I read a lot. Well, I listen to a fair bit of it via audiobook these days on Audible too. Life doesn’t leave me enough time to sit quietly with a paper copy, which is my preferred medium. So let’s revise that and say I consume a lot of books, one way or the other, annually. I’m sure some of you out there read way more, and my a lot is less than yours. I’m jealous if so…

Here I’m only going to cover the stuff I read that’s relevant to historical wargaming. I do read more besides but no one is here to read me talking about a Brandon Sanderson novel. There’s other places that do that better.

History is a passion of mine by itself, it’s what I studied in college and I never stop consuming it. However, topical pieces to historical wargaming tend to feed into my gaming choices. The reverse is true too, my wargaming projects inspire me to pick up related books. This year the lion’s share of my reading related to the Pacific Theater of World War Two. My Bag the Hun campaign was my biggest project of 2023 and so I spent a lot of time digging into related stuff, as well as refreshing my general knowledge of the Pacific war, or diving into stuff I didn’t know as much about like the early Java Sea campaign.

Below I’m going to to quickly jot down my thoughts about each book or series of books. Hopefully you find something worth picking up. Please drop me a comment below if you have any good recommendations at all to share! (I have a book buying problem)

The Pacific War Trilogy – Ian W. Toll
1. Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific 1941-1942
2. The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944
3. Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944–1945

A great narrative history trilogy which gives the reader an excellent base level knowledge of the Pacific Theater. If you don’t know much about the Pacific, but want to learn, I’d recommend this set to start.

Lords of the Sky – Dan Hampton

This is the proverbial (maybe literal) 30,000 foot view of the history of fighter pilots and aerial combat. Dan Hampton is a former fighter pilot who seamlessly weaves between historical narrative and first hand accounts to take you from the skies over No Man’s Land in the First World War all the way to the cockpit of a F16 over Iraq and everywhere in-between. An easy read and a great overview.

Samurai! – Saburo Sakai with Martin Caidin and Fred Saito

Samurai! is an autobiography of one of Japan’s top scoring WWII aces. Saburo Sakai flew the famous A6M2 Zero in combat as a land-based naval pilot. The book is older now having been published in 1957. If you do some research there are some debates about authenticity of different parts of the book but it’s a good read regardless as it reads like a novel at times.

Wings of Gold – Gerald Astor

Wings of Gold is a history of United States Naval Aviation in World War Two. Told through copious first hand excerpts and snippets it leaves no aspect of the subject matter untouched. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I found it at a yard sale of all places.

Semper Fi in the Sky – Gerald Astor

My enjoyment of Wings of Gold led me to do what I often do with books I like: check out the author’s other works. Gerald Astor did not disappoint and his history of USMC aviation in WW2 was as good as Wings of Gold and similar in style. I would recommend these are read together as they complement each other nicely.

Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat

This book is actually a collection of more academic essays by various authors. It’s a bit drier than my other picks here but I found it a really interesting read. It covers the failings of 11 different air forces in history with an essay each. If that sounds interesting to you, pick it up.

The Face of Battle – John Keegan

John Keegan’s 1976 work Face of Battle is probably something you’ve heard of or read if you’ve been a military history fan for a while. I’ve had it for a few years and finally decided to give it a go. It covers the structure of warfare through the lens of three battles which all involve English soldiers in the same relative geographic area: Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. I enjoyed it despite it lacking airplanes.

Jeffery R. Cox’s works on the Pacific Theater (four books)
Rising Sun, Falling Skies
Morning Star, Midnight Sun
Blazing Star, Setting Sun
Dark Waters, Starry Skies

Jeffery R. Cox has four books that cover the first two years of the Pacific Theater of WWII in detail. Maybe too much detail sometimes, but I like that kind of stuff. The occasional bit of dry humor got a few chuckles out of my nerdy self, and I did learn about a lot of smaller events that get overlooked in more general histories. I have a small gripe with each book having a condensed review of the entire series up to that point in the beginning. I listened to these and by the fourth book the review ran over six hours of play time. It would be good if you were picking it back up, but when you marathon them in a month…. Overall very good books that I enjoyed and I’ll be keeping my eyes out for future works by Mr. Cox.

Air Campaign 19: Malaya & Dutch East Indies 1941-42 – Mark Stille

I know if you’re reading this blog you’ve probably read at least one Osprey series book of some sort. If you haven’t you probably still own one. If you don’t, what are you waiting for? These books are always jam-packed with details, maps, and photos. I really enjoyed this one as it covered a lot of ground and felt well paced.

Tanks in Hell: A Marine Corps Tank Company on Tarawa – Oscar E. Gilbert

Did you know there were Sherman tanks involved in the Tarawa landings? If you didn’t you do now. This book is fantastically researched and pieces together the tale of the ill-fated first use of medium tanks by the USMC during the Tarawa landings. I liked it so much I’m painting three 28mm Shermans based on the tanks involved. Short and fun read for you tread heads.

Twenty-Two on Peleliu: Four Pacific Campaigns with the Corps; The Memoirs of an Old Breed Marine – George Peto with Peter Margaritis

This memoir I actually stumbled into as a free offering on Audible with my membership. I gave it a go because why not. A really interesting, and sometimes sad, tale of a man who served across multiple campaigns in the Pacific with the Marine Corps, as well as his life before and after. If you like soldier memoirs and you’ve been eyeballing your dog eared copy of Helmet for my Pillow for another re-read grab this instead….then go re-read Helmet for my Pillow….and probably With the Old Breed too….

That’s it! I hope you found something to read here, or just enjoy perusing some reccomendations.