A Boutique Warmongery’s Bestseller List
UPDATED with some jockeying for position and some additions thanks to your response.
Most popular titles at A Boutique Warmongery to date. Turns out you’re an erudite lot:
The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One David Kilcullen (10). The Baghdad Brain Trust member’s counterinsurgency manifesto. Still on my list. Your reviews in comments.
The War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain and France: 1789-1815 Robert Harvey (9). Excellent choice. I’m still working through its 900 pages of intimate detail and the characters and circumstances of the Napoleonic Wars. Great read.
The Forever War Dexter Filkins (8). The war memoir of our times, a magnificent book by an e-acquaintance whose path I’ve managed to cross a couple of times without meeting for more than a decade now, back to Muzzafarabad, Azad Kashmir, 1998. Owns real estate on the shelf next to Michael Herr’s Dispatches. The experience of intense combat and complexities of life and reportage in one of the modern era’s most difficult war zones.
The Battle: A New History of Waterloo Alessandro Barbero (6). First rate, highly detailed account of of the battle, down to the particulars of weaponry, tactics and the experience and terms of service of individual units. Barbaro puts you on the field and renders the complex battle comprehensible, though Waterloo’s mysteries remain intact. Some questions will never be answered.
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education Craig Mullaney (6). From West Point to Afghanistan,
Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood Donovan Campbell (6). Combat memoir of Iraq.
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 Tom Ricks (5). A detailed history of the Surge.
Baptism: A Vietnam Memoir Larry Gwin (5). A good friend’s memoir of the Ia Drang battles of 1965 and other operations in Vietnam as XO of A Co., 2/7 Cav, 1st Cav.
Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto Mark R. Levin (5). Never been big on polemics … unless I’m delivering them. Reviews?
Tethered: A Novel Amy MacKinnon (5). The wife’s debut, now out in paperback. Turns out she can write. Turns out, she writes pretty damn well about some parts of my tabloid world I didn’t know she knew about … the cop shops, triple deckers and crack houses of the greater Boston area. Kicks off with an embalming, in technical detail but with the deeper mystery left intact, not unlike Barbero’s Waterloo in that regard now that I think of it.
Flashman: A Novel George Macdonald Fraser (4). The first in the series about the dashing, womanizing Victorian coward who finds himself to his horror in the van of the great actions of his day, and despite his poltroonery always comes out looking like a hero. The epic saga starts with Elpinstone’s disastrous 1841 Kabul expedition.
Cut Off; Behind Enemy Lines in the Battle of the Bulge With Two Small Children, Ernest Hemingway, and Other Assorted Misanthropes William Davidson (4). That’s reader NeoConScum’s father-in-law, a professional scribbler who kept interesting company in interesting places. Been meaning to get this one.
Danger’s Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her Maxwell Taylor Kennedy (4). A highly detailed and intimate look into the life of an Essex class carrier in the Pacific war and Japan’s Kamikaze program. I had a couple of philosophical problems with my friend Max’s views in the introduction, but the body of work itself is impressive.
Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome Rodney Stark (4). Still on the night stand. Worth it?
The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories Rudyard Kipling (3). What do I need to say, it’s Kipling. Different than the movie, also great.
Honorable Mentions:
Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan, 1842 Patrick Macrory (2). The excellent history of the 1841 Kabul expedition, heavily drawn on by Fraser for the first Flashman.
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu Bernard Fall (2). The definitive history of the debacle.
Five Years to Freedom: The True Story of a Vietnam POW James N. Rowe (2). The classic memoir of psychological combat in captivity by the architect of the U.S. Army’s SERE program.
Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America David Hackett Fischer (2). What the Cavaliers and Roundheads of the English Civil War, and other British cultural and political issues have to do with you.
Ulysses S. Grant : Memoirs and Selected Letters : Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant / Selected Letters, 1839-1865 Ulysses S. Grant (2)
The Book of War: 25 Centuries of Great War Writing John Keegan (2)
The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat Robert Drury (2)
A Terrible Love of War James Hillman (2)
The American Patriot’s Almanac: Daily Readings on America William J. Bennett (2)
Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae Steven Pressfield (2)
The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great Steven Pressfield (2)
Agincourt: A Novel Bernard Cornwell (2)
Once An Eagle Anton Myrer (2)
Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke Philip Jose Farmer (2)
Rubicon: A Novel of Ancient Rome Steven Saylor (2)
Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking Mark Bittman (2). Must be good. I dunno. I like fish, though. Some kinds. A lot. I just usually let other people cook it. Be bold!
In other noteworthy readers’ picks … some interesting finds in here, as well as some of my favorites:
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt H.W. Brands
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change Jonah Goldberg
War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism Douglas J. Feith
The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates Ralph Ketcham
The Gallic War: Seven Commentaries on The Gallic War with an Eighth Commentary by Aulus Hirtius Julius Caesar
A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube Patrick Leigh Fermor
Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople: From The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates Patrick Leigh Fermor
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 Christopher Clark
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present Christopher I. Beckwith
The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective Richard Rohr
God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars Michael Braddick
Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia Karl Ernest Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: A Biography Edward Rice
Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman William Tecumseh Sherman
Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions Zachary Shore
7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century Andrew Krepinevich
Winter in Madrid: A Novel C.J. Sansom
Dies the Fire: A Novel of the Change S.M. Stirling
The Gate House Nelson DeMille
In DVDs:
The Man Who Would Be King John Huston, with Sean Connery and Michael Caine (5). It’s fitting that the best film ever made should top the list. Don’t just take my word for it.
The Last Valley James Clavell, with Michael Caine and Omar Sharif (5). This excellent flick about the 30 Years War gets bestseller rating because it did well in prior quarters.
THE 9TH COMPANY / 9-YA ROTA [PAL] Ivan in Afghanistan. (3)
Also worth a mention in DVDs:
Red Dawn John Milius. Adieu, Patrick Swayze.
Cross of Iron Sam Peckinpaw, with James Coburn and Maximillian Schell. Russian Front epic of courage and cowardice. This uncut Korean edition gets good user reviews.
The Duellists The other greatest film ever made. Ridley Scott, with Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel.
WATERLOO - by Sergei Bondarchuk
Those are just a few that jumped out. There were a lot more. Your reviews are encouraged in comments, and any suggestions will be added. Many thanks to all who bought books and DVDs through the site, as well as those who bought everything ranging from Swiss Army knives to automotive tools to watches to furniture to energy bars and power drinks to Kindles. And fancy Italian gloves. Your purchases help support the site.
(Care to comment? Registration is shut down, due to persistent spammers. Use the “contact” link to assure me you are a real human being interested in commenting on the topics at hand, include the screenname and temporary password of your choice, and I’ll create a logon for you. Lefty Kumbayah singers, moderate handwringers, meanspirited rightwingers all welcome. Just keep it clean and make an effort to be accurate.)
Topics: books, shameless opportunism
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 2:42 pm on Sunday, September 13, 2009
3 Responses to “A Boutique Warmongery’s Bestseller List”
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September 13th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I don’t know if I did the trackback correctly, but I did post a request for folks to shop at the boutique via this link.
http://www.therightreasons.net/index.php?s=&showtopic=16115&view=findpost&p=224486
September 14th, 2009 at 7:37 am
I came. I saw. I ordered. LOL
September 14th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Many thanks on both counts, SL