Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

I'm pretty big into military history; especially WWII and the Vietnam war. I've read a few war books, and generally enjoy them. Books like, Band of Brothers, and another one I can't remember, lol.

Anyway, since the dreadful Minnesota winter is upon us, or at least will be in no time, I'd like some literature to get me through those frigid days.

What are you recommendations for non-fiction war books?

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Anything by Ambrose, especially, "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldiers"

Check out Amazon for these.

Also, Jeff Shaara has just released, "The Rising Tide" and I also recommend "To The Last Man" (about WWI)

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Flags of Our Fathers is a great read.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Chickenhawk is a good Vietnam book. Autobiographical book from a huey pilot. Freakin unbelievable the stuff those guys did with helicopters. It's not a history book but is a good read.

I also read a biography of Churchill a couple years ago. The Last Lion I believe it was called. A bit dry but worth the effort.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

A World at Arms is THE WWII book. It's pretty technical, and even though I'm not a big book guy, I loved this book even though it is something like 1200 pages.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Studs Terkel-The Good War

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

[ QUOTE ]
A World at Arms is THE WWII book. It's pretty technical, and even though I'm not a big book guy, I loved this book even though it is something like 1200 pages.

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And, densely packed with information, the pages are. Definitely, the all-encompassing book on WWII. Funny, I made a thread just like this years ago and ended up buying A World at Arms from a suggestion then.

OP, have any fiction books in mind? I just finished A Game of Thrones, and would highly recommend it along with the rest of the Song of Ice and Fire series. Especially since you got a long, cold winter ahead of you.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw
by Norman Davies

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Marine Sniper...simply put Carlos Hathcock = bad ass...this book is where they got the "shoot the other sniper through the scope" idea for the movie Sniper

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

[ QUOTE ]
Anything by Ambrose, especially, "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldiers"


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Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

[ QUOTE ]
Marine Sniper...simply put Carlos Hathcock = bad ass...this book is where they got the "shoot the other sniper through the scope" idea for the movie Sniper

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I like this one as well. My favorite Vietnam book is The Tunnels of Cu Chi: A Harrowing Account of America's "Tunnel Rats" in the Underground Battlefields of Vietnam by Tom Mangold

Amazing story of the guys who had go into the VC's vast tunnel network with nothing but a 45 and a flashlight.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

An absolute standout book that references WW2, Korea & Vietnam & beyond is "About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior" by Douglas Hackworth

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

The Last 100 Days (may not be exact title) is an excellent book about the horrors of the closing days of the european war. Dirty Little Secrets of WWII is a great book filled with interesting facts and anecdotes about the war. I'm something of a WWII buff so I'll probably think of some more later. Unfortunately all my books are literally on the other side of the world right now and I'm having trouble remembering everything I have.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Band of Brothers

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

"The Longest Day" by Cornelius Ryan is a great D-Day book

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Enemy At The Gates
Ghost Soldiers
A Writer At War: Vasily Grossman With The Red Army

I am reading Storm Of Steel right now which is a WWI book from a German soldier's perspective, but I imagine you would like this too.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Sounds like a bunch of great reads. Thanks guys.

I was at Border's tonight, and came across Ivan's War, looks interesting. Anyone read this? It's fairly new.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Khe Sahn, Siege in the clouds is one of my favorites. Check out "nam" if you can find it (can't remember the author and don't know where my copy is), interviews with dozens of vets.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

"Vietnam: A History" by Stanley Karnow

This is widely considered by historians to be the bible of Vietnam history books. Very all encompassing.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

[ QUOTE ]
A World at Arms is THE WWII book. It's pretty technical, and even though I'm not a big book guy, I loved this book even though it is something like 1200 pages.

[/ QUOTE ]

I love this book. I tried to get all the way through it a couple years ago but stalled about 600 pages in. Now I just dip in randomly, still great stuff.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

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[ QUOTE ]
Anything by Ambrose, especially, "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldiers"


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These are both good. I just finished Eisenhower 1890-1952 also by Ambrose. Good read spends most of its time on his role in World War II.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

The six volume Churchill history of WWII is very good....it is a bit of "How England Won the War - with some other guys"
but still a good read. Should get you thru the whole winter.

MM MD

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

[ QUOTE ]
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Anything by Ambrose, especially, "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldiers"


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Also for Vietnam, the book that "We Were Soldiers" was based on. I can't remember the specific title right now, something like "When we were young and soldiers" or something.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

I liked: Berlin + Stalingrad both by Anthony Beevor and Auschwitz by Laurence Rees

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

An Army at dawn- About the Invasion of North Africa. excellent.
We were Soldiers Once and Young is the Vietnam book.
http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Soldiers-O...TF8&s=books

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich... 1100 pages but so money if you are fascinated by the subject.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

[ QUOTE ]
An absolute standout book that references WW2, Korea & Vietnam & beyond is "About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior" by Douglas Hackworth

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It is Colonel David H. Hackworth. Yes, I am being a nit here, the guy was a true hero. I did not realize he passed away recently.

