BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

Old Ironsides: The Rise, Decline, and Resurrection of the USS Constitution by Thomas C. Gillmer was an outstanding book that was pretty narrowly focused on the material elements of USS Constitution, starting with her design and construction, her maintenance (or lack thereof) and her various refits and restorations. It winds up with a through survey of her condition before her $12 million 1995 restoration, which returned her to sailing condition. One important note is that Gillmer is one of the naval architects who surveyed the ship and helped create the project plan for that 1995 restoration. It really does tell you everything you want to know about the fabric of the ship.

A Most Fortunate Ship: A Narrative History of Old Ironsides by Tyrone G. Martin was kind of the flip side of Gillmer’s book in that it covered Constitution’s operations in great detail, with only a few references to her material condition. It was a good, concise, workman-like history.

The Men Who Would be Kings Colonial Wargame Rules by Daniel Mersey is a set of miniature skirmish rules for recreating small scale “battles for empire”. I’ve always been a sucker for this period and had dozens of 15mm Brits and hundreds of 15mm Zulus painted up but never really played with them because I couldn’t get into the other standard set of Colonial rules The Sword and the Flame . Anyway, these are excellent rules and I recommend them highly for anyone looking to get into colonial skirmish games.

Freelance on the Galactic Tunnel Network by E.M. Foner is the latest book by the author of the Union Station humorous sci-fi novels. This book, obviously the first of a series, is a spin-off from that series set in the same universe that explores the culture of the independent traders who move goods from place to place along the Galactic Tunnel Network. It was fun and I’ll read the other ones as they come out, as I will anything else by this author. Its not great literature, but its fun and cheap for Amazon Kindle.

Like Wolves on the Fold: The Defence of Rorke’s Drift and How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed by LTC Mike Snook are two volumes that cover the opening actions of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War in great detail. I re-read them because of my reading the aforementioned miniature rules. These books are simply outstanding. To my mind they represent the current definitive guide to both of these battles. Snook, a LTC who retired from the Royal Regiment of Wales (the successor organization to the 24th Foot which fought in both of these battles) brings a fair amount of military acumen to the voluminous research and extensive site visits that he made in the course of writing these books. The result is just outstanding. If you want to understand these battles, read these books.

Blue Moon: a Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child is the latest offering in this series and pretty much exactly what you would expect. As with a few other Reacher novels, this one is sort of a re-work of an old movie. This time its the the old “spaghetti western” movie A Fistful of Dollars. But even so, not a bad outing in the series. If you’re a Reacher fan, you’ll want to read this.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach was a more titillating than informative look at the biological ramifications of long term exposure to weightlessness that would be involved in a multi-year mission to Mars. The book was mildly fascinating in a gross, 15 year-old boy humor, sort of way, but didn’t really make me feel more informed. Read it for curiosity only.

Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship by Bernie Schein was a sort of biography of the relationship between the author and Southern novelist Pat Conroy. The book will pretty much only be interesting to serious fans of Conroy. Even for them (of whom I am one) I’m not sure it should be of interest. What I mean is that the book delves deeply into Conroy’s private life in ways that don’t actually illuminate his writing. Although Schein is respectful and clearly loved Conroy, there’s an awful lot of dirty laundry being aired here to no discernible purpose.

Holding the Line on the River of Death: Union Mounted Forces at Chickamauga, September 18, 1863 by Eric J. Wittenberg was an outstanding monograph on the operations of Minty and Wilder’s brigades to delay Bragg’s army’s crossing of Chickamauga creek on 18 Sept. Wittenberg, who is rapidly becoming the go-to guy on US Cavalry in the ACW, does an excellent job of recounting those operations on almost a moment by moment basis and is particularly strong on the larger context and ramifications of how the defense derailed Braggs entire plan and probably saved the Union army. I recommend this very highly for anyone who has any interest in the battle.

Confederate Waterloo: The Battle of Five Forks, April 1, 1865, and the Controversy that Brought Down a General by Michael J. McCarthy was another excellent monograph, this time on a pivotal battle in the East. McCarthy, who is clearly a partisan of Warren, provides an excellent overview of the operations that led to the battle of Five Forks and a very good account of the battle itself. But the real meat of the book lies in his extensive coverage of Warren’s relief and his efforts to set the record straight and exonerate himself from the calumnies heaped upon him by Sheridan. The 1879 court of inquiry that found for Warren as well as Sheridan and Grant’s machinations to prevent the publication of the court’s report are all covered very thoroughly. This is an excellent book on an interesting topic. If you’re interested in Warren, Sheridan, Grant, or the Battle of Five Forks, you should read this book.

Little Phil: A Reassessment of the Civil War Leadership of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan by Eric J. Wittenberg was a not entirely effective effort to re-frame the reputation of Sheridan’s ACW performance as a cavalry leader. Wittenberg clearly doesn’t like Sheridan and he takes every opportunity to view all of Sheridan’s actions in the worst possible light. I can’t say any of the allegations against Sheridan are wrong, but at the end of the day, they weren’t really very convincing at diminishing Sheridan’s reputation. Although this is not Wittenberg’s best work, it is still worth reading if only to get a “competing view” on Sheridan than the one prevalent in the ACW history community.

The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi are an excellent pair of books in Scalzi’s The Interdependency series. I reread them because the third volume in the series, The Last Emperox is coming out in April. Interestingly, I like them much better this time through because I now understand that the “interdepenency” of the empire was actually designed into it by the founders. I’m not sure how I missed that the first time through, but I did, and it adds a whole new dimension to the books.

Essentially, the empire revolves around a set of very large family owned megacorporations or “Houses”, each of whom, at the foundation of the Empire was awarded a commercial monopoly on some commodity or other. The Wu (the house of the Emperoxes) has a monopoly on ships and weapons, another had the monopoly on citrus, a third the monopoly on maize and rice, etc, etc. Each family controls one of the 48 star systems, and because of the monoplies and specialization, each family has to trade with the others to survive. Now, the “flows” that facilitate this interstellar trade are collapsing, potentially isolating the 48 systems, none of whom can survive without the others, and threatening the survival of humanity as a species. Anyway, this time through I found the books much more compelling and I recommend them highly to anyone who is a fan of philosophical sci-fi in general or Scalzi in particular. Oh, and I want to be Kiva Lagos when I grow up!

14 for the year