My current read. As a "Texas is the greatest damn country in the union" kind of guy, I'm actually really lacking on my Texas history. This book reads almost like an action/adventure novel

That's a good one. Not a whole lot of new information, but a fun read.

Just finished his book on Andrew Jackson which was very interesting.

The Last Gunfight by Jeff Guinn.

It's about the gunfight at the OK Corral

This thread has motivated me to get back onto the reading train. Last year my favorite book I read was:

"The Black Watch: A Record in Action" by Joe Cassels. His account of service the The Black Watch in WWI

Nice. I got into a Zulu wars kick last year. Favorite book was "How Can Man Die Better". Might reread for next weeks Isandlwana and Rourkes Drift anniversaries

ABATTBQ87 said:

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dcbowers said:

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Just finished Countdown 1945 by Chris Wallace (yes, that Chris Wallace).

The story starts on April 12, 1945, the day that FDR died, and counts down days until the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki. The main characters include Robert Oppenheimer, Gen. Leslie Groves, Paul Tibbets, and President Harry Truman. The only Texan briefly mentioned is Joseph Stiborik (side note: I found a website that mentioned that Stiborik attended Texas A&M, https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/joseph-s-stiborik , but the AFS website does not list Stiborik as a former student.) Amazing to me that despite the immense size and effort of the Manhatten Project, Truman was in the dark and unaware that the bomb was being developed until after FDR died.

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From the Battalion: August 9, 1945:

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In my lifetime, I would have never considered a Taylor Duck as a member of the Enola Gay crew.!!

Edit: Or the Bockscar B-29. It really doesn't say.

Could have been in a one of the Telemetry aircraft too that shadowed each mission. I think Bock's Car had two chase planes.

1. The 99% Invisible City ****
2. In Cold Blood ****
3. A Gathering of Saints, a True Story of Money, Murder and Deceit ***** pretty good crime story that teaches a lot about the Mormon religion

To start the year I bought Ian Toll's three books on the war in the Pacific. Atkinson's trilogy on the WW2 European war set the gold standard. Toll's effort is just as good. I have finished Pacific Crucible and The Conquering Tide. I will now start The Twilight of the Gods. The books are great reads. Go ahead and get all three because you will want to read them all.

First Americans by JM Adovasio

Has some good info but he really likes to talk about his feuds with other paleo archeologists

Going through the Toll's series in audiobook now. Narrated by Grover Gardner, the same reader who performed Shelby Foote's trilogy. Great voice.

Gary Gallagher's Causes Won, Lost and Forgotten: How Hollywood & Popular Art Shape what we know about the Civil War

Most Americans, for bad or worse, learn most of what they know about history from the movies.

Anyone ever read Grant's autobiography?

Yes, it is so well written I would consider it a work of literature as well as history

Just read "Roll me over: An Infantryman's World."

It's basically a collection of an infantry man's letters home. Started slow but really got interesting about half way through. It also was told from a very real point of view downplaying heroics and pointing put flaws of army experience in the personal behavior side. The author was one of 3 from his company that made it though.

The Great Influenza is a good one. I recently finished A Ruined Land by Michael Golay and Truth, Lies, and O Rings by Allan J McDonald and James R Hansen. Currently reading Goldwater by Barry Goldwater and Jack Casserly and The Soul of Our Nation by Jim Meacham.

I'm in the midst of an old book reading phase:

5 Years a Cavalryman by H.H. McConnell - one of the best accounts of what it was like to be an ordinary cavalryman on the post-Civil War frontier. Posted for five years (1866-1871) with the Sixth U.S. Cavalry at Fort Belknap and Fort Richardson, in West Texas, McConnell gives the unglorified inside story on his fellow enlisted men and the officers, reporting candidly on their heavy drinking, their general disorganization, their boredom, and their thievery.

This is an entertaining and quick read, with some interesting tales of the frontier after the war. I thought Indians would figure more prominently, but it appears that it was like most military work, very boring unless someone was shooting at you.

The Great Plains by Webb - Webb argues that "the Great Plains environment. . .constitutes a geographic unity whose influences have been so powerful as to put a characteristic mark upon everything that survives within its borders," Webb singles out the revolver, barbed wire, and the windmill as evidence of the new phase of civilization required for settlement of that arid, treeless region.

Lots of interesting information that I haven't seen before and some very intriguing points on why the Spanish and Mexicans failed to move into the plains. I also enjoyed the description of the development of the cattle business after the Civil War.

The first 100 pages are a slog through the history of post-germ theory medicine, the Rockefeller Foundation and founding of Joh Hopkins but it picks up from there and helps you understand today's pandemic and the overreaction we seem to be having.