I have read maybe 100+ books on Vietnam. Carlos Hathcock's is excellent as is the one mentioned above. Most of the ones I enjoyed were by SOG/SF soldiers and my list is representative of that fact. The others are:

<u>Reflections of a Warrior</u>- by Franklin D. Miller
This guy was one badass dude. He won the Medal of Honor in amazing fashion. I would not do it justice to describe it. He was about the sickest soldier I ever read about.

<u>Rogue Warrior</u> by Richard Marcinko- This covers Vietnam through Grenada so it is not solely based on Vietnam however it is covered in great detail. It is an entertaining read.

<u>Point Man</u>- James "Patches" Watson- This is an entertaining book on the covert ops of the US Seals during Vietnam.

<u> Death in the Jungle</u>- Gary Smith Alan Maki. Another good Navy Seal book.

<u>Gone Native: An NCO's Story</u>- Alan Cornett. A Green Beret's and project Delta soldier POV.

<u>SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam</u>- John Plaster A great book on Special Forces and their role in Vietnam.

There is an awesome book on the Montagnards (the mountain people of Vietnam) that I can not place even via Google. I will post it later if I could only remember the damn thing.



I know you asked for Non-Fiction books but one of the best books I ever read on Vietnam was fiction:

<u>The Expendables</u> by Leonard B. Scott (Col. USA ret.)- It is an amazing book IMHO.



However the best war book (US) ever written is without a shadow of doubt:

<u>The Civil War: A Narrative </u> - Shelby Foote. It is 3000 pages. If you have any interest in the Civil War or any war for that matter read this. I can not express to you the quality here, it is simply amazing.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

The Forgotten Solider by Guy Sajer

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

<u>The things they carried</u> by Tim O'Brian is a classic book of short stories on Nam. If I recall correctly believe they are short stories with the same central characters as they go through the war.

Very good.

<u>Night</u> by Elie Wiesel is a good/depressing holocaust book.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

[ QUOTE ]
Marine Sniper...simply put Carlos Hathcock = bad ass...this book is where they got the "shoot the other sniper through the scope" idea for the movie Sniper

[/ QUOTE ]
If you think Hathcock is bad ass, read up on Simo Häyhä

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan.He was a Pulitzer Prize winning Vietnam reporter.Arguably,the definitive book on the Vietnam debacle.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

[ QUOTE ]
An absolute standout book that references WW2, Korea &amp; Vietnam &amp; beyond is "About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior" by Douglas Hackworth

[/ QUOTE ]

David Hackworth. RIP

His site


"A Rumor of War" by Philip Caputo.

Marine LT. who allowed his platoon to massacre a Vietnamese village.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

When I was at my officer basic course we used "The Killing Zone" by Frederick Downs to study and discuss several moral and ethical dilemmas that the platoon leader faced and tried to evaluate how we would deal with them. Very good read.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

I took a world war 2 class in college which was so great, one of the readings was the best war ever, it was a quick read and gave some insight into something aspects i never knew.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

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If you think Hathcock is bad ass, read up on Simo Häyhä

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wtf...iron sights? What's the farthest out you could possibly pick off a soldier with iron sites reliably? 150 yards??

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

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If you think Hathcock is bad ass, read up on Simo Häyhä

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wtf...iron sights? What's the farthest out you could possibly pick off a soldier with iron sites reliably? 150 yards??

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I'm sure after the first hundred he got to be pretty good at it. Still, I'd think your sight post would be bigger than your whole target at 400 yds.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

Winds of War
War and Remembrance

Both by Herman Wouk. Fantastica historical fiction taking place during WWII.

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

If anyone is into alternative "what if" history, I would suggest the great war series by Harry Turtledove. It basically imagines ww1-ww2 if the south had won the civil war, with the point of diversion from our timeline making a lot of sense. Basically the south wins @ antiem, gets recognized by england/france, wins war. WW1 comes, CSA is allied with france england and russia in the quadruple Entente, USA is allied with Germany Italy and Austria Hungary in Quadruple Alliance. And seeing how Canada = UK, the US has to fight a 2 front war much like Germany did in Europe. Pretty [censored] awesome, and a great read if you are a ww1/ww2 buff since he takes many of the events which occured in europe and puts them realistically happening in the Americas (such as the spanish civil war happening in mexico, for example).

Re: Recommend me some good WWII books, Vietname too!
 

the oster conspiracy of 1938-parssinen
inside the third reich-speer
nuremburg diary-gilbert
ribbentrop-bloch
the labyrinth-schellenburg