Inside GMT Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Desperation Morale Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative GamerNarrett’s book takes a look at the intrigues that surrounded a portion of the Gulf coast in a period of unsettled transition. It’s far enough off the track of the usual topics of the colonial period to be nearly completely[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
As a one volume history of the American Revolution, The Glorious Cause is nicely complete, but seems to assume some prior knowledge. Now, as there’s plenty of ‘everyone knows’ bits about the American Revolution, that’s not awful here, but this[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Crowley’s book on Venice is about the Stato da Mar, and as such, is exactly one of the things I’ve been on the lookout for. The first section starts with Venice’s mercantile rise, and then goes into the story of[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Tom Pocock posits the Seven Years War as the first world war (an assertion that he’s not alone in, and that I can get behind), but his book on the subject doesn’t really develop this. Instead, each chapter is about[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This was created as a Kickstarter stretch goal, and while good, is smaller and much more limited than the main four books. The first part is a collection of four essays done as a result of the Kickstarter that funded[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Originally written in English in 1974, this is apparently still one of the basic studies of Italian Renaissance warfare in English or Italian. Mallett spent some time studying the original sources and came to what were at the time non-traditional[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The fourth (and kind-of final) volume of Shannon Appelcline’s massive history of the RPG industry finishes up the project well. However, I can’t help a feeling that this one is less important, and unpolished. Some of this is my prejudices,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Nancy Goldstone’s The Rival Queens is one part biography of Marguerite de Valois, half a part biography of Catherine de Medici, and half a part outline of the French Religious Wars. Catherine getting first billing the in subtitle, the focus[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Osprey’s book on fortifications in the Kingdom of Wessex is a well-done introduction, but didn’t quite dive into some detail I’d like. At the end, Lavelle admits that the book is even more limited in scope than it could be,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The third volume of Shannon Appelcline’s history of the RPG industry maintains the same general format as before: about four hundred pages, separate chapters for each publisher, covering (essentially) a decade of time (1990-1999). I tend to be fascinated by[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…