I realized something yesterday.  Many news outlets and analysts liken the fighting in Ukraine since the fall of 2021 to WWI, but not many (I am especially looking at you analysis types) try to explain why that is.  I have been thinking about quite a lot in the last couple of weeks, the analysis angle, I mean.  I think it simply comes down to the fact that a lot of commenters are afraid to admit that there is no current solution to the attritional stalemate in Ukraine, any more than there was a solution to the attritional stalemate on the Western front from the end of the Race to ..read more

Unless you have been living in a cave you should be aware that political correctness and the “war for social justice” is everywhere in the last 10-15 years.  This book details how the social justice warriors (SJWs) have infiltrated the American military and the corrosive effect SJW policies has had on military readiness. The author is a former US Army officer and combat veteran.  The numbers: there are 182 pages of text divided into 9 topical chapters with 38 pages of notes and an index.  The first chapter defines the problems that the author sees and chapters 2-8 describe the v ..read more

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] This is a very interesting book that takes a look at the life of Napoleon Bonaparte through using 100 objects contemporary to his life to tell the story.  It is an interesting concept and one that the author does a generally very good job at. The numbers, the book is not divided into contemporary chapters, instead there are 100, I will call them micro chapters, for each object.  There is 282 pages of text and a 7-page inde ..read more

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] I expected this book to be somewhat similar to the classic “A World Lit Only by Fire” by William Manchester.  It is in that it describes medieval life and it is different in that it presents a more realistic appreciation of what life was actually like in the Middle Ages vice the depressing picture painted by Manchester. First, the stats.  The book is 117 pages of text divided into six topical chapters.  There are no n ..read more

The Russo-Ukraine War of 2022 is now a week old.  Perhaps it is time to step back a minute and consider where we are and what could happen next.  In the first week of the war I learned two things I think are of significance: The Russian military is not as competent or as fearsome as I and many other analysts thought they were The Ukrainian military is neither as weak willed or as incompetent as I and many analysts thought they were These two things have combined to both frustrate the Russians and encourage the Ukrainians.  Many people people, me included figured Russia would hav ..read more

David Stahel has conclusively demonstrated that there is more to learn from the history of World War II. His first published work, a revised version of his doctoral dissertation entitled Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.  This work is not another single volume “comprehensive” work describing the entire campaign conducted by Germany and its allies and their invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. Instead, the author restricts his narrative to describing the planning and preparation of the offensive and th ..read more

This is not the usual fare for the type of books I read but I found this on a discount rack and found the cover synopsis interesting and vaguely remembered reading about this case when it happened.  I am glad I picked it up. This is the almost unbelievable story of Cristopher Knight, who abandoned his car in the Maine woods in 1986 and spent the next 27 years living by himself in a makeshift camp less than a mile from civilization.  He survived by stealing from the many summer camps and cabins on the two lakes, known as North and South pond.  It is estimated that over the years ..read more

George C. Marshall, Jr. would graduate from the Virginia Military Institute in two months and he had decided that he wanted to be an officer in the U.S. Army. So in April of 1901, Marshall took it upon himself to travel to Washington, D.C. and meet with the U.S. Attorney General who was an acquaintance of his father. This gentleman was impressed by the interview and arranged for Marshall to meet that same day with the Chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee who received him favorably. However, Marshall wanted to be certain that he would achieve his goal. That same day he walked into t ..read more

The Big Stick by Eliot A. Cohen is an examination of the usefulness and/or necessity of having credible military force as part of US international relations. First the numbers, the book is 243 pages of text divided into 8 topical chapters with an introduction and postscript.  There are 36 pages of endnotes and an index as well. The central thesis of the book is that the United States has to have a credible military capability in order to engage with the wider world.  The basic idea is that even if we wanted to, it is impossible for the US to disengage and take up the kind of isolatio ..read more

Beneath the Killing Fields is a study and description of the subterranean remnants from WWI (tunnels, mines, etc.) that for the most part were covered up and forgotten in the post-war period. This is actually a pretty interesting book if you can get past the author’s obvious contempt for every other branch of historical study beyond modern conflict archaeology. The author waxes eloquent at several different places about how his particular field of study is the only one that illuminates the lived experience of conflict on the western front. I am not going to argue here, I will simply point out ..read more