Things are starting to happen with my forthcoming book, The Next War in the Air: Britain’s Fear of the Bomber, 1908–1941, which is being published by Ashgate. The manuscript has just been proofread, the cover design is in the works, I have a marketing questionnaire to fill out. The book is now listed on the […]
Joanna Bourke. Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the Great War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. A now-classic gender analysis of the impact of the First World War on masculinity — mostly in social and cultural terms, but the first chapter is entitled ‘Mutilating’ so sometimes the impact is quite literal. Other topics
Joan Beaumont. Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2013. With the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War looming, it’s high time we had a book like this: a synoptic overview of the whole of Australia’s war, from the fighting overseas to the conflicts at home, from
As I discussed recently, Philip Sabin’s Simulating War: Studying Conflict through Simulation Games (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012) is primarily about using wargames to understand past wars. This is sensible; apart from the obvious benefit of helping us to understand history better, there’s also the useful featurethat there are some facts to go on
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.] If I had to recommend one military history book I’ve read this year it would be Philip Sabin’s Simulating War: Studying Conflict through Simulation Games (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012). Admittedly, this is not your usual military history book. Sabin ranges at will from the 5th century
Holger Afflerbach and David Stevenson, eds. An Improbable War? The Outbreak of World War I and European Political Culture before 1914. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007. Sometimes the origin of the First World War seems overdetermined, there are so many theories to account for it. Other times, it seems like, as in the
Karl Baedeker. Great Britain: Handbook for Travellers. Old House, 2013 [1937]. As I said, I’m a sucker for facsimile editions, and this one has many nice foldout maps. As the cover doesn’t fail to tell you, this is the version supposedly used by the Luftwaffe to plan the Baedeker raids. At any rate, if you
Bradshaw’s International Air Guide. Oxford and New York: Old House, 2013 [1934]. I’m a sucker for facsimile reproductions like this. Bradshaw’s are best known for their compilations of [added: railway] timetables for the Continental traveller, but beginning in 1934 they did the same for air routes. You also get airport information, hotel advertisements, standard air
Picked up both of these at the Shrine of Remembrance, while visiting to see the new Bomber Command exhibition. Of which, more another day. Don Charlwood. Journeys into Night. Warrandyte: Burgewood Books, 2013 [1991]. I discussed Charlwood’s memoir of the war recently; this is a sort of collective memoir of the twenty men who formed
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.] In Giulio Douhet and the Foundations of Air-Power Strategy, Thomas Hippler describes what he calls Douhet’s ‘ahistorical historicism’: His thinking is ahistorical to the extent that it poses a concept of history (‘everything has changed’) that simultaneously cuts off history itself. His thinking is historicist, because this absolute
