John D. Anderson, Jr. The Airplane: A History of its Technology. Reston: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2002. As an aviation historian I should have some understanding of the technology of flight, and this seems a more enjoyable avenue into the subject than some dry textbook. It's a bit US-centric, though that's justifiable to a large extent.

John Benson. The Working Class in Britain 1850-1939. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003. A bargain-table find at my local quality bookshop; not immediately useful to me but good to have on the bookshelf.

Antony Beevor. Crete: The Battle and the Resistance. London: John Murray, 2005 [1991]. More family history stuff. I thought The Battle for Spain was very good, so hopefully this is of the same calibre.

R. A. Saville-Sneath. Aircraft Recognition. London: Penguin, 2006 [1941]. Sometimes I think publishers bring out books just for me! This is a cute little facsimile reprint of a wartime Penguin Special guide for aircraft spotters, complete with silhouettes, glossary, identifying features, and so on; everything from Albacores to Wirraways. I've been inspired to set up my own observer corps post on the roof; first I'll need to work out which direction France is, though.

Two big-picture histories this week ...

David Edgerton. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. An anti-heroic history of technology, which bids fair to puncture assumptions that higher tech necessarily is better tech, or that the rate of technological change is ever-increasing (take that, singularitarians!) Or so I gather from a quick skim.

Azar Gat. War in Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. I'm ashamed to say I still haven't read his Fascist and Liberal Visions of War. This new one looks at the evolutionary roots of war, and the way in which technology and culture have (overall) limited the incidence of war more recently, and tackles many other big questions along the way. Or so I gather from a quick skim.

Adrian Gilbert. POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe, 1939-1945. London: John Murray, 2006. Due to recent findings, a subject I'd like to know more about. (Over and above the thorough grounding I've received from watching The Great Escape, Hogan's Heroes, etc.) Not to be confused with the celebrated author of The Mayan Prophecies and The Cosmic Wisdom Beyond Astrology. Thankfully.

K. S. Inglis. Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2005 [1998]. A classic book which I've only just gotten around to buying. Just as in Britain (as I am led to believe, anyway), nearly every city, town and suburb in Australia, large or small, has a war memorial to commemorate their dead soldiers.

N. J. McCamley. Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers: The Passive Defence of the Western World during the Cold War. Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2002. Who wouldn't be fascinated by a title like that? Well, most people probably. Mostly about British bunkers and post-apocalyptic contingency planning, but also has a few chapters on America and Canada. Well-illustrated.

Frank Furedi. Culture of Fear Revisited. London and New York: Continuum, 2006. 4th edition. The sociology of fear, including that of terrorism. A well-timed chance discovery for me, as my current chapter is about fear, and the mass media's role in propagating (and amplifying, if not creating) it.

L. E. O. Charlton. The Royal Air Force and U.S.A.A.F. from July 1943 to September 1944. London: Hutchinson & Co., n.d. [1944?]. I didn't know of this book by Charlton. It's a chronology of the air war, with hundreds of great photos; looks like writing these kept Charlton gainfully employed during the war.

Jörg Friedrich. The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945. New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2006. A controversial and best-selling book in Germany a few years ago, now translated into English. Note: this is a review copy supplied by the publisher (a first for Airminded).

Kenneth Munson. Airliners Between the Wars 1919-39. London: Blandford Press, 1972. Not a complete survey, just the 70 most significant types. I'll have to do a plot of the performance data at some stage.

John Ray. The Night Blitz, 1940-1941. London: Arms & Armour Press, 1998. Probably the standard history of the Blitz.

Forgot to write this yesterday ... I blame the pre-Xmas social round! Both of these were bought after being seen elsewhere (at least the author was, in the latter case).

Simon Garfield. We Are at War: The Diaries of Five Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times. London: Ebury Press, 2006. Drawn from the Mass-Observation archives, covering from August 1939 to October 1940, so should be a fair bit of air raid stuff to keep me interested. Would have liked to have it go to the end of the Blitz but one can't have everything.

Peter Hennessy. Never Again: Britain 1945-51. London: Penguin, 2006 [1992]. Post-war Britain is still a bit of an unknown country to me, as I've spent so long now reading up on, first the Edwardian period, and now the World Wars and the bit in between, so this is just the ticket.

Duff Cooper. The Duff Cooper Diaries, 1915-1951. London: Phoenix, 2006. Nobleman, socialite, Conservative MP, Cabinet Minister, anti-appeaser, and apparently a fine diarist too. Edited by his son, John Julius Norwich.

Adam Tooze. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. London: Allen Lane, 2006. I've heard good things about this book. Seems to assign a higher value to the Combined Bomber Offensive than do some, but argues that it was often misdirected (e.g. Battle of Berlin).

Arthur Harris. Bomber Offensive. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2005 [1947]. It's that man again! And his memoirs.

William Mitchell. Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power -- Economic and Military. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1988 [1925]. Mitchell was not hugely influential in Britain, other than for bombing the Ostfriesland and, to a lesser extent, as a cautionary example of the punishment reserved for the visionary by the hidebound military establishment. So I wouldn't have gone out of my way to get this -- but I was in the bookshop, it was in the bookshop, I couldn't very well say no, could I.