Fans pick 100 books like Strong Men Armed

This has to be one of–if not the–greatest single book I’ve ever read about war in the ancient world. I read the first ten pages, and I was interested; then I read the next forty, and I was utterly hooked. As a description of an elite military force holding out against overwhelming odds it fascinated me, but as a human story of the way Spartan society worked to produce those warriors, imbued with heroism, honour and humour in equal amounts I was simply blown away.

It’s fair to say that this book has been my greatest influence all the way through my writing career. I dare anyone with an interest in the genre to read this and then deny that they were informed, entertained, and (perhaps darkly) amused by the story and its payoff. This is God-tier writing, plain and simple, and, not for no reason, the closest thing the… show more.

The Second World War marked the apogee of American naval power, and there are many wonderful books about it, especially about the Pacific War. One of the many such books is James D. Hornfisher’s book, which is a dramatic telling of the furious engagement off the island of Samar during the Battle for Leyte Gulf in 1944 when a small group of destroyers stood up to a Japanese battleship-cruiser force.  

If “Shared misery” bonded the Spartans together at Thermopylae in 485 BC, it was those bonds that enabled 19,000 U.S. Marines to fight their way 79 miles to safety through 300,000+ Chinese soldiers in sub-zero temperatures in December 1950.

Author Martin Russ is a former Marine who fought at Chosin Reservoir, going on to a career as a writing professor.  Well-researched, Breakout is both historically accurate, as well as filled with information and personal anecdotes offered to Russ when interviewing his fellow Marines.

Although the Chinese had warned about not approaching their border, Gen Douglas MacArthur disregarded them, and as his Army-Marine force approached China, icy Manchurian winds and snow dropped the temperatures to the minus 30-50’ range; vehicles had to be kept running 24/7 and the Marines and soldiers learned to urinate on their rifles in order to unfreeze them. Then the Chinese attacked – in huge force.

The… show more.

Those of us who read newspaper remember James Brady, who wrote Page Six a Hollywood gossip column that ran every Sunday for 25 years on the last page of Parade magazine.

What few knew is that James Brady was a Marine officer who’d seen combat in the Korean War, and lived to write 13 fiction and five nonfiction books, with his autobiography, “The Coldest Winter” nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.              

Brady often described himself as “an immature 23-year old when I left for Korea, but when I left nine months later I was a grown-up and a pretty good Marine officer,” and reading his story, you’ll see this ‘pretty good Marine officer’ became a ‘pretty fine author.’                               

Brady concentrates on the Marines in his unit and his growth as an officer in leading them. Except for ‘Saving Private Ryan and few others, combat isn’t near as glorious or macho as… show more.

In view of the numerous controversies and varied views of General MacArthur’s actions and policies in the Pacific War, it is great to have a balanced and very carefully researched and presented account of a commander who was in it from Japan’s attack on the United States to Japan’s surrender. While dealing fairly with some of the criticisms of the general, Borneman does note his repeated announcements of battles being ended when they were not as well as the hopeless incompetence of his intelligence chief.

This is simply one of the finest books to be written on the final critical two years of the Pacific War, with extensive detail on the Japanese side of the conflict and plenty of new insights into the better-known American story. It is a big book, but this was a large conflict both in terms of space, time, and the resources deployed. It was also chiefly a story of amphibious naval warfare, an original and significant development in modern warfare that too often gets understated. By the end of the conflict, the American armed forces had created the shape that they were to employ for the next half-century in projecting power overseas.

Though these stories are actually linked, told over a century and a half through many generations of one family, the characters are so different that what acts as the unifying thread for this book more than anything is its exploration of imperialism’s traumas, perpetrated, experienced, and inherited.

Like my own work that seeks to explore a country’s identity through many different members and eras, Serizawa paints a portrait of Japan before and after the Second World War in breathtaking scope to remind us that events in history have much longer roots and much greater reaches than we recognize. 

Anyone interested in the War in the Pacific will find this collection of 175 photographs showing the variety of interactions of Islanders and foreign servicemen interesting. It goes beyond official military photos (though there are plenty of those) to include photos from Japanese sources and veterans’ personal photographs. The text gives insight into the conditions of war and how Islanders and foreign fighters perceived and dealt with each other. A beautifully produced book.

For a broader perspective on the war in the Pacific, you cannot do better than Ian Toll's trilogy, beginning with Pacific Crucible (2012), then The Conquering Tide (2015), and finally Twilight Of The Gods (2020). If I had to pick one of these, I would choose the last one, where Toll really hits his full stride as a historian and storyteller. 

Perhaps the very best crafted book of this selection, this is a remarkable story about a relatively unremarkable combat career.  Samuel Hynes—who later taught at Northwestern and Princeton—gives the reader not just a rote recounting of his experiences as a Marine Corps pilot during the war, but he also shares what and how he felt. He is unwaveringly honest, and includes an account of a sexual encounter that at the very least causes the reader to reflect on the morals of that time. His book is a refreshing look behind the façade of “The Greatest Generation,” and reassures the reader that, other than circumstances, there is little that distinguishes individuals from one generation to the next.