Best War/Military book?

I agree that "the Forgotten Soldier" is an outstanding book. My personal favorite is a volume of the U.S. Army History in World II, also known and the Green Books, titled "Three Battles." Although many may consider these volumes dry reading, they provide a wealth of detail and can be quite frank about operational failures. I remember pouring over the great foldout maps to follow the battle for hours when I was in High School. In fact the entire series is a very good reference for all aspects of World War II U.S. Army history.

I have the One Shot One Kill as well and liked it alot. 

One of my favorites was Martin Caidin's Flying Fortress, which I read five times. 

I have right at 650 books in my basement 'man-cave'.  Mostly WWII and Vietnam. There are several of the ones I have that I really enjoyed. 

Mike

ygmodeler4

Hercmech:

My favorite is "One Shot one Kill the Carlos Hathcock story" 

 

 

That's a good one, I don't know why, I just seemed to like "Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills" better though.

Your right that is the one I was thinking of...got the two mixed up

Hercmech

My favorite is "One Shot one Kill the Carlos Hathcock story" 

 

That's a good one, I don't know why, I just seemed to like "Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills" better though.

My favorite is "One Shot one Kill the Carlos Hathcock story" 

"Five Years, Four Fronts"...Georg Grossjohann was great. A little tough in spots, just because of the translation. Very few books have made the hair on my neck stand like this one did. I highly recommend it...and it's not expensive!!! 

I'll second "Forgotten Soldier". Other ones that I like are "With the Old Breed" by Eugene Sledge, "Guns Up!" by ?Johnnie Clark?, "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick, "A Rumor of War" by Philip Caputo, "The Last Stand of Fox Company" by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin...and for an interesting but good read for the aircraft enthusiasts I really liked "Raid on the Sun" by Rodger Claire.

gunner_chris

If you like British humour, Spike Milligan wrote a series of short books of his experience as a gunner in WW2.

He went on to be involved in a show called Goon Show and was the inspiration for Monty python.

I read one of his books and am now looking to track down the rest.

I never got to read any of Spikes book. My dad did have a few of them, but i am not sure where they are now. He was a huge Spike fan and for my 16th birthday took me to see him live, my best birded pressie ever. The Goon shows are just brilliant, i keep meaning to get them on CD.

I love his cameo in The Life of Brian.

If you like British humour, Spike Milligan wrote a series of short books of his experience as a gunner in WW2.

He went on to be involved in a show called Goon Show and was the inspiration for Monty python.

I read one of his books and am now looking to track down the rest.

I would find it hard to say just one book. I do like Adrian Goldsworthy' book, i would have to say Ceaser is my favorite. I do enjoy reading the acnicent account's so Ceaser's books on the gaulic war and the Civil war and Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian War would deffinatly rate as my favorites.

Two favorites of  mine are "Eagle Against the Sun" - Ronald H. Spector covering the PTO from pre-war to Hiroshima, and "Why the Allies Won" - Richard Overy, an overview covering the  military, political, economical, technical and moral reasons for the Allied victory.  On a lighter side, I just picked up "FUBAR Soldier Slang of World War II" - Gordon L. Rottman. This has US GI and Marine, British and Commonwealth, German, Russian and Japanese slang expressions.  One word of warning, this is uncensored, unvarnished terminology, as used by soldiers.

oddmanrush

I'm a big fan of what Antony Beevor rights about WWII...So Stalingrad, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, A Writer at War. 

I didn't know too much about the Spanish civil war,so I read his "Battle for Spain" which was also very good.

Indeed. It is hard to narrow down just one. Beevor's 'D-Day' is excellent. Shelby Foote's "Stars in their courses", about Gettysburg or his entire 3 book series is really good. I recently read "The Retreat" by Michael Jones.,.. I never realized just how bad Barbarossa went in late 1941.

That would be impossible to narrow down to one favorite,I can give you a few

Shattered sword-Midway

Gentleman of War-Emden

Guerilla-Von Lettow in E Africa

Killer Angels-Gettysburg

Stalingrad-Beevor

Konigwolf13

Band of brothers would be my fave. Dont give a rats crack about any other Ambrose book. I saw the series first, thought it was great, then read the book and it was so much better it left the series for dead.

I actually prefer Citizen Soldiers to BoB. Some of the accounts of the hedgerow fighting are absolutely gripping.

Band of brothers would be my fave. Dont give a rats crack about any other Ambrose book. I saw the series first, thought it was great, then read the book and it was so much better it left the series for dead.

My second fave book (cant remember the title right now and it's still to be unpacked) is letters home from australian's serving over seas (has nurse's as well as soldiers) from the Boer war to the 1990's. It gives such insight in small parts from different views of what its like to serve away from home.

The Forgotten Soldier is #1.

A Stillness at Appomattox is #2

Antony Beevor books are also fantastic

I'm a big fan of what Antony Beevor rights about WWII...So Stalingrad, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, A Writer at War. 

i have two that are pretty hard to decide between

Flying Fortress by edward jablonski, although its old, i learned more about the B-17 from this book than any other, plus it has alot of the cutaway illustrations and assembly diagrams from the real crew training manuals, a must have for the B-17 modeler

there was a book i had years ago and i think it was called simply "german tanks of WWII" and it had a TON of pictures that would have made great reference material......too bad i destroyed it before i started seriously modeling lol.

Ever? About any war/military?

The Punic Wars by Adrian Goldsworthy

More recent?

Big fan of "Neptune's Inferno", about the naval side of the Guadalcanal campaign.

Just started "Wake Island Pilot" by John Kinney of VMF-211 and am really enjoying it so far. Very much more a personal account than a "definitive history"-type, but considering he's probably the man most responsible for keeping the Wildcats in the air during the desperate defense of Wake, one fantastic perspective.