Blog Archives
sThe Thracians were one of the great barbarian peoples of ancient history. The Greeks lived in fear of invading hordes of Thracian warriors. Later, they were the backbone of Macedonian and other Hellenistic monarchies armies. Herod of Judea employed them. Spartacus was a Thracian. Chris Webber’s The Gods of Battle (Pen & Sword, 2011) is […]
One of the newest Osprey Men-At-Arms booklets is The Dutch-Indonesian War 1945-49. I discussed The Royal Netherlands Indies Army 1936-42 by Marc Lownstein almost five years ago. This is the third boolet by him covering Indonesia in WW2 and afterwards. Booklet is 48 pages as per usual size for Osprey Men-At-Arms. Contents Introduction: Summary, chronology, […]
If you read the appendix and biographical notes to Penguin Classics The Age of Alexander by Plutarch, you see the original Game of Thrones. Alexander the Great’s generals and officer immediately set to to prove who was the strongest. Michael Taylor’s Antiochus the Great is a history of one of the more interesting descendants of […]
If you have paid attention, I like to read about ancient and medieval warfare. Myke Cole’s The Bronze Lie is an Osprey publication from 2021 that is a hefty 464 pages. The cover blurb under the title is “Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy.” I have not read Cole’s Legion Versus Phalanx which I […]
Pen & Sword History continues to take my money. One of the batch of my most recent order from Hamilton Books is The Galatians by John D. Grainger. Subtitled “Celtic Invaders of Greece and Asia Minor,” this is the most comprehensive text I have ever read on the Galatians. History has episodes of wandering tribes […]
Years ago, reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, this passage on the Vandals excited my imagination: “The Vandals, who in twenty years had penetrated from the Elbe to Mount Atlas, were united under the command of their warlike king; and he reigned with equal authority over the Alani, who had passed within […]
It is dangerous to methodically go through the military history section of Hamilton Books. It is irresistable when coming across some fairly new title drastically marked down. One recent addition from my last order is Levi Roach’s Empires of the Normans. Pegasus Books, August 2022, 301 pages, hardback. Originally priced $29.95, $7.95 at Hamilton Books. […]
Osprey Publishing’s Men-at-Arms booklet Italian Colonial Troops 1882-1960 is #544 in the series. Published in 2022, author: Gabriele Esposito, artist: Giuseppe Rava. Forty eight pages including eight color plates. Italy like Germany got into the colony business later than Great Britain, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. Italians had moved into Tunisia across the Mediterranean Sea […]
Osprey Publishing’s Celtic Warrior is #30 in the Warrior series. It is a 64 page booklet written by Stephen Allen and illustrations by Wayne Reynolds including 10 color plates. The book is laid out similar to the Pictish Warrior booklet. Allen has eight pages on introduction and short history of the Celts. Eleven pages are […]
Osprey Publishing’s Pictish Warrior AD 297-841 is number 50 in their Warrior series originally published in 2002. Author is Paul Wagner with illustrations by Wayne Reynolds. The Picts are an enigmatic people of the British Isles first mentioned in 297 A.D., a regional power until succumbing from hammer blows from the Scots and Vikings. Robert […]
The Normans in Italy 1016-1194 by Raffaele D’Amato and Andrea Salimbeti from 2020 is a fairly recent addition from Osprey Publishing. This is the latest addition to volumes on the Normans. Terence Wise wrote Saxon, Viking, and Norman (Men-at-Arms # 85, 1979) and David Nicolle wrote The Normans (Elite #5, 1987). The Normans in Italy […]
I think I first heard of the Numidians when I read Harold Lamb’s Hannibal. That happened to be the first Harold Lamb I ever read. You used to run across the Bantam paperback editions of Lamb in used bookstores on a regular basis. Hannibal is also one of Lamb’s better histories as the the details […]