/k/ books

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>>33117896
>inb4 thread fills up with fiction written at the 3rd grade level by irl Dale Gribbles and """""non-fiction""""" """""written""""" by ex-SEALS

Pic related is possibly the best SHTF novel around. Set during the Siege of Leningrad

Is "A Corpse in the Koryo" and the other Inspector O novels good?

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>>33117896
To the anon that suggested this to me a few threads ago, good shit man, good shit.

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>>33119017
>"""""non-fiction""""" """""written""""" by ex-SEALS
>AKA fiction written at the 3rd grade level by irl Dale Gribbles

Greetings fellow light rail enthusiasts

With The Old Breed - book that the miniseries the Pacific is based off of. Very well written, and of course much better than the tv version. Currently reading it now.

Band of brothers - easy pick, the series of the same name is based off of it. Also much better than the series, its alot more serious and focused on the historical events.

Battle of the Somme - dictionary sized book that focuses on the battle of the Somme during WWI, mainly from the british POV, and how they managed to fuck up so ridiculously hard. They took over 50,000 casualties in the first hour of the offensive - it was such slaughter than the defending germans sent their own medical teams out into no mans land to help the british wounded because they couldnt bear to see such mass suffering. About half a million would be killed on both sides each by the time the battle ended months later. This book is extremely dry as it is based off of historical accounts, memoirs, diary entries - but if you dig that sort of thing youll love it. Its like a thousand pages of "holy fucking shit that must have sucked".

A Long, Long Way - a fictional yet historically based book about an irish soldier fighting for the crown in WWI. Argueably the best war based fiction ive ever read. Very vivid - theres a part where they get gassed and attacked by the hun and fend them off with all sorts of medieval weapons like clubs and tomahawks, all the while shitting their pants in pure terror. This book is METAL AS FUCK. Highly recomend it.

Johnny Got His Gun - very loosely war related, but its about a soldier who gets hit with an artillery shell and loses his arms, legs, eyes, ears, face - literally everything. The whole book is him realizing what happened to him, being in agony and complete sensory deprivation feom everything but touch, and going through bouts of madness as he can do nothing but lay there, trapped in his own shell of a body. Whole story is flashbacks of his earlier life and fighting back insanity.

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>>33119205

Just a few pages from the gas attack scene in A Long, Long Way. Unfortunately a page or two is omitted - basically what you miss is Willy (the protagonist) shitting himself in fear, shells falling, everyone being terrified and praying to god for mercy, rtc etc.

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>>33119298

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>>33119308

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>>33119321

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>>33119347

Last one. Hopefully someone actually read this shit so i didnt screencap and post it for no reason. Enjoy.

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Street Without Joy- Bernard Fall
Really good at showing the French experience of the Indochina War. His book on Dien Bien Phu was a classic too. Died Covering VIetnam

>>33119052
that looks good.

>>33117896
Storm of Steel (Ernst Jünger)
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (T. E. Lawrence)
Homage to Catalonia (George Orwell)

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French soldiers in the First Indo-China War all the way to the Battle of Algiers

Explores the way that combat has evolved from WW2 combat with two easily identifiable belligerents into the insurgency we know today

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>>33119205
>Johnny Got His Gun
tl;dr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSNJ00iAZ7I

Similar vein in TV shows to BoB and The Pacific i Generation Kill and as with the others the book's much better for going into the details of things.

This is the last one I finished and it was pretty entertaining. Not as good as Chickenhawk but it's an easy and fun read.

Currently reading Secrets of the English Warbow - Hugh D. H. Soar. So far it's very informative and has a lot of in depth discussions. Looking forward to all the experiments the author and members of the EWBS (English War Bow Society) performed to analyse the effectiveness of bow and arrow.

>>33119578
Shit why haven't I read this

>>33119587

Chickenhawk is really good. In middle school I found out my grandpa was in Vietnam, from a newspaper clipping. I asked him about it and he went downstairs to the basement and brought back a photo album, explained the first two pictures then walked away. I really got into Vietnam books because he wouldn't say anything else- Chickenhawk was the first book I got from the library when i got home.

Anyone else use audible? I bought Red Phoenix from a recommendation here the other day. The best book I've listened to is Dispatches, the narrator is amazing.