Killers of the Flower Moon. Oil boom, Osage Indian murders, and beginning of the FBI

Just finished spearhead by makos. Very good book about the spearhead division and more specifically about the events and people taking part in the battle for cologne. The gunner for the american pershing and the driver for the german panther both survived the war which makos was able to interview the both and be there when the two met in the 2000s.

Very interesting and ww2 tankers were a tough bunch.

Bleeding Blue and Gray by Ira Rutkow. History of Civil War medicine. Basically no advances were made in medicine as a result of the Civil War. But advances were made in mass casualty care particularly by Jon Letterman and his triage and ambulance innovations.

Just finished the Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson. About Churchill during the German Blitz of 1940-41. Good read. I've read all of Larson's books. Everything he does is great.

chick79 said:

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Just finished the Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson. About Churchill during the German Blitz of 1940-41. Good read. I've read all of Larson's books. Everything he does is great.

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I have read many of Erik Larson's books and have enjoyed them all. He does and excellent job of weaving multiple authors' diary entries into an interesting, coherent story.

I have somewhat mixed opinions about "Spendid and the Vile", though. The story focus on how the English aristocracy survived the Battle of Britain. I admired John Colville (and someday want to read his diary) and loathed Randolph Churchill. One item, in particular bothered me: page 222 mentions Mary Churchill's brief romantic encounter with a young RAF pilot named Ian Prosser on September 11, 1940. What the book fails to mention is that Prosser, aged 22, was killed on October 28, 1940 when his Blenheim Bomber crashed (uncovered on an easy google search). Perhaps what bothered me is that Mary's birthday party gets a mention yet Prosser's death 6 weeks later doesn't. Maybe it just didn't fit the storyline.

1. Robert E. Lee and Me-Seidule, no stars, don't bother, sorry I bought it.

2. The Last American Aristocrat-Brown. ***** The book is about Henry Adams, the grandson of Quincy and Great grandson of John Adams. He knew everyone, lived a long life and had an opinion( generally informed) about everyone and everything.

3. The New World Begins-Popkin**** I knew little about the French Revolution. Now I never have to read another thing about it. The author covers the waterfront. I had a casual understanding that it was bloody, but the actuality of it all is shocking. Would have gotten five stars, but the constant killing did get a little redundant. One has to conclude that the French should never govern themselves. They just can't do it.

4. How to Astronaut-Virts****. This is a neat little book. The author is an astronaut that can actually write. He got dinged one star because he is a former fighter pilot and had to tell me that about every other page. That said if you have any interest in our space program this is a fun read. He covers training, how to put on a space suit...there are more that one type. Yes he deals with diapers and what the plans are if one of them dies while at the space station. It was a nice break after the French Revolution.

Agthatbuilds said:

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Just finished spearhead by makos. Very good book about the spearhead division and more specifically about the events and people taking part in the battle for cologne. The gunner for the american pershing and the driver for the german panther both survived the war which makos was able to interview the both and be there when the two met in the 2000s.

Very interesting and ww2 tankers were a tough bunch.

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Saw today that spearhead is being made into a movie. Let's hope it's decent.

McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, again.

That's interesting. Hope they do it up good. Also check out the "Tank Duel at Cologne" to see real footage of that Pershing v a Panther. It's on YouTube

Wrong emoji.

Just finished "The Greatest Beer Run Ever." True story about a guy who took beers to his buddies fighting in Vietnam to show them that they were appreciated back home. Quick and easy read and a great story. I think they are making a movie about it as well.

BigJim49 AustinNowDallas said:

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Just finished "First Circle" by Solzhenitsyn . Russian prison life bios after WW11 . You can't

believe the way they treated political prisoners - most on ten year sentences for nothing !

While stationed in Germany 55-56, I saw on TV the first German POWs from Russia being returned

10 years after the end of WW!!. Sad looking bunch and no one to greet them !

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less than 5% ever returned. their wives and daughters were killed, raped, transplanted, gone, or married away at best. homes all gone. children they'd never known now mostly communists. can you even imagine?

1913: in search of the world before the great war.

really, really fascinating read.

given that i have now concluded that the great war destroyed the human race's prospects and western culture, and took the world from an upward parabola towards greatness, peaked it onto a downward trend of anti-progress, degeneration, and socialist exploitation, i really wanted to get a handle on what the world was really like in 1913, before the american dream was undermined and western european culture destroyed.

that's a slightly melodramatic take, certainly the world of 1913 had its problems, and has always been deeply flawed, but anyway, its a fascinating trip around the world of the end of an era.