In 2017, our inaugural year of the #BroaderBookshelf challenge, we asked you to read a history, any history. In 2018 we are asking that you broaden your reading horizons by specifically reading a military history, with many suggestions listed below.
Why history? Well, check out this answer from Boston University on why the study of history should be encouraged as a major: "[T]he heart of historical study is a richly vicarious experience, teaching you to move beyond yourself and envision other worlds, to explore the interplay between material circumstances and human character. History is both a science and an art, combining the careful analysis of evidence with compelling storytelling. Historical knowledge is powerful currency for the 21st century. History increases cultural literacy and sensitivity. You will learn to consider multiple points of view and changing global contexts. And you will get more jokes." (Source: So You Think You Want to Study History | Boston University)
Why military history? Standing militaries have been in existence since 3000 B.C., and battles and wars have been a huge part of our human story. While surfing the net searching for information about military history, I noted that one historian and author, John Keegan, was referenced and quoted often, but this quote from his book The Face of Battle struck me as particularly meaningful about why we should read military histories: "The study of battle is therefore always a study of fear and usually of courage; always of leadership, usually of obedience; always of compulsion, sometimes of insubordination; always of anxiety, sometimes of elation or catharsis; always of uncertainty and doubt, misinformation and misapprehension, usually also of faith and sometimes of vision; always of violence, sometimes also of cruelty, self-sacrifice, compassion; above all, it is always a study of solidarity and usually also of disintegration – for it is toward the disintegration of human groups that battle is directed." (Source: Manuever Self Study Program | Ft. Benning).
When you read a book based on the prompts from the 2018 #BroaderBookshelf Challenge, please take the time to share the book cover and your thoughts about the book with us via social media using #BroaderBookshelf.
Here are just a handful of military histories, many considered classics, in Richland Library's electronic collection:
- Band of Brothers, by Stephen Ambrose. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- Thunder Below! by Eugune B. Fluckey. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, by Nathaniel Fick. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- 1776, by David McCullough. Access it via OverDrive and cloudLibrary.
- The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, by Jake Tapper. Access the eBook via OverDrive and cloudLibrary. Access the eAudiobook via OverDrive and hoopla.
- The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman. Access the eBook via OverDrive. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides (c400 BC). Access the eBook via hoopla.
- The Face of Battle, by John Keegan. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- The Persian Expedition by Xenophon. Access the eBook via hoopla.
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford. Access the eBook via cloudLibrary.
- On War, by Carl von Clausewitz. Access the eBook via hoopla. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- The Liberator, by Alex Kershaw. Access the eBook via OverDrive.
- The 33 Strategies of War, by Robert Greene. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- American Soldier: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, by John A. Nagl. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- Strategy, by Captain B. H. Liddell Hart. Access the eBook via hoopla.
- Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold True Story of American Submarine Espionage, by Sherry Sontag. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, by David Halberstam. Access the eBook via OverDrive.
- Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945, by Carlo d'Este Available via hoopla.
- Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome, by Carlo d'Este. Available via hoopla.
- Decision in Normandy, by Carlo d'Este. Available via hoopla.
- Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945, by Max Hastings. Available via OverDrive and cloudLibrary.
- Bitter Victory, by Carlo d'Este. Available via hoopla.
- Six Days of War, by Michael B. Oren. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.
- The First World War, by Hew Strachan. Access the eAudiobook via hoopla.