October 2016 Reading

I'm at Dawn of the Horse Warriors by Duncan Noble, about chariotry and cavalry from their beginnings down to the fall of Assyria. Not too enamoured yet - it's a written in an informal style that's hardly appropriate to the subject, and while I haven't yet noted any errors directly relevant to the subject matter, it's discouraging to see sloppy mistakes like the claim that there are only three living Semitic languages (Noble lists Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew - leaving out, among others, Amharic, which is the second largest in terms of native speakers). But I'll perserve for the time being at least.

It's been a couple of months or more since I read any military history. Today I started McCampbell's Heroes: The Story of the U.S. Navy's Most Celebrated Carrier Fighters of the Pacific War by Edwin P. Hoyt. Anybody know of this book?

>2 rocketjk: I read it years ago, not too bad as I remember.

Finished an excellent Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick. Very readable and quite well researched.

>3 jztemple: I'm only about 25 pages in, but it seems to be researched in great detail.

Now reading Ronald Seth's 1965 work Caporetto: the Scapegoat Battle about Italy's role in the Great War (of which I know very little).

The most relevant book I read this month was A Soldier to the Last (B), a decent attempt to provide a fair-minded military life of "Fighting Joe" Wheeler. I also read Jasta 18 (A), which reminded me of why I miss Osprey's "Aviation Elite" series.

Just finished Somme: Into the Breach by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore . Long but extremely well-written and has 21 maps which help to put the narrative into perspective. Definitely a keeper.

I finished McCampbell's Heroes: The Story of the U.S. Navy's Most Celebrated Carrier Fighters of the Pacific War by Edwin P. Hoyt. I found the book to be informative to a certain extent, but unfortunately quite tedious for long stretches. My full review is on the book's work page.

I just picked up Long Tan: the start of a lifelong battle by Harry Smith the other day. Unfortunately I have a few books in the queue before I get to that one.