Here are 100 books that Soldiering fans have personally recommended if you like
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My entire life I’ve been a historian, a treasure hunter, and a crime solver, which is likely why I became a broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. Having worked cases, worked with police, and asked the questions I believe the public wanted answered, there isn’t much which gets by me. I see every story as a movie and every scene in life as a story that needs telling. One of my passions has always been genealogy which fits right into all of the above. I live by a simple saying, “Be a student of history, not a victim of it.”
Logic! While Machiavelli is looked upon as a shrewd politician he is quite the opposite of John Potenza, the character in my book, but that’s where the similarities begin. Machiavelli was the most logical person ever. I’m fascinated by Logic. So is my crime-solving detective, who uses everything logical to figure out life. Potenza is a loyal Italian, so is Machiavelli. Machiavelli is loyal to himself and his cause, for Potenza it's the cause and family.
If you love logic and intrigue, you will love The Prince. It deals with the logic of human experience; one powerful tool in our repertoire. It certainly was for the politician. The same for a surfing cop trying to keep two biker gangs from going to mattress.
My entire life I’ve been a historian, a treasure hunter, and a crime solver, which is likely why I became a broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. Having worked cases, worked with police, and asked the questions I believe the public wanted answered, there isn’t much which gets by me. I see every story as a movie and every scene in life as a story that needs telling. One of my passions has always been genealogy which fits right into all of the above. I live by a simple saying, “Be a student of history, not a victim of it.”
Forget the Alamo is a take-off on the popular saying at the time in Texas, “Remember the Alamo,” which was a battle cry. I love this book because of the logic the authors use and the tremendous hard-core research of letters and documents, to show why one of America’s legendary tales was a lot more myth. The true story of “why” more than the actual outcome continues to be battled today. John Wayne’s version, which many of us grew up with, was so far from the truth, it boggles the mind. The documentation in this book and the logic behind the letters that were written reveal the sad truth of what happened and more importantly what led up to the tragic end for so many brave souls.
“Lively and absorbing. . ." — The New York Times Book Review
"Engrossing." —Wall Street Journal
“Entertaining and well-researched . . . ” —Houston Chronicle
Three noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head.
Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of…
My entire life I’ve been a historian, a treasure hunter, and a crime solver, which is likely why I became a broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. Having worked cases, worked with police, and asked the questions I believe the public wanted answered, there isn’t much which gets by me. I see every story as a movie and every scene in life as a story that needs telling. One of my passions has always been genealogy which fits right into all of the above. I live by a simple saying, “Be a student of history, not a victim of it.”
Card Sharks is the story of the trading card industry and how one company, Upper Deck, created an industry of sports collectibles and then, because of greed, cheated its customers. Pete Williams's investigative book searched out true stories and documents and flipped the booming trading card world on its head. We all should have known the logic behind creating collectibles that cannot be sustained and how one company took the industry to new heights, fooled everyone, and then reworked itself to continue years later, even getting caught counterfeiting another company’s collectibles and pretty much getting away with it. It is a path I wrote about happening when it was happening, and few listened because there was money to be made.
Taking the reader from the birth of sports cards in the 1880s to the present, Williams investigates the success in the shady world of baseball cards. At the center of the industry is Upper Deck, the largest manufacturer, with sales of over $260 million each year. Williams exposes how the power brokers in the game of baseball have changed this once-innocent hobby forever.
Published in 1995 when Williams was a writer and columnist for USA Today Baseball Weekly, Card Sharks has been frequently cited by other authors and remains the definitive investigative look into the trading card business.
My entire life I’ve been a historian, a treasure hunter, and a crime solver, which is likely why I became a broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. Having worked cases, worked with police, and asked the questions I believe the public wanted answered, there isn’t much which gets by me. I see every story as a movie and every scene in life as a story that needs telling. One of my passions has always been genealogy which fits right into all of the above. I live by a simple saying, “Be a student of history, not a victim of it.”
