Modern Military History; Recommended Reading List

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes"

Mark Twain

"What's past is prologue"

William Shakespeare

Modern Military History

 Recommended  Reading List   

The following books are in my personal collection. I think

they represent a good cross-section of what I call "modern military history."

I hope parents, students and history buffs consider these recommendations

useful.

Regards,

MG

WWI

The Sleepwalkers; How Europe Went to War in 1914 Christopher

Clark

The Guns of August   Barbara W. Tuchman 

The Great War   Peter Hart

Instrument of War; The German Army 1914-1918 Dennis Showalter

All Quiet of the Western Front  Erich M. Remarque

11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour; Armistice Day 1918 Joseph H. Persico

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East   David Fromkin 

Post-WWI

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich  William L. Shirer

[very long, great for research projects]

The Trial of Adolph Hitler David King  

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939  Antony Beevor

The Hundred Day Winter War  Gordon F. Sander

A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940 William Trotter

The Generals; Patton, MacArthur, Marshall and the
Winning of World War II   Winston Groom

George Marshall; A Biography  Debbie and Irwin Unger

The European Theater

Operation Drumbeat;the Dramatic Story of Germany’s First

U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II 

Michael Gannon

The Battle of the Atlantic, How the Allies Won the War Jonathan Dimbleby 

Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany  Donald L. Miller

Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945   Max Hastings

The Supreme Commander; the War Years of Dwight D. EisenhowerStephen E. Ambrose

Hitler’s Panzers; the Lightning Attacks That Revolutionized

Warfare Dennis Showalter

The Liberation Trilogy   Rick Atkinson:

• An Army at Dawn The War in North Africa,1942-1943
• The Day of Battle The War in Sicily and Italy,1943-1944
• The Guns at Last Light The War in Western Europe,1944-1945

The Battle of Huertgen Forest Charles B. MacDonald

One Soldiers Story   Bob Dole

Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945  Max Hastings

Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge   Antony Beevor

Closing with the Enemy; How GIs Fought the War in Europe,

1944-1945  Michael D. Doubler

September Hope; the American Side of a Bridge Too Far

(Operation Market Garden)  John C. McManus

Monty and Rommel; Parallel Lives  Peter Caddick-Adams

The Third Reich at War   Richard J. Evans

Berlin: The Downfall 1945   Antony Beevor

D-Day

The Longest Day  Cornelius Ryan

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy  Antony Beevor

D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches   Stephen E. Ambrose

The Dead and Those About to Die; D-Day--The Big Red One

at Omaha Beach John C. McManus

Omaha Beach 

Joseph Balkoski [29th Infantry Division Historian]

The Pacific Theater

Flying Tigers  Daniel Ford

Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-45

Barbara Tuchman

Implacable Foes; War in the Pacific 1944-1945 Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio

With the Old Breed; At Peleliu and Okinawa   E.B. Sledge

The Pacific War Trilogy  Ian W. Toll 

 

The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the

Pacific 1944-1945 Conquering Tide James D. Hornfischer

 

Retribution; The Battle for Japan 1944-1945   Max Hastings

Rampage  James M. Scott

The Eastern Front

Ivan’s War;Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 Catherine Merridale

Stalingrad  Antony Beevor

Armor and Blood;the Battle of Kursk  Dennis Showalter

Death of the Wehrmacht;the German Campaigns of 1942Robert M. Citino

Intelligence

The Irregulars; Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in War

Time Washington Jennet Conant

The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas, 1939-1945   Max Hastings

Tapping Hitler’s Generals; Transcripts of Secret Conversations,

1942-1945    Sonke Neitzel

Very Special Intelligence; the Story of the Admiralty’s

Operational Intelligence Center, 1939-1945  Patrick Beesly

Ultra Goes to War  Ronald Lewin

Homefronts

Freedom’s Forge; How American Business Produced Victory

in WWII Arthur Herman

Engineers of Victory; the Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide

in the Second World War  Paul Kennedy

The Holocaust

Hitler’s Willing Executioners; Ordinary Germans and the

Holocaust  Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

 

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the

Final Solution in Poland  Christopher Browning

The Perpetrators; The World of the Holocaust Killers

Guenter Lewy

The Nuremberg Trial  Ann Tusa and John Tusa

Modern

The Korean War Max Hastings

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

David Halberstam

Vietnam; An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 Max Hastings

We Were Soldiers Once..and Young; Ia Drang-The

Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam

Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway

Hue; 1968 Mark Bowden

From Beirut to Jerusalem Thomas L. Friedman

Imperial Grunts Robert D. Kaplan

Masters of Chaos; The Secret History of the Special Forces Linda Robinson

Not a Good Day to Die Sean Naylor [Afghanistan]

Charlie Wilson's War George Crile [Afghanistan]

Lone Survivor Marcus Luttrell [Afghanistan]

In the Company of Soldiers; A Chronicle of Combat Rick Atkinson [Iraq]

Baghdad at Sunrise, Peter R. Mansor [Iraq]