15,000 tons.

What is unfortunately missing. There is a detailed discussion on where some ships got hit and how much damage was caused, including drawings and pictures. With others there isn’t much. For example one cruiser survived three torpedo hits and came home by itself, but there isn’t much info, probably because of war related document destruction (the authors don’t say much about such things.) There also isn’t much discussion about what worked and what didn’t. The authors do discuss the controversial practice of centerline bulkheads (they tend to led to very severe danger of capsizing.) In their opinion the provision of extensive counter flooding equipment etc. was mostly sufficient. (I disagree, but I’m not an expert.)

Again, I think this is a wonderful, if expensive, book for anybody intrested in the gritty details of WWII cruisers.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: LowCommand


Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War by Eric Lacroix and Linton Wells II

Why you might want the book, “Not only is this the best work by far on Japanese cruisers, it is also invaluable for the insights it provides into the Japanese navy as a whole,” dust jacket quote from Norman Friedman, author of the roughly comparable series of books on US, well, pretty much every class of Navy ships and boats. I pretty well agree.

Why you might not want it, Amazon wants somewhere between $200 and $300 used for it.

There is a vast quantity of information here, everything from the usual, guns, speed, armor, lots of drawings, service history, etc. to the unusual, like the launch speed attained by one cruiser. There is a detailed breakdown of which cruiser had what funnel identification bands when. There is lots of detail not usually found in this type of book, like detailed stability figures, hull weight distribution, space devoted to habitability, engine room layout, engine details, etc. There is some very interesting data like hit percentages at various ranges during practice and ammunition usage during various surface actions, so some idea can be gathered of actual combat accuracy.

What isn’t there. There isn’t much discussion over the design process, probably because there doesn’t seem to have been that much discussion. In Friedman’s books, lots of space is devoted to long, detailed arguments between the various authorities over what should get built and why the ships came out the way they did. In Japan, the admirals decreed and the designer produced. There were some discussions over some ships, but nothing like the long fights in the US or the fights aren’t in the book. That probably has something to do with the way many of the ships came out. { My opinion, The book’s authors’ do mention, in passing, that the designer of the later cruisers didn’t fight the admirals the way the previous one did. } The book does have a discussion on the overweigh problem and how it seems to have been (pre treaty abrogation) a massive design error not evil planning. After treaty abrogation the treaty 10,000 ton cruisers ended up displacing over 15,000 tons.

What is unfortunately missing. There is a detailed discussion on where some ships got hit and how much damage was caused, including drawings and pictures. With others there isn’t much. For example one cruiser survived three torpedo hits and came home by itself, but there isn’t much info, probably because of war related document destruction (the authors don’t say much about such things.) There also isn’t much discussion about what worked and what didn’t. The authors do discuss the controversial practice of centerline bulkheads (they tend to led to very severe danger of capsizing.) In their opinion the provision of extensive counter flooding equipment etc. was mostly sufficient. (I disagree, but I’m not an expert.)

Again, I think this is a wonderful, if expensive, book for anybody intrested in the gritty details of WWII cruisers.

Warspite1

Why so damn expensive?? [&:] I would love that book....but at that price its sadly not possible [:(]

[YankeeAirRat]

Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War

It is an out of print book and popular. The classic of supply and demand

[Lokasenna]

Surprised this one isn't in the thread yet. I found it at the library as a young man about 15 years ago, and recently bought it used off of Amazon. My copy didn't come with the jacket, but that's OK...

http://www.amazon.com/The-campaign-Guad ... 385043546/

A couple hundred pages with an extensive appendix and bibliography. Hundreds of drawings and maps of the campaign. Every major engagement is detailed. Hardcover, and you can get a copy in "very good" or "like new" condition for about $15 US.

It really is an amazing book. I got my copy yesterday, and while paging through I noticed that Coggins' sources stated that I-19 torpedoed Wasp while I-15 tried for Hornet and hit North Carolina/O'Brien instead, when in reality it was the same salvo that traveled (I still go at that) all the miles in between the task forces to hit the BB and DD. But hey, we might not have known that in 1972...

[Skyros]

Great book, I remember reading it back in the 70s when I was in high school. Its detailed battle obs got me into naval miniatures.

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

Surprised this one isn't in the thread yet. I found it at the library as a young man about 15 years ago, and recently bought it used off of Amazon. My copy didn't come with the jacket, but that's OK...

http://www.amazon.com/The-campaign-Guad ... 385043546/

A couple hundred pages with an extensive appendix and bibliography. Hundreds of drawings and maps of the campaign. Every major engagement is detailed. Hardcover, and you can get a copy in "very good" or "like new" condition for about $15 US.

It really is an amazing book. I got my copy yesterday, and while paging through I noticed that Coggins' sources stated that I-19 torpedoed Wasp while I-15 tried for Hornet and hit North Carolina/O'Brien instead, when in reality it was the same salvo that traveled (I still go at that) all the miles in between the task forces to hit the BB and DD. But hey, we might not have known that in 1972...