Battle Briefings: D-Day and the Normandy Campaign By David Reisch Stackpole, (2018) 128 pp. $21.95 The historiography of the June 1944 Normandy Campaign, centering on the amphibious assault on 6 June, has been chronicled exhaustively in the literature of military history. Journalist and military historian David Reisch’s entry into the field, his second
British & German Battlecruisers: Their Development and Operations By Michele Cosentino and Ruggero Stanglini. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2016. HMS Dreadnought and the Invincible-class battlecruisers transformed naval warfare when they were laid down in 1905 and 1906. Dreadnought, the first all-big-gun battleship, made previous ships of the line obsolescent if not
Churchill’s Thin Grey Line: British Merchant Ships at War 1939 -1945 by Bernard Edwards 2018, Pen & Sword, Havertown, PA. 248 pp., $34.95. The United Kingdom has always considered its Merchant Marine to be part of its armed forces during wartime. Since time immortal, the White Ensign of the Royal Navy and the
Adrift: A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived to Tell About It Brian Murphy with Toula Vlahou New York: Da Capo Press, 2018 240 pp., Bibliography, Map, and Illustrations If in the mid-19th century an ocean crossing wasn’t the blind leap into the unknown that it
Controlled Delivery: Covert Operations in the War on Drugs: Volume 1 & Volume 2, Nick Jacobellis, Senior Special Agent U.S. Customs Service (Ret.). 2018, www.badgepublishing.com. Volume 1, 328 pp. and Volume 2, 347 pp., $13.99 per volume. Within the pages of these two self-published volumes, the author provides a firsthand look at the interdiction by
Steam Titans: Cunard, Collins and the Epic Battle for Commerce on the North Atlantic. William M. Fowler, Jr., New York & London: Bloomsbury, 2017. 358 pp., Illus., biblio., Index., $30. Dr. William Fowler, professor of history emeritus at Northeastern University, is primarily a naval and maritime historian. He is the author of Rebels
On Grand Strategy John Lewis Gaddis New York: Penguin Press, 2018 John Lewis Gaddis, an historian of the Cold War and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, offers this book as a derivative or emulation of Carl von Clausewitz’s classic, On War. In fact, however, On Grand Strategy surpasses Clausewitz and stands
Our Little Monitor: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War By Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White, Kent State University Press, Kent, OH (2018). 304 pp., $33.86 History is filled with pivotal moments in time when the tried and true is no longer sufficient and innovation both wins the day and points
Inspiring Innovation by LCDR Robert Crosby, USN is the first in what is intended to be The John A. van Buren Studies in Leadership and Ethics published by the Naval War College Press. 209 pp., $30.00 “The John A. van Buren studies was established to advance scholarship and publish thought-provoking works of analysis in the
The Shadow Tiger: Billy McDonald, Wingman to Chennault. by William C. McDonald, III and Barbara L. Evenson Shadow Tiger Press, Birmingham, Alabama, 2016. 313 pp. Ill. $39.95 Special Hardback Edition, $24.95 Soft-Cover Edition. This new book is one of the most unusually conceived and designed books on any military aviation subject I have seen in
Victory at Midway: The Battle That Changed the Course of World War II by James M. D’Angelo. McFarland Press, Jefferson, NC, 2018. 198 pp., $35.00. This book is more than another account of the Battle of Midway. Yes, the author covers the story of the naval engagement between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the
The Defenders of Taffy 3: Analysis and Retelling of the Battle of Leyte Gulf by Byron G. Como. (2018.) Reviewed by Charles H. Bogart This print-on-demand paperback book is destined to be the benchmark against which all future accounts of the struggle of Taffy 3 to survive its encounter with the Japanese Navy
World War II at Sea: A Global History Craig L. Symonds New York: Oxford University Press, 2018 Reviewed by Kenneth J. Hagan The author of this monumental and unique book, Craig L. Symonds, a former colleague of mine, writes to fill what he sees as a massive gap in World War II historiography. He laments
Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea By John Lehman, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, NY, (2018) Previewed by David F. Winkler, Ph.D. NOTE: Having been asked to review Oceans Ventured for an academic journal later in the year where I will detail how this fits into the growing historiography of the
Osprey’s Soviet Destroyers of World War II (New Vanguard #256) by Alexander Hill; illustrated by Felipe Rodriguez Reviewed by Jeff Schultz Alexander Hill’s Soviet Destroyers of World War II fills an important gap in the neglected story of the tragedy and triumph of Soviet naval operations in World War II. Hill’s background in Soviet