Polk was one of the most important presidents, considered Top 10, and he only served one term. He didn’t set out to be president. He got nominated because the bigwigs at the time couldn’t win their party's votes. Polk kept getting more votes as the ballots were turned in and became his party’s nominee. He won the election and set out three goals; get rid of the bank of the US, which was ripping the country off, expand the country to the west coast, and get rid of tariffs, all three of which he accomplished. He did it all in four years, chose not to run again, went home, and died. Talk about logical? Get it done, get it over with, and leave the future to someone else.
Soon after winning the presidency in 1845, according to the oft-repeated anecdote, James K. Polk slapped his thigh and predicted what would be the ""four great measures"" of his administration: the acquisition of some or all of the Oregon Country, the acquisition of California, a reduction in tariffs, and the establishment of a permanent independent treasury. Over the next four years, the Tennessee Democrat achieved all four goals. And those milestones--along with his purported enunciation of them--have come to define his presidency. Indeed, repeated ad infinitum in U.S. history textbooks, Polk's bold listing of goals has become U.S. political history's…
Having penned several history books, Historical Fiction is as natural to me as wooden teeth were to George Washington. And hopefully, my writing speaks as authentically. But Historical Fiction’s real attraction is that it not only adds realism and depth but also offers readers the chance to learn about our past in an enjoyable format that isn’t tedious or boring. Naturally, that’s if it's crafted well. However, history shouldn’t be just a backdrop, its myriad of events should impact the characters’ lives, and in turn, impact the reader. In that vein, Historical Fiction packs a punch to the intellect and emotions. So I hope you’ll enjoy these timeless classics.
John Jakes’s trilogy is a huge investment of time, but for those who love family sagas, American history and intriguing conflicts, it's a huge banquet to sink your teeth into. This sprawling saga drew me in with its inevitable chain of events, namely the Civil War, and how it split families and friends apart due to a military conflict, one that threatened to split the nation apart and with profound humanitarian rights at its core. Superbly written and even beautifully captured on film, John Jake’s magnum opus is a winner.
Part one of the #1 New York Times bestselling North and South Trilogy—the Civil War saga that inspired the classic television miniseries North and South—with over five million copies sold!
“An entertaining…authentic dramatization of American history.”—The New York Times
From master storyteller John Jakes comes the epic story of two families—the Hazards and the Mains. Separated by vastly different ways of life, joined by the unbreakable bonds of true friendship, and torn asunder by a country on the brink of a bloody conflict that will irrevocably change them all…
I am a retired teacher, author, and researcher/presenter focusing on the real boys of the American Civil War. A Ray Bradbury short story in The Saturday Evening Post back in 1963 first sparked my interest. It focused on a drummer and his general at the Battle of Shiloh–a two-page conversation between them. There was no action. A teenager then, I decided I could do better and began what decades later would become my 4-book series, Journey Into Darkness, a story in four parts. In the years that followed, I became a middle-grade teacher, and my students learned about the Civil War by way of their peers.
I found this book a fascinating look into the life of a boy who survived years in the most notorious prison of the Civil War, Andersonville, through his own writings. Not only did he survive imprisonment, but he also survived the explosion of the Sultana, the riverboat that carried thousands of prisoners north after their release following the war.
I lived Michael’s experiences through his words, saw the half-naked men and boys, their hair matted by the pitch smoke from their fires as they tried to keep warm, their bodies reduced to skin and bones through starvation diet, their numbers reduced as mortal wounds and illness cut lives short. Once released, I felt the heat of the burning water when the Sultana exploded and heard the cries of the dying consumed by the flames.
Diary of a Civil War Hero reveals how strong men became broken, vermin eaten skeletons who went mad or turned on their friends to survive. It is a powerful self-portrait of the will to live of a young soldier whose battle courage won him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Michael Dougherty was 16 when he enlisted in the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry; he was captured in the Fall of 1863. This is his diary: a true-to-life, undiluted record of Union men imprisoned in Confederate camps. It is authentic-right down to the death rattles of countless thousands who perished. It is a…
I came to Civil War studies fairly late in life but still relatively callow, by a route too roundabout to explain. But after reading James McPherson’s, Battle Cry of Freedom(there’s a bonus book!), I found I had a love of every facet of the era. The only thing I’d ever wanted to be was a writer and, as I delved deeper into the vast body of literature on the American Civil War, I finally felt as if I’d found thesubject I could pour all my passion into (that and my enduring love of dogs). My novel Wilderness, along with a few novels published in French, was the result.
