I’m a military history fan and two great history books filled my May. I don’t write military history or historical fiction, so I don’t mention it here much unless it ties into my research (which would most likely be the Civil War). But here are two fantastic books from two great historians about two different wars. You might want to read either or both if, like me, you enjoy knowing more about these historic conflicts. (Note: Though these gentlemen probably don’t pull the same levers on voting day, they are both at the top of their field).
The Second World Wars
The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson is not available on Kindle Unlimited, but might still be free on Audible.
A “breathtakingly magisterial” account of World War II by America’s preeminent military historian (Wall Street Journal)
World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. Never before had a war been fought on so many diverse landscapes and in so many different ways, from rocket attacks in London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya.
The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war.
Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, bestselling author Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war’s origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.
An authoritative new history of astonishing breadth, The Second World Wars offers a stunning reinterpretation of history’s deadliest conflict.
What’s to Love About this Book: The Second World Wars is the most comprehensive account I have read (and I’ve read many) and its topical, rather than chronological, presentation is a refreshing perspective. Rather than focusing on battles, Hanson compares how the combatants prepared for and fought the war.
Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975
Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975 by Max Hastings is available free on Kindle Unlimited.
An absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Secret War.
Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.
Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.
No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
What’s to Love About this Book: Like The Second World Wars, the comprehensive account is enlightening. Beginning almost 20 years before US involvement adds perspective to events later in the war. Hastings pulls no punches and apologizes for no one in this account. The victims in and out of uniform were many, and this is their story.