Currently reading:

American Assassin by Vince Flynn

Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart

Conceived in Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard

To Hell and Back- Audie Murphy

Just started it today, pretty good so far, way better than the movie.

Just finished The Voices of D-Day.  Wow, just wow.  The only weakness is that it doesn't have enough stuff from the German experience.

Every Man a Hero by Ray Lambert with Jim DeFelice

Alex Kershaw's The First Wave.

Just finished Tides of War by Steven Pressfield.

Partially listened to the audio book in 2014. I'm glad I took it down.

In the wake of the plague, by Norman F. Cantor.

Eugene Sledge's China Marine.

Eugene Sledge would probably be called a snowflake if he posted in GD.

Charles Scheffel's WW II memoir, Crack! and Thump: With a Combat Infantry Officer in World War II

Finished The Voices of Stalingrad last night.

Just finished "Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas and "On Desperate Ground" by Hampton Sides.

Reading "The Hollows" by an arfcommer (forgot who).

Max Gendelman's A Tale of Two Soldiers.

The Handmaids Tale.

J-

The Adventures of Big Foot Wallace

Been about nine weeks since my last update.

Started/Ongoing:

Aftershocks: The Palladium Wars, Book 1 by Marko Kloos. A very interesting if rather slow intro to a new universe Kloos is building. Unfortunately I'm concerned about its viability; the author has demonstrated that he can create reasonably engaging stories but doesn't have a strategy to wrap up a saga. Authors can write like that and be successful, but he simply lacks the output to keep that going. I don't know if Frontlines is dead or what, and I just don't want to get suckered into another extended series with no exit plan.

Monster Hunter: Guardian by Larry Correia. Interesting with the change of narrator, not far in yet. I'm a tad worried that this series is starting to stagnate as well, but I've never read much by Larry that I didn't like so I'll keep the faith.

Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn.  Thrawn was excellent; Thrawn: Alliances was sort of meh. Jury's still out on this third installment.

Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie. An unusually comprehensive (and lengthy) account of World War I at sea. So far I'm quite enjoying it; nice to know other things happened than just Jutland. He gets bogged down in the details from time to time, and it can occasionally be difficult to follow without a map at your fingertips, but it seems a very well-researched and inclusive work. I'd strongly recommend it to those with interest in naval history.

Manual for Survival by Kate Brown. An accounting, through interviews of firsthand participants, of those impacted by the Chernobyl disaster and the subsequent clunky and heavy-handed government response. Pretty gripping so far, though I have a lot left to read.

Clash of the Carriers by Barrett Tillman. It started to bore me a bit, and I wasn't sure if it was the work itself or the fact that I've read any number of books on the topic. Might need to reboot and start from the beginning to give it a fair shake.

Finished:

Re-read/listened to all (yes all) 21 Sharpe novels, from Sharpe's Tiger to Sharpe's Devil, by Bernard Cornwell. Also started watching the BBC program(me). For anyone unfamiliar, think of Richard Sharpe as the antithesis of Jack Aubrey: son of a whore vs man from a family of distinction, army vs navy, enlisted man (initially) vs officer, thief, murderer, and blaggard vs upstanding citizen, socially awkward vs bombastic and expansive, etc, etc. Also instead of a diminutive, clever scientist and doctor Irishman as a sidekick (Aubrey), Sharpe has a simple, brutish, and massive Irishman as a sidekick. I can't recommend this series enough.

The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's threat to the West/ Harris

I am on a fantasy kick right now. It came from running out of books too fast on Audible because they were 6-15 hours long, most of them military books. I started reading Sanderson(way of kings, mistborn etc), Rothfuss(Kingkiller Chronicles), and I just started the first Wheel of time.

I love driving in traffic now, because I enjoy listening in the car.

I am reading some business books too, and accountability books like This is Your Ship and Extreme Ownership

The Evolution of a Cro-magnon by John Joseph.

J-

One of the best books about WWII that I have ever read: The Liberator.

Finished these three:  Blood Red Snow, Foxhole Memoirs from A to Z and An Infantryman in Patton's Army.

Terra Nova: The Wars of Liberation, anthology series on Tom Kratman's Carrera series

12 Rules For Life by Jordan Peterson.  I was gifted it by an ex .  It's actually pretty good.  There's definitely some stuff in there that I needed.

Stan Richardson's Growing Up in a Foxhole. Richardson served in the 45th Infantry (Thunderbirds) Division and I just visited that museum on Friday.

Herb Sheaner's Prisoner's Odyssey.  Sheaner was captured with his regiment (422 of the 106th Div) at the Battle of the Bulge.  They did not get the command to fall back to St. Vith (the fortified goose egg), were surrounded and with very little ammo, incapable of resistance.  His book is mostly the ordeal he and other prisoners endured as PoWs.  Unlike others who were in camps, he was put on a work detail for months that fed them only a thin soup and a slice of bread daily.  Lunch was no lunch and it was just a rest period.  Some guards were kind and would smuggle food to prisoners.  Anyway, Sheaner was like a Union prisoner at Andersonville when he and his buddy escaped and flagged down a passing jeep that delivered them back to American lines.

Contrast that to the treatment German PoWs in America got.  Same rations as a GI with plenty of food.  They even got to go to the movies (while Black GIs who guarded them had to sit in the balcony) or dances.

