Jon Cooksey. The Vest Pocket Kodak & The First World War. Lewes: Ammonite Press, 2017. A small book on an interesting topic. The utility and portability of the Vest Pocket Kodak camera made it incredibly popular with soldiers in the front lines and behind them, mostly British here (though the French and Germans are not excluded). As you'd hope, well-illustrated, including one or two photos of actual combat and even atrocities -- and a koala!

Lawrence Freedman. The Future of War: A History. Allen Lane, 2017. This looks like a lot of fun. Exactly what you'd expect from the title, though it does concentrate on the post-1945 era (not surprisingly given Freedman's own areas of expertise). I'm please to see the knock-out blow features prominently in the early chapters, though!

Robert Gerwath. The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923. Penguin, 2017. I saw a preview of this research back at the Perth AAEH in 2011 and I'm glad to have finally have the results in my hands. Why did the First World War fail to end? Because violence continued in many parts of Europe after the Armistice, not only in actual wars and civil wars but at the paramilitary level too. The focus is rightly on Russia, Germany, and parts in between, but I'll be interested to see what he has to say about western Europe too.

David G. Morgan-Owen. The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. One I've been looking forward to; a critique of the refusal of British military, naval and political leaders to properly think through the implications of decisions such as the committment to a continental expeditionary force over home defence, forcing the Navy into a defensive and reactive posture when war came. A disturbing lack of Zeppelins in the index, however.

Christopher Schaberg. Airportness: The Nature of Flight. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. What does airmindedness look like now, when flying is as routine as most of the early air prophets dreamed -- but also therefore mundane and often tedious? It could look something like airportness.

Alan Stephens. Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force, 1946-1971. Canberra: AGPS Press, 1995. A random secondhand bookshop find; doubly appropriate as I was reading Coulthard-Clark's equivalent volume for the 1921-39 period at the time. Yoink!

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