The nominees for this year’s MHM book awards have been announced, and we need your help to select the winners!
Books
REVIEW – The Fortress: the Great Siege of Przemysl
I had thought I knew a lot about the First World War. Until I read this book. Then I discovered a yawning gap in knowledge and understanding.
REVIEW – The Armies and the Wars of the Sun King 1643 – 1715 Volume 1: The Guard of Louis XIV
During the second half of the 17th century, France underwent a military transformation of such magnitude that in the space of a generation it overturned the supremacy of Spain to become the pre-eminent power in Europe.
REVIