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 GamerLike a lot of people, ancient Egypt has always had a fascination for me, and being a history buff, I’ve picked up a decent amount of knowledge on the subject over the years. But, I’ve never had any one great[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The second volume of Osprey’s New Vanguard books on medieval siege weapons is pretty much just like the first: Thompson’s gouache illustrations do a good job of showing some specific examples, while the text goes through variations on terminology and[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
My biggest regret about Reed Browning’s book on the War of the Austrian Succession is that he never wrote any other military history. His normal subject seems to be the British government of the early 18th Century, which is probably[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Preston’s book on the last Jacobite Rebellion is an interesting volume. It looks for balance not by stripping away all romanticism or propaganda, but by embracing them. What papers and people were saying on both sides is looked at, not[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Amphibious Thing is another Kindle book that I picked up on sale, though I was uncertain that I’d care much about the life of an early Eighteenth Century person I’d never heard of. Thankfully, the book is well-written and fairly[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Osprey’s book on siege weapons does it’s intended job of introducing the subject, but that’s about it. Sam Thompson’s gouache illustrations show a nice variety of specific examples of machines, but the rest of the book tends to be unspecific[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Massie’s book on Catherine the Great is first and foremost a biography, and never loses sight of this fact. As an empress, there is a temptation to equate her with the state, and end up with more of a history[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Peter Heather’s study of Western Europe after the fall of Rome comes in four parts, with the first three being similar, and the fourth different. Each one is about a separate attempt to restore ‘imperial’ rule to the Western Roman[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The end of the Western Roman Empire is a hard subject to get a real grasp on. Ian Huges’ book about one of the final magister militums of the western empire does a lot to explain conditions during the beginning[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Osprey’s Campaign book on the Battle of Manzikert continues their proud tradition of featuring just about every military disaster Rome had. (Well, yes, we are just a bit ‘post-Rome’ here, though it’s still the Roman Empire.) As usual, it’s a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…