>>33119656
Also, Matterhorn is narrated by Balky from Perfect Strangers and its great too, oddly enough

Low Level Hell
I book written by a Loach pilot over Vietnam. Good shit.
There's a portion where he talks about lighting up an NVA column with his new minigun before running out of ammo. He ended up shooting his handgun out the door as his gunner ran out of M60 ammo, then out of M16 ammo, before switching to his shotgun he kept around as a backup for a backup. All the while his Cobra team is like "bro get the fuck outta the way so we can nail these fuckers." There's another part where a pilot ran over a fleeing NVA officer with the helicopter, literally holding him under a rice paddy with the skids while hovering.
PDF link: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=06BD2BAD336EA9778B7EDBAC51DB0CD0

>>33119656
>Chickenhawk
Excellent book, probably the best Vietnam book I've read.

>>33119703
Something about Vietnam, most interesting modern conflict

Soviet Afghan War has led to a few good books.The Hidden War by Borovik is really good. Russkies were fucking crazy

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>>33119480
O B S C U R E

Some anon recommended me The Forgotten Soldier a while back. Excellent book told from the view of a frontline German soldier on the Eastern Front.

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Voices of the Pacific

Its the those old crusty bastards last, unfiltered words on the Pacific War.

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I'm reading the Best and the Brightest by Halberstasm, and while it covers the US political side of the war I'm disappointed by the lack of detail from enlisted and officers in Vietnam. If he can tell me the daily habits of JFK, LBJ, George MacBundy, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara why is there so little on soldiers fighting the war?

I'd also like to know /k/s opinion on the idea whether the war was lost because the American people lost the will to fight, and that they lost the will because the government mislead the war and the military

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My Friend the Mercenary

It loses steam in the last 1/3 so so but it's a pretty interesting look at the Liberian Civil War

Goodbye Darkness - great memoir about fightan in the Pacific

Another vote for Forgotten Soldier and Storm of Steel too; both excellent

>>33120063
I honestly don't think the war was ever winnable

>>33120063
In order for the US to win in Vietnam, one of two things had to happen, preferably both.

The North had to give up, or the South had to shape up.

Available evidence indicates that neither of these things was likely to happen under any circumstances.

>>33120063
I think that's pretty close to the truth, with the added "benefit" of the MACV commander being Westie. He represented the kind of careerist, corporate leadership that lost the war. His shining moment was his last moment- the response to tet. But Weyand had a lot to do with that too. Abrams came in and introduced something much closer to a counter insurgency doctrine, and that shift along with a basically defunct Vc in much of the country put us closer than we ever got to winning. Bit Tet wa s the shock to the system that the Media wouldn't allow us to snatch victory, partly because of Westie being the PR nonce obsessed with being overly optimistic prior to Tet. If Abrams had command from 1964 onwards, there is a better chance that we would have held onto public support and been able to at least gain much more time for the South to become viable. Which is another can of worms, because the Souths leadership and government were shit tier

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Anyone recommend a good book about the Korean War?

>>33120247
Max Hastings did a decent history. I'd be interested in others' suggestions

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Any of Jason Mark's books about Stalingrad are excellent (though expensive) I hope Island of Fire gets a re-print someday,

Does anyone have any good innawoods reads?

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Ton of interesting books in here.

https://mega.nz/#F!uVVXGQTR!khwhTBlj6fdkGHWYWrkbmg

>>33117896
Unintended Consequences

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>>33117896
Please don't use greentext to emphasize certain sentences, it's not how it was meant to be used and it makes you look retarded.

Anything with Beevor should immediately send alarmbells off, as he's a sensationalist who loved to come up with random shit just to write his novels.

If you want a pretty good intro book that covers how the war went on for the Soviets read "The Soviet Union At War 1941-1945" by Stone

>>33119205
>Battle of the Somme

Who is the author? I can't find a book with this specific name.

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>>33117896
Dude, I picked up that book at the library and could not put it down. I stayed up until 2AM reading it even though I had to go to work the next day, so good. Dan Carlin uses it heavily for his Ghosts of the Ostfront podcast.

Pic related is my favorite, another book I just couldn't put down until I was done. Honorable mention goes to the Fall of Berlin by Anthony Beevor.

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Whats the best Chechnya book? Anything been written about Ukraine yet?

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Good operational and tactical view of Operation Anaconda

>>33120986
One Soldiers War by Babchenko

>>33117896
>He claims that Vasily Zaytsev was executed.

Where on earth does he get his evidence for this?

