Some really great books suggested...I'm going to have to head to the library.  ETH, I will definately have to get "Goodbye to a River."

I'd like to add the following:
Military Fiction--Anything by Dale Brown or Harold Coyle.

Science Fiction--The Honor Harrington series by David Weber.

Non fiction--Bias by B. Goldberg, Gideon's Spies (The Secret History of the Mossad) by Gordon Thomas.

I'm going to have to add unintended consequences again... just finished it last night.  good book.  Before that, i read Patriots : Surviving the coming collapse.  That was pretty cool.  Basically about our economy going to crap and then society breaking down... quick read but good.  Has some good ideas in it about bugging out.

Nuke

Thanks for all the suggestions.  

Interesting to note that we all have similar tastes in literature.[;)]  I will have to print this thread out and compile a list from it.

Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier)

I was just cleaning out the basement and ran across an oldie but goodie: Tappan on Survival by Mel Tappan.  Haven't seen it in years.

Robert Heinlein:
Farnham's Freehold
Red Planet
Tunnel in the Sky
Door into Summer
Methuselah's Children
"If This Goes On"
"Coventry"
Time Enough for Love
The Number of the Beast
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Stranger in a Strange Land
Starship Troopers
The Puppet Masters
Glory Road
Sixth Column
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
The Past Through Tomorrow
Expanded Universe
Assignment in Eternity
Friday
Orphans of the Sky
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
Waldo
"All you Zombies"
Farmer in the Sky
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long


John Steakley:
Armor
Vampires


Frank Herbert:
The Dune Series

Ray Bradbury:
The Illustrated Man
The Martian Chronicles
R is for Rocket
S is for Space
Something Wicked This Way Comes

Edgar Rice Burroughs:
The Tarzan Series
The Warlord of Mars Series

Okay, I like mainly science fiction....


Scott

And don't forget part II in the series:

"Nearer to the Outhouse" by Betty Dohnt

How about the thought provoking Chinese novel:
"Brown Spots on the Wall" by Hoo Flung Dung

And the World War II classic:
"The Yellow River" by I. P. Freeley

About half way through "We Were Soldiers Once...
And Young", by Hal Moore and Joe Galloway.  Great book and I highly recommend it.  You might also want to try "Blind Mans Bluff" (can't remember the authors) about clandestine submarine ops.  Finally, suggest "Stalingrad" by Anthony Beevors (?).  Best book I've read on the battle of Stalingrad.  Hope these work for you.

StEAKLEY---I spoke to John Last month and he is writing a new book....
American Gods--Neil Gaiman
The Jhereg series----Steven Brust
anything by L Neil Smith
Anything by Janet and Chris Morris--especially the High Couch and Earth Dreams series
Gods New And Used By Mark Finn

Science Fiction:  Try anything by David Weber, or John Ringo.  They have worked together as well.  Eric Flint's 1632.

Military:  Harold Coyle, Tom Clancy, Buchard Herman.

The "Prey" series by John Sandford.

History:  
 Stephen Ambrose: Undaunted Courage, Nothing Like it in the World, Citizen Soldiers,D-Day and others.
 Breakout by Martin Russ
 Doughboys by Gary Mead
 The Boxer Rebellion by Diana Preston
 The Boer War by Thomas Packenham
 Fearful Majesty by Benson Bobrick
 Peter the Great by Henri Troyat
 Bold Dragoon by Emory Thomas
 Stonewall Jackson: Portrait of a Soldier by John Bowers
 Mosby's Rangers by Jeffry Wert.


Hunting and Shooting:
 Robert Ruark's Horn of the Hunter, Use Enough Gun.
 Black Magic Rifle by John Feamster
 Gun Notes by Elmer Keith (I have Vol. 2, and am looking for Vol. 1)
 Sixguns by Elmer Keith
 Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting by Ed McGivern.
 

I'll disagree with this.  Robert Jordan is a good writer who got REAL greedy.  He took a story that would have nicely concluded in maybe four books and bogged it down in interminable details until now, after something like 9 volumes at 700-1300 pages a whack, he's not anywhere nearer to resolving things than he was after two volumes.   The guy has turned into a hack and he's lost the story arc.

If you really want to read the series wait twenty years until the idiot bothers to finish it. And I really liked the first three or four books too.


For rapid, fun reading with a nice dose of 19th century warfare...Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharp novels following the career of an officer in the 95th rifles who was jumped up from the ranks by Wellington.  

Caleb Carr's Alienist novels...Freaky.

Anne Perry's novels.  Murder misteries written by a woman who knows of which she writes having been convicted of murder when she was a teenager.

Ellis Peters Cadfael novels

Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose"

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books...yeah they were written primarily for kids, but they are great fun.

Dale Brown's  Air Force based techno-thrillers can be fun.

John  Le Carre spy books looking at a more realistic vision of the intel business.

Robert Ludlum's various books.  Pretty interchangeable, but fun.

A few more:

Chris Whitcomb's "Cold Zero"

David Baldacci: "The Last Man Standing"

John Plaster:  SOG

Stephen King's "The Stand"

Try "Killing Pablo" by Mark Bowden.

 Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission -- by Hampton Sides

Riveting true account of the Bataan Death March survivors, those that didn't survive, and the Rangers who got some real payback in on of the first SpecOps missions, one that went nearly perfectly.

I could not put it down, and read itto the exclusion of sleep until done.


Casts long overdue light on the atrocities committed by wartime Japan.  

If you liked "Red Storm Rising", you should read Team Yankee by Harold Coyle.  It could have been a companion book to Red Storm Rising.

Anything by J.R.R. Tolkein, Andre Norton, Robert A. Heinlein, and David Eddings.

In non-fiction try Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie.  It about the events that lead to the modern battleship and World War One.

  Vulcan94

Gates of Fire : An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
by Steven Pressfield

Great book about a handful of Spartans holding the pass at Thermopylae against the invading Persian army.  Someone the board suggested it last year and I happened to run across it.  Great reading!

MOLON LABE!
[sniper]


If you like Sci-Fi/Fantasy, try  "Book of the New Sun" series:
"Shadow of the Torturer"
"The Claw of the Concilliator"
"The Sword of the Lictor"
"Tthe Citadel of the Autarch"
by Gene Wolfe

Very cool, very different.

Wow, this has gotten to be quite a list. Hmmm, would anyone be interested in a compiled list of recommendations by fellow AR15.comers?  I might be willing to put the effort into it.  

Leave it to kentstate4 to make me sick again. Don't you know that some things are better left alone!? [puke]

(Your favorite book... geez, you need to get out more.)

I'm pretty into military and financial history, so I'll give a rundown on a few books on it I've been reading lately.

Just finished "Steel My Soldier's Hearts" by David Hackworth (USA Col, ret). Interesting read which confirmed a lot of other stuff that I'd read about Vietnam. (about the tactics and mistakes)

Currently working on a few other books,
1. Nickeled and Dimed, interesting expository piece on the wokring poor in America. I never thought people who worked for a living would be poor enough to live in trailor parks and motels.

2. The Tsar's Last Armada, a book on the Battle of Tsushima from the western perspective (since the author can't read Japanese). It ranks among the most significant naval battles in history, up there with Midway and Trafalgar. The resulting disaster for the Russians left the Far East open to Japanese conquest and broke the myth that western powers are invincible. It was also the first major naval battle of industrialized navies. It's also the battle in which most of Japan's Naval high command in WWII started their careers.

3. The Money Culture (also suggest Predator's Ball, Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and When Genius Failed) Very interesting books on Wall Street culture and the madness that comes with every boom. The scandal after scandal of financial misdealings, fraud and other shortcuts in the race of dollars makes for some interesting reading. The Money Culture starts by proclaiming that while the Japanese were busy buying up American landmarks in the late 80s, America's biggest export was get rich quick schemes. This was before my time (I'm only 18 so I don't really remember the 80s), but does anyone remember the Penny stock scandals, the boiler rooms brokerages, the mergers and acquisitions boom, the junk bond craze, the Savings and Loans crisis? What about Long Term Capital Management (90s) Does anyone remember people like Mike Milken and Ivan Boesky?

You're not kidding. I stopped reading it after book four or five. Talk about selling out. He could have just gone on to another series... BUT NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!.



How about LeGuin's "A wizard of Earthsea," where she probably got the inspiration in the first place.

The Gunslinger Series by Stephen King

Some of my favorites

John Keegan:
-The Face of Battle
-The Mask of Command

Ayn Rand:
-Atlas Shrugged

Jared Diamond:
-Guns, Germs, And Steel

Stephen Hawking:
-(The Illustrated)A Brief History Of Time

Bjorn Lomborg:
-The Skeptical Environmentalist

Friedrich Nietzsche:
-Beyond Good and Evil
-Twilight of the Idols

Charles Freeman:
-The Greek Achievement

Vincent J.M. Di Maio:
-Gunshot Wounds, Second Edition

GIG EM!
America by Stephen Coonts, Dead Hand by Harold Coyle. Both high tech thriller type scenarios.

Two biographies I liked:

"Goodbye To All That"  by  Robert Graves, a poet's experience of the Great War

"Radical Son" by David Horowitz, a former Marxist radical discovers the truth

I have to second this.  It is full of unexpected twists....  it's somewhat dark though.  If you like Martin's series definitely read "The Black Company" by Glen Cook.  It is the first book in a series about a mercenary group in a dark fantasy setting.

See, to me the more details the better. I wouldn't mind if he made the series 20 books long - but I wish he'd do them faster! What I'd really like to see afterwards are new series (by Jordan or other authors) covering times, lands, people, etc, only alluded to in WoT - similar to what's been done with Star Trek and Star Wars.

One I forgot is Raymond E. Feist and his "Riftwar Saga," "Serpentwar Saga," and "Krondor" series.

Yup. Got one of the 1st copies of the 1st edition of "Magician." Same with the Wheel of Time. Just took a chance based on the cover art (!) and backcover. I do that.

"The Gates of the Alamo" by Stephen Harrigan. Eric? Are you listening?

Just finished "Deadhand" by Harold Coyle. It is a great read.

docmac86

Post from docmac86 -

[i][b]Entendu![/b][/i]

But read Graves' works, first, to understand [u]Texas[/u]!

Eric The(ThoreauIsNotQuiteAsGood)Hun[>]:)]

Lucifer's Hammer- SHTF book-Comet hits earth

Anything by Robert Ludlum- Spy stuff

The Winds of War &
War and Rememberence-  Herman Wouk