S. P. MacKenzie. The Battle of Britain on Screen: 'The Few' in British Film and Television Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. A short but densely-packed book, a series of cases studies of key representations of the Battle: The Lion Has Wings, The First of the Few, Angels One Five, Reach for the Sky, Battle of Britain, Piece of Cake, A Perfect Hero. Of course, The Lion Has Wings was made before the Battle, and so is anticipation, not memory. Note: review copy (not for Airminded).

Jeffry Record. The Specter of Munich: Reconsidering the Lessons of Appeasing Hitler. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006. Generally speaking, I'm bored by the ritual invocation of Munich every time some foreign crisis dominates the headlines. But it's not going to stop happening just because it bores me and it's kinda my area (or adjacent to it, at least), so maybe I should pay more attention to it.

Neil Hanson. First Blitz: The Secret German Plan to Raze London to the Ground in 1918. London: Doubleday, 2008. This is a thick, new narrative history of the German air raids on Britain in the First World War, concentrating mainly on the aeroplane raids in 1917-8. Although written for a popular audience, it's based on a prodigious number of primary sources, both published and archival (there are plenty of periodical articles listed with which I'm not familiar, for example) -- some are even in German. This is all good! But I'm worried about that subtitle. Hanson argues that there was a plan to use Elektron incendiary bombs to burn out London in 1918, which seems plausible enough. A plan is one thing, but Hanson seems to think that it could have actually worked. Is that likely, when the more capable and numerous German bombers of 1940-1 didn't come close do doing this even on the worst nights of the Blitz? He also speaks of mass panic in London during air raids (346) ... well, as I say, he's read a lot of primary sources that I haven't, but not even the most extreme airpower advocates between the wars claimed that there had been mass panic, merely isolated cases which they quite happily extrapolated to a larger scale. Hmm. I still look forward to reading it, though.

Anthony Burke. Fear of Security: Australia's Invasion Anxiety. Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Britain isn't the only country to go into periodic panics about its vulnerability to invasion, after all. This book ostensibly begins in 1788, but looks like it mostly deals with the Cold War and after.

Andrew J. Rotter. Hiroshima: The World's Bomb. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. As the name suggests, a global history of the Bomb, highlighting the extent to which its development was an international race. Correctly notes the continuities with strategic bombing theory. NB. out of four titles so far published in Oxford's "The Making of the Modern World Series", this makes three that I've bought ...

Peter Stanley. Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942. Camberwell: Viking, 2008. Every so often, I get into arguments on the net with someone who claims that Japan was poised to invade Australia in 1942, and who therefore is someone who is wrong on the Internet. I used to have to point them at this paper by Peter Stanley. Now I can point them at his book instead.

John T. Whitaker. Fear Came on Europe. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1937. Just when one is tempted to agree with Evo Shandor that society is too sick to survive, somebody performs an act of random kindness. I found this in my pigeonhole at work this week, from a senior colleague with whom I've had many enjoyable chats over the years, who thought it might be of interest to me. And it is! Whitaker was an American journalist who covered the League of Nations at Geneva, including the World Disarmament Conference, and also the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. Lots of gloomy foreboding about the failure of internationalism and the descent into war. Thanks Lindsay!

Stephen Biddle. Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2004. An analytical and numerical approach to working out which side should be victorious in battle. I see nothing in the index to suggest that there's an answer to the classic dilemma: U.S.S Enterprise vs. a star destroyer, which would win? A missed opportunity.

Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards. Britain Can Take It: British Cinema in the Second World War. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007. 2nd edition. A standard text, in a new edition with a new chapter on one of my favourite films of the war, Millions Like Us. Note: review copy (not for Airminded).

Keith Lowe. Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943. London: Penguin Books, 2007. A chunky account of Operation Gomorrah in July 1943. Looks thorough: a good bibliography, in both English and German. But surely there are better descriptions of Sir Malcolm Campbell than 'military theorist' (p. 52)!

Air Raid Precautions. Stroud: Tempus, 2007. Another one of those books where the publishers have obviously asked themselves, Who'd buy this book? and answered, Well, there's that Airminded bloke -- that's one copy at least. A collection of facsimile reprints of various Home Office/Lord Privy Seal's Office ARP booklets and leaflets: The Protection of Your Home Against Air Raids (1938); ARP Handbook No. 1, Personal Protection Against Gas (1938); Public Information Leaflets 1 through 4, Some Things You Should Know If War Should Come, Masking Your Windows, Evacuation Why and How? and Your Food in War-time (all 1939); Organization of the Air Raid Wardens' Service (1939?); and Inspection and Repair of Respirators and Oilskin Clothing (1940?).

Carl von Clausewitz. On War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989 [1832]. Probably something anybody with pretensions to being a military historian should have to hand, even if other strategists have been more influential in different contexts, places and times. (I recently came across Trenchard speaking of Edward Hamley in the same breath as Clausewitz and Mahan -- I must confess I had to look him up!) This is the version edited/translated/introduced/commented on by Michael Howard/Peter Paret/Bernard Brodie.

Basil Mathews. We Fight for the Future: The British Commonwealth and the World of To-morrow. London: Collins, 1940. Found this in a secondhand bookshop for $3. Even at that price I was a bit unsure about buying it -- there seems to be some talk in it about setting up an international federal system after the war, but nothing quite in my line. But I had to get it when I saw on the first page that Mathews ascribes Hitler's success (he's writing in August 1940, or at least the preface was written then), in part, to his 'spreading wild confusion through mass air-bombing of terrorised refugees' -- yep -- 'and taxi-ing his planes over their writhing bodies' -- wait ... what? That's a use for the bomber I haven't heard of before! I suppose it must have been some story or rumour which came out of one the German invasions, but that's about all I can say.