Breakfast with the Dirt Cult

>>33121492
If you liked that, i recommend Free Fall by Nicolai Lilin. It's semi-fiction but still great.

>>33119900
Check out Sniper On The Eastern Front by Albrecht Wacker. Based on the memoirs of and written with a German sniper, Sepp Allerberger, during the final days of their advance into and retreat from Russia.

>>33119695
That's the next book on my list to get as soon as I finish the current batch.

>>33119973
>let's not let the sniper team take their rifles cos they're too intimidating
>okay you can have your rifles but no mortars
Good read though. You might want to look at Bravo Six Zero as well.

>>33117896

https://mega.nz/#F!ZAoVjbQB!iGfDqfBDpgr0GC-NHg7KFQ

>>33120710

for a good book on the opening of the battle of the somme I strongly recommend

The First Day on the Somme by Martin Middlebrook

>>33123086
The author was a war reporter in Stalingrad during the war, he claimed that Vasily had been executed by the Soviet army due to treason or something like that.

Reality (or claimed to be):
Dear Mom: A sniper's Vietnam - Good
Chickenhawk (slick pilot) - Very good & sad
Making a killing (awesome PMC adventures) - Extremely recommended
Escape from Baghdad (PMC adventures the sequel) - Decent, not special
A long way gone (child soldierin') - Decent
The forgotten soldier - Timeless operator classic, must read
Storm of steel - Timeless operator classic, must read
SOG (americans owning & getting owned) - Educational
Acceptable loss (more Vietnam LRRP & Blue Apaches) - Good
Shake hands with the devil (UN ROE suck balls) - Educational

>>33123431
Is there a torrent of that?

>>33123431
>>33124136
Anon, is there a torrent?

>>33120986

seconding
>>33121492

reading it now and its light on politics and tactics but it shows how truly shitty it was for everyone involved.

The things they carried, and everything else from o brien.

Sled driver

One minute after.
One hour after.

>>33119394
Bernard Fall was a masterful writer.

>>33120063
>why is there so little on soldiers fighting the war?

Because there are other books for that and a book on policy is a book on policy.

Nam was lost because it was not worth trying further to win. The war was a trap for idiot hick Lyndon Johnson and others who didn't get geography or history. Remember in those years Americans only understood technology, not history or culture. I was alive then (born 1959).

Nam was not worth fighting for, which is proven by the entire postwar era. Now the US trades with Nam and "capitalism" won despite war instead of because of it. Americans have terrible problems with emotional investment in war.

Modern war cannot be sold as utilitarian necessity, so it must be sold as moral duty. This leads to bad decisions.

NATO mattered, Nam did not.

Korea is on a nice defensible peninsula. Nam has borders too long to secure.

China had countermoves to EVERY US option, and escalation to nukes was unworkable because Mao knew he could withstand tac nukes and reply in kind. Infinite ChiComs negate a lot of technology. They fought the US to a draw in Korea.

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>>33119480

Väinö Linna's "The Unknown Soldier" is pretty good. Apparantly the Finnish version is way better because he does an amazing job with the soldier's dialects. It can be pretty hard to get the English version if you don't have a Kindle.

>>33125014
>The things they carried
Seconding this. It's great, even if its not wholly accurate

>>33123872
He died just shortly before the USSR collapsed.
He interacted with family and gave interviews after the war.

If what you're saying is true, Grossman is a fucking conartist and everything he's said should be discredited.

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need to be said?

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First of two books of memoirs.

Eastern Front: Leon Degrelle
EPIC: The Story of The Waffen SS: Leon Degrelle
Obedient Unto Death: Werner Kindler
Blood Red Snow: Günter Koschorrek
Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepo Allerberger

Reading right now "We Will Not Go To Tuapse" by Fernand Kaisergruber right now, he was in Division Wallonie much like Degrelle. Writing style is very similar.

>>33125549
*SEPP Allerberger.

Excuse my phone typing.

>>33125556
I've not read the book yet but some reviews contend that the descriptions of exploding ammo effects were exaggerated. Here's proof they were not and that these ancestors of Raufoss etc were very impressive!

B-Patrone vs. Soviet PZ.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXaaybiRiYY

>>33119900

Half of it's made-up bullshit

There's a ton of unsubstantiated claims and embellishments

>>33125966
As opposed to other war books? Lots of the stories told in these books are embellished.

>>33120247
Bruce Cummings is an expert on the Korean War, I recall, and has several books. David Halberstam did "The Coldest Winter" and like his other writing pretty well.

