I read Gates of Fire and loved it. It's got to be on my top 5 list. I read Last of the Amazons and was disappointed. It just didn't mesh for me. I read Killing Rommel and it was pretty good, but again, nowhere near as good as GoF.
Printable View
LHS - If you enjoyed Pressfield's Gates of Fire (which I did as well) may I recommend The Ten Thousand, by Michael Curtis Ford? It's the story of Xenophon's famous march to the sea, from Babylon back to Lydia. It is done in a similiar narrative style as Gates of Fire.
Also, Tides of War is good. It's by Pressfield and is about Alcibiades, the Athenian general. The Warrior Ethos is also a very good contemporary read, my daughter is reading it now. From what I listened him say, Pressfield interviewed a large number of our Special Operations service members for that book.
I liked The Profession a lot. I kept wondering in the back of my mind. What if Jim Mattis had political ambitions?
Note: That is not any kind of affront or attack upon General Mattis. I have enormous respect for him as a warior and thinker. But the book just made me wonder, which is what good books are supposed to do.
Two tomes that I finished recently were The Quest by Daniel Yergin, and Lee, by Douglas Southall Freeman. Yergin wrote a book called The Prize, which chronicles the role oil has played in our society and history. The Quest is about energy.
Lee is probably the authoritative biography on a fascinating general. If you can obtain the original printing that is not abridged, it's quite good. Even the abridged paperback (over 800 pages) is still an excellent read. Freeman died long ago, and his books can be difficult to find. I have an original 3-volume set of Lee's Lieutenants that took me some time to read, but was quite worth it. I gained more knowledge of the Civil war than by reading Burns, Foote or Shaara.
That took two boxes of cigars and several bottles of single malt to do. ;)
Well, I guess I'm a lot simpler minded than everyone else here, but so far some of my favorite fiction has been by Matthew Reilly- some of his new stuff is getting a little redundant, but the first time I read Temple my mind was blown. :laugh:
And the Scarecrow series was awesome too.
If you like really over the top action-movie style writing, his stuff is not to be missed- seriously, it puts many other so-called "thrillers" to shame.
Anything by Louis Lamour. Ya thats right, western fiction.
Specifically the "Daybreakers".
Have you read any of the Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch Series by Robert B. Parker? I read all four and thought they were good:
http://robertbparker.net/robert-park...s.php#westerns
The Flashman Papers by George Fraser McDonald
There are 12 books in the series and I just finished my 8th book in the series. Although they are fiction, the history behind them is superb and you end up learning alot about the Victorian era British Empire as you laugh about cowardly Flashman's various adventures and misdeeds.