Part of the enduring popularity of the Battle of Gettysburg studies, is that the battle offers a true microcosm of the American Civil War—from politics to personalities. A meeting engagement, a desperate struggle, a turning point, and human tragedy on a scale the continent had never seen before, the events of those three days in July still resonant down the years. Guelzo’s book, besides being one of the most recent, offers wonderful descriptions of every facet of the battle with finely-crafted prose and a pacing that will keep readers invested from start to finish.
Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier.
Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and the sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett’s Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it…
I’ve been a history nerd since I first learned to read. My father served in the United States Air Force, and we had an elderly neighbor who served in Korea. Their stories and a lot of time on my hands (I grew up on a small farm) led to an early love of reading. Most of the books on this list helped that love grow into ultimately writing fiction and getting a Ph.D. in U.S. History. I hope going back through them is also an enjoyable experience for everyone else.
This book is recommended because it’s one of the best historical fiction works of all time.
Even though the reader knows what’s going to happen (“General Pickett, come on down!”), Shaara still humanizes both the Union and Confederate participants.
I read this before I took a Civil War class, and it amazed me just how well Shaara managed to turn primary sources into three-dimensional characters with all their human foibles and flaws.
“My favorite historical novel . . . a superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant.”—James M. McPherson
In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty…
Two boyhood experiences inspired my fascination with the Civil War: a family trip to Gettysburg and purchasing original photographs of soldiers at flea markets. Captivated by the old photos, I became an avid collector of Civil War-era portrait photography. Curiosity about identified individuals in my collection led me on a lifelong journey to tell their stories. In 2001, I started a column,Faces of War,in theCivil War News.Since then, I’ve profiled hundreds of participants in the column, and in six books. In 2013, I became the fourth editor and publisher of Military Images, a quarterly journal that showcases, interprets, and preserves Civil War photography.
Battle-hardened and wounded veteran Ambrose Bierce recounted his army experiences in a series of grim short stories that reveal the horrors of the Civil War. In graphic detail, he paints a disturbing and twisted picture of the conflict. His writings stand in stark contrast to reminiscences by other veterans in the twilight of life who reflected on their participation in the battles and campaigns with pride and esprit de corps. A collection of these fictional writings by “Bitter Bierce” first published as Tales of Soldiers and Civilians explores the dark side of the Civil War—and human nature—with a unique brand of wit and satire.
In Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories, humor and horror paint a bleak picture of war, marked by violence, isolation and looming madness. Despite the subject matter, the macabre tone is balanced by the author's satirical prose and signature levity.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories is a literary collection from writer and veteran Ambrose Bierce. The leading title focuses on the realities of battle and various conflicts in the field. Stories such as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "One of the Missing" and "Chickamauga," are heavily influenced by the American Civil War. Others focus…
As a historian of the Civil War, I love thinking about how the war shaped what came after it. The Civil War, and the abolition of slavery that was wrapped up with it, is perhaps the most important turning point in the history of the United States. It had so many afterlives and made such a deep impact on everything from the daily lives of the formerly enslaved in the southern states to popular culture to the shape of the country’s economy. As a historian of the period, I’ve written and edited multiple books and scholarly articles on the period. Still, I remain fascinated by how much more there is to learn and study!
Much like how Glymph recaptures the daily lives and struggles of African Americans in the South, Jordan takes you into the personal histories of Union veterans.
Following them as they march home and then struggle with social acceptance, battlefield wounds, and personal struggles, he offers a sobering view of the legacies of the war. The book takes a lot of the shine off the Civil War, reminding us of the immense human toll it took, even among its victors.
For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative. These veterans- tending rotting wounds, battling alcoholism, campaigning for paltry pensions- tragically realized that they stood as unwelcome reminders to a new America eager to heal, forget, and embrace the freewheeling bounty of the Gilded Age. Mining previously untapped archives, Jordan uncovers anguished letters and diaries, essays by amputees, and gruesome medical reports, all…
