Picked these up at the closing-down sale of a very good bookshop (so not Borders, obviously). Terry Charman. Outbreak 1939: The World Goes to War. London: Virgin Books, 2009. I very distinctly remember not going to the IWM exhibition this accompanied when I was last in London. An almost minute-by-minute account of 3 September 1939, […]
Martin van Creveld. The Age of Airpower. New York: PublicAffairs, 2011. A history of airpower for the 21st century — there’s about twice as much space devoted to small wars and counterinsurgency as there is to the Second World War. Presentism or rebalancing? Barrett Tillman. Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945. New York: Simon
Herbert Best. The Twenty-fifth Hour. London: Jonathan Cape, 1940. This must have been about the last flowering of that forgotten genre, the knock-out blow novel. More than that, it’s an example of the exceptionally rare post-apocalyptic sub-genre, as it is set years after the end of civilisation and portrays the grim struggle for survival among
Michael Kerrigan. World War II Plans That Never Happened. London: Amber Books, 2011. That strange zone between what might have been and what was. Looks at various operational plans considered at some stage by one side or the other, usually getting as far as getting a codename — from Operation Stratford to Operation Downfall. Review
Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter, eds. A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010. A diverse collection of articles: strategy, historiography, oral history, operational history. Of particular interest is a contribution by John Ferris on British perceptions of Japanese airpower (includes Darth Vader bonus quote). A. L. Goodhart. What Acts
Gerald Dickens. Bombing and Strategy: The Fallacy of Total War. London: Sampson Low, Marston, n.d. [1946?]. That’s Admiral Sir Gerald Dickens KCVO CB CMG to you and me, the grandson of Charles Dickens no less. An example of airpower scepticism. I had hoped that it was the 1941 edition, but the ‘n.d.’ turns out to
Keith Kyle. Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011 [1993]. Suez was not the first time Britain ‘intervened’ in the Middle East, nor the last; but it was arguably the most disastrously misconceived intervention. A classic (and weighty) account.
Chaz Bowyer. RAF Operations 1918-1938. London: William Kimber, 1988. There were more than you might think — enough to fill a 300-page book, anyway — mostly in the Middle East and on the North-West Front. Very well-illustrated (if you like aeroplanes, that is). Richard Knott. Flying Boats of the Empire: The Rise and Fall of
Mark Clodfelter. Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917-1945. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. The American bomber dream: a more humane kind of warfare through precision bombing. Looks like a worthy update to Michael Sherry’s The Rise of American Air Power. Randall T. Wakelam. The Science of Bombing: Operational
John S. Partington. Building Cosmopolis: The Political Thought of H. G. Wells. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2003. A very highly regarded book on Wells’ ideas about a world state and how to get one, a subject which I have dipped into insofar as it involves airpower (which is frequently).
