My favorite non-fiction of 2023. Robert K. Massie cements his place as my favorite biographer. The Face of Battle is an absolute classic. The History of Ukraine is complex and turbulent but their identity as an independent nation should not in any way be construed as up for debate. Orwell can write about anything and I‘ll read it. Gulag. Everyone should have some Anne Applebaum reading in their life.
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This is a detailed account of the day-to-day fears and struggles the average solider faces through Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. While Keegan's detailed research efforts are commendable, the content is tedious to me which is why my sense of accomplishment is so satisfying now that I finished it. This will play best w/deep military history buffs.
#Nonfiction #historical #history #military #war #battle
"Sorrow and anxiety spare only the rarest even among leaders."
#Nonfiction #historical #military
"The army needs a vision, a dream, a nightmare, or some mixture of the three if it is to be electrified into a headlong advance."
#Nonfiction #history #military
"For the reduction of delay in evacuating the wounded soldiers from the point of injury to the point of first aid in the period since 1918 has been striking, and represents easily the most important of the many advances achieved in modern military history."
#Nonfiction #military #history
"But most important of all was the simple ignorance of what was happening which prevailed almost everywhere on the British side of no-man's-land throughout most of the day."
#Nonfiction #military #historical #history
3 Chapters down, 2 to go! The book is composed of 5 chapters, 4 of which focus on large amounts of detail surrounding 4 separate battles. The 5th is a look at the future of battle.
#Nonfiction #military #historical #history
"Inside every army is a crowd struggling to get out, & the strongest fear w/which every commander lives-stronger than his fear of defeat or even mutiny-is that of his army reverting to a crowd through some error of his making. For a crowd is the antithesis of an army, a human assembly animated not by discipline but by mood, by the play of inconsistent & potentially infectious emotion which, if it spreads, is fatal to an army's subordination."
The Treaty of Bretigny concluded Edward III's campaign of conquest, marked the end of the 1st phase of the Hundred Year's War, and it marked the height of English power on the continent.
#NFNov #Nonfiction #military #historical #TIL #TodayILearned @rsteve388 @Clwojick
"Soldiers die in largest numbers when they run, because it is when they turn their backs to the enemy that they are least able to defend themselves....Men fight...from fear: fear of the consequences 1st of not fighting, then of not fighting well."
#NFNov #Nonfiction #military #historical @rsteve388 @Clwojick
"Disciplined bodies of 'civilized' soldiers...always best undisciplined bodies of barbarians. Yet barbarians, man for man, are fiercer fighters than civilized soldiers."
#NFNov #Nonfiction #military #historical @rsteve388 @Clwojick
"No military institution of which we have detailed, objective knowledge has ever been given the monumental, marmoreal, almost monolithic uniformity of character which classical writers conventionally ascribe to the Legions."
#NFNov #Nonfiction #military #historical @rsteve388 @Clwojick #TodayILearned #TIL
"While Caesar is writing particular history, Thucydides is writing general history, by every test a more useful, a more difficult and a more illuminating form of art."
#Nonfiction #historical #NFNov #TIL #TodayILearned
#military
@rsteve388 @Clwojick
"The Roman defeat at Cannae that helped to precipitate the First World War....it was probably Caesar who most influenced the way in which military history was written from the Renaissance onwards."
#Nonfiction #military #historical #NFNov #TIL #TodayILearned
@rsteve388 @Clwojick
"Two of the most important military reformers of the late 16th & early 17th centuries, Maurice of Nassau & Gustavus Adolphus."
#Nonfiction #military #historical #NFNov #TIL #TodayILearned
@rsteve388 @Clwojick
"Battles are extremely confusing."
#NFNov #Nonfiction #military #historical
@rsteve388 @Clwojick
"The typical 'battle piece', w/its reduction of soldiers to pawns, its discontinuous rhythm, its conventional imagery, its selective incident & its high focus on leadership, is cast.... Modern historiography, like modern warfare, began with the Renaissance."
#NFNov #Nonfiction #military #historical #TIL #TodayILearned
@rsteve388 @Clwojick
Here's my 1st #NFNov bingo post for the month! This is what #Nonfiction book I'm currently reading.
I'll be posting more nonfiction books that are in my #TBR stack throughout the month.
@rsteve388 @Clwojick
#military
"The study of war is also a study of human free will."
"[For] the interests of many states are often involved in the collisions of but a few."
"Battle history, or campaign history, deserves a similar primacy over all other branches of military historiography. It is in fact the oldest historical form, its subject matter is of commanding importance, and its treatment demands the most scrupulous historical care."
"Combine analysis with narrative - the most difficult of all the historian's arts."
Starting this #Nonfiction book on #military history. What it's like for the common soldier who has to face the enemy in a life-and-death struggle.
There cannot be any hard and fast rules. But there can be suggestions and useful analogies. The most useful, to my mind, is that of the difference between the English and French judicial systems... The character of these two different legal approaches is usually defined as ‘accusatorial‘ (English) and ‘inquisitorial‘ (French) respectively.
The Face of Battle | 