Denis Edwards' The Devil's Own Luck about the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire's Co. D as it fought its way from Pegasus Bridge to the Baltic.   Been reading a lot about D-Day lately.

Been on a Revolutionary War binge of late, just finished Rick Atkinson's "The British Are Coming" but I found it to be inferior to David Hackett Fischer's "Paul Reveres Ride."  Next up, Walter Edgar's "Partisans and Redcoats" and George Daughan's  "Lexington and Concord."

Hking

Thank you for My Service by Mat Best

I just finished "Alone At Dawn" by Dan Schilling.

This is about Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, Roberts Ridge, and the Medal of Honor awarded to Air Force Combat Control Team member John Chapman on the same ridge as Roberts.

If women complain of sexual harassment today is bad, imagine being the sole female in an all male unit.   Just read Girl With a Sniper Rifle.  After being injured, she is transferred from her all women sniper platoon and an infantry regiment where her commander respects the women who are in his  charge to an all male artillery battery.   She spurs her captain's advances and her platoon responds by treating her favorably like a "fille de regiment" (Daugther of the regiment) and are like a bunch of fathers/big brothers who care for her as if she was their daughter/little sister.  In this case of a WW II Soviet "Me Too", I believe her.

If women complain of sexual harassment today is bad, imagine being the sole female in an all male unit.   Just read Girl With a Sniper Rifle.  After being injured, she is transferred from her all women sniper platoon and an infantry regiment where her commander respects the women who are in his  charge to an all male artillery battery.   She spurs her captain's advances and her platoon responds by treating her favorably like a "fille de regiment" (Daugther of the regiment) and are like a bunch of fathers/big brothers who care for her as if she was their daughter/little sister.  In this case of a WW II Soviet "Me Too", I believe her.

Last night I also finished Up Close: A Scout's Story by John Davis.    Like Herb Sheaner,  Davis was in the 106th Infantry but in another regiment.  Thus he fought through the Battle of the Bulge and all the way to the Siegfried Line.  Davis does not mention his boot camp qualification, but in one battle he slaughters a bunch of SS men whose uniforms stand out against the white snow.

I finally started reading again for the first time in a couple years.

I just finished Scott Horton's excellent book on the war in Afghanistan, Fool's Errand.

This week I started Alongside Night by the recently passed J. Neil Schulman. I'm about a third in and so far I really like it.

I recently finished I Heard You Paint Houses.
Looking forward to the flick next month.
I've often wondered about Jimmy Hoffa's demise. This book explains a shit-ton of background with corroboration throughout.
It could have used footnotes, but was otherwise expertly written.

Before that, I read John Tornow – The Wild Man of the Wynoochee,.
A true who-done-it of a double murder in a Washington state pioneer family.
The story is tantalizing in that the guilty party was never established.
The main suspect lived in the wilderness for nearly 2 years evading the law.
The book could have had about 1/3 edited out. A lot of it was repetitious, but it was still quite interesting.

Just knocked out Thank You for My Service by Mat Best. Very quick read and pretty entertaining.

J-

Just flipped through a ton of Small Arms Review (58 issues!), Tactical Shooter, and Military History Quarterly (32!) to make a list to sell them.  I have read all of these and wish I could again, especially the MHQ.  They have some really great articles, especially the earlier issues in the 1990s.

Sad to see them go, but the stacks around here were just too much.  My wife and I packed 7 boxes of books to go to Half Price.  Plus a box of gun-type books that I will try to sell separately, and a box of my industry books I will contribute to the library at work.

My stack of to-read books I found in this process is about 20" high.  These were books I've bought but mostly lost in the stacks.  I pulled them out to one area.

With this cleanout I should be able to get rid of 2 of the 4 (mismatched of course) bookcases in my office.  Cleaning up feels so good!

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

I read No Angel,By Jay Dobyns pretty good.I worked every once in awhile with Dobyns ,Good dude.

Is Vince Flynn any good.

Dean P. Joy's Sixty Days in Combat: An Infantryman's Memoir of World War II in Europe.

The Red Badge of Courage.

I started reading the Longmire series.   I am on Book 9 now.

Fred H. Salter's Recon Scout. About a WW II infantryman.

Adventures of My Youth by Armin Scheiderbauer

Put aside Adventures for Battle Hardened by Craig Chapman.

The Forgotten 500, about the covert air-rescue of over 500 men from bomber aircrews that were shot down over Yugoslavia during WWII. The locals would just collect them up and then hide them from the Germans, but they couldn't get back since they were behind enemy lines. Interesting book so far, just started today.

I just started "Call Sign Chaos" by General Jim Mattis and so far, it's been excellent. The book is broken down into three parts, each emphasizing a higher level of leadership. It's very well written, which isn't always the case with books like this.
I would encourage anyone who is interested to go to the Amazon link and read the sample under the "Look Inside" section.

ETA: This is a new release (09/03/2019) and I've seen several articles stating that when the media figured out it was highly critical of Obama, instead of Trump, they dropped coverage of it like a hot potato.

Just finished “The Art of Racing in the Rain”, and working my way through all the “Galaxy’s Edge” books

Question. Does Bing cover Chaos and Fallujah? I know he wrote a little about both in No True Glory.

Thrawn Treason

Great book.