Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Military History Book Challenge

"Jmnlman" over at Strategist's Personal Library has issued a challenge for folks to read 3 books on military history between now and Veteran's Day (or should that be Armistice Day, which it was called when I was a little girl). Reading some military history books is one of those things that I keep putting on the back burner but that I know I really need to do to fully understand my ancestors' involvement in the various wars or to understand the times in which they lived. I will link the reviews of the three books to this post as I complete them. I think there are other genea-bloggers out there who may also be interested in signing up for this challenge!

BOOKS READ:

Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. 1st paperback ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

5 comments:

Ally said...

I'm sure you have an idea of what three books you're going to read - but I just wanted to share one that I can thorougly recommend: "Honor Untarnished: A West Point Graduate's Memoir of World War II" by General Donald V. Bennett - I audited the WWII class in college, and General Bennett was our guest speaker almost every week (we had a lot of great guest speakers, but he was the one who talked the most). Much of what he told us (including the REAL story of what Patton actually did) is in this book. Sadly the book doesn't appear to be in print anymore (although Amazon is offering it for the Kindle - further proof of that ebooks can be a very good thing!)
(I've got two copies of it myself - but I'm not giving up either, not even to the library, lol!)

Lori Thornton said...

I think I'm going to stick to some of the ones that I have either at home or in the library where I work. That does sound like an interesting book though.

jmnlman said...

Lori:Thanks for participating!

YGL:Bennett isn't a fan of Patton I take it?

Ally said...

No, actually, apparently all the soldiers (and especially the ones who were right there in the next tent when the infamous event occurred, like General Bennett) actually sided with Patton - because it didn't happen the way it was portrayed in the movie... I'd try to summarize General Bennett's explanation - but its hard to do without doing an injustice to General Bennett's words (Which I most certainly do not want to do) But the jest of it is - it didn't happen the way it was portrayed - yes Patton slapped a soldier - but there was more to the story than that...

Sadly that WWII class will never be as great again - General Bennett passed away a couple of years ago, and I'm sure several of the others who talked have as well - but it was an amazing class to be in on to hear it from the people who were there... and from multiple viewpoints - we had a German immigrant who had been in the German army during the war, and American who had joined the Royal Air Force in order to get involved earlier, a woman who had been a school girl in England at the time... it really was amazing...

jmnlman said...

I'll have to look for that book.