QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE, A RECOLLECTION OF THE WAR IN BURMA

by George MacDonald Fraser

George MacDonald Fraser is the author of the innumerable volumes in the Flashman series. In this memoir he recounts his experiences as a teenaged combat infantryman, serving in William Slim’s 14th Army. His tale is brilliantly written—at times sad, at times gripping, at times hilarious, but always readable. Fraser’s powers of observation are extraordinary, as well as his ability to sum up a point in a few words. His description of Slim is brilliant. In addressing his men and the Burma campaign after the war, Slim “never said I, rarely said we, and almost always said you did.”

DEFEAT INTO VICTORY

by William Slim

Besides Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, Slim’s memoirs ranks as one of the great works of military literature, both for its insights as well as for its honesty. And like Grant, Slim has few pretensions about his own “greatness.” Instead he tells how he took a beaten and demoralized army and rebuilt it into one of the finest military organizations in the Second World War. He then recounts his conduct of the war and the re-conquest of Burma against the odds of weather and tenacious resistance of the Japanese. It is a great tale told by one of the great captains of history. And in the end it is about a great leader.

WITH THE OLD BREED AT PELILU AND OKINAWA

by E. B. Sledge

E. B. Sledge survived two of the nastiest battles of the Second World War and returned to Alabama to serve his community as a professor of chemistry. He also wrote one of the finest accounts of combat ever written. With the Old Breed is a story of leadership, comradeship, and Marines under the terrible circumstances of combat against a fanatical opponent. It is a great piece of autobiography and a tribute to the Marines who fought in these terrible battles

DOWNFALL, THE END OF THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE EMPIRE

by Richard B. Frank

Richard Frank survived a combat tour in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He returned to the United States to become a lawyer. He has also become a first-rate military historian. His study of the surrender of the Japanese Empire as a direct result of the dropping of the atomic bombs quite simply destroyed fifty years of academic nonsense written about the atomic weapons. Thoroughly researched and clearly written, Downfall is brilliant military and political history. It is a must read for anyone interested in the history of the Pacific War.

VERY SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE

by Patrick Beasley

This memoir of British intelligence and its efforts to thwart the submarine war waged by the gray wolves of the Kriegsmarine is not only a wonderful memoir of Bletchley Park, but an insightful and persuasive account of the complexities and difficulties of understanding one’s opponents in war. Beasley underlines that it was the understanding, not just the broken codes and technological superiority, that was the key ingredient in the Allied victory in the first great information war. This is a great read that offers the reader much for little effort.

A SAVAGE WAR OF PEACE, ALGERIA, 1954–1962

by Alistair Horne

Horne is a great historian of French military history and its less-than-successful record over the past 130 years. Horne’s greatest book is an examination of France’s great military victory in the Algerian War and its disastrous political defeat—a defeat that almost destroyed France. It is a tale that American strategists and military leaders should ponder as the American military embarks on wars against enemies about whom it knows little and understands less.