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I highly recommend it. It's a shame that what was one of the great turning points of world history has been relegated to a foot note. Crowley really brings the key players to life and skillfully impressed upon the reader all the hopes, fears, and ambitions of defender and conqueror alike. When the inner wall is finally defeated, your heart breaks.

An excerpt:
>Passing the statue of Justinian, [Mehmet] rode up to the front doors of St. Sophia and dismounted. Bowing down to the ground, he poured a handful of dust over his turban as an act of humility to God. Then he stepped inside the wrecked church. He seems to have been both amazed and appalled by what he saw. As he walked across the great space and stared up at the dome, he caught sight of a soldier smashing away at the marble pavement. He asked the man why he was demolishing the floor. "For the Faith," the man replied. Infuriated by this visible defiance of his orders to preserve the buildings, Mehmet struck the man with his sword. Hew as dragged off half-dead by Mehmet's attendants.

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It's a journalists own impressions of Germany in 1945 as he is embedded with the US army. Its really interesting as he doesnt glorify the GIs and it discusses sex, violence in a way that people looking at it form the inside would. and his disdain for the germans as they start lapping up to the US solders more and more, the further they advance the less nazis they find.

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Has anyone read it?

>the further they advance the less nazis they find

If you lose two world wars there's no reason to piss off those who kicked your ass and every reason to play it safe with a conqueror who might kill you for giggles or, later, chuck you into a DP camp.

Pride in failure is generally stupid because it does nothing useful for survival and economic recovery. The US rewarded cooperation and our intelligence agencies in particular. Disdaining the conquered for not fighting to the death thus killing more of YOUR men is understandable but a bit silly.

My uncle missed combat but was in Germany during the late 1940s. He commented it was easy to sort between types of German and that as the Occupation progressed relations got better. NATO was comfy in 1982/83 when I was stationed at Sembach, and the older Germans were genuinely friendly and happy not to be on the Communist side of the Berlin Wall.

Any /k/ tards who can get orders to or otherwise visit Germany should do so.

>>33124136
>>33124189

No, its 45gigs but that mega has been up for nearly a year now. I add to it semi-regularly.

You can also find a ton of Osprey-style reference books in /tg/'s Historical Wargames General

I can recommend Throught Hell for Hitler by Henry Metelmann. He was just an ordinary enlisted man whose ill fortune it was to be part of 22. Panzer-Division on 19 November 1942.
He completely elides over his post-Stalingrad experience to fast-forward to getting captured, which always bothered me a little. He lived a long time - I think he died about 10 years ago - and gave a lot of interviews to people like Beevor, Hastings etc

a question for you guys
are there any tactical-type novels that aren't over the top? the few books that i did find myself were disappointing.

>>33127337
Can't you make a torrent please?

>>33123431
>>33120436
thanks bros.

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Gf just bought me this


Achtung, Panzer!, On Killing, and All Quiet on the Western Front are my recommendations

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>>33117896
Offers a new perspective on the end of the war. The fall of South Vietnam from the perspective of ARVN. It's particularly great because the author collaborated with someone who used to work at the US Embassy in Saigon to do translations of Vietnamese sources as well as American sources.

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>>33130010
Also, currently listening to the audiobook for this one and I really like it. The author claims that popular support for the Nazi party during the rise was more for fear of repercussions and a general desire to make Germany a great power again after the first world war. The author claims that very few people he actually knew bought into the racial ideologies. He also says that the disdain for the Soviets wasn't out of racial beliefs but rather disdain for Communism in general because many Germans blamed Communists at home for losing the war.

For example, during Operation Barbarossa, he says that no one in his unit actually believed that the Slavic peoples were subhuman, but rather that they were regular people who lived in a backwards country.

How much of it is apologist writing from someone who was a Wehrmacht officer I don't know. But it's interesting to wonder, since in Blood Red Snow, Gunter Koschorrek called the Nazi ideologies "bar room racial theories backed by the force of a powerful state".

>>33125966
>Half of it's made-up bullshit

Mate, almost all war memoirs will be like that.

>>33125426
It's fiction, tho. That's almost the point

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Chicken hawk is a great book about being a Huey helicopter pilot and some of the tactics involved to stay the fuck alive.

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Dude covered every major conflict from the Spanish Revolution to Vietnam, and got to hang out with Hemingway in the process.

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this was pretty good

david sounds autistic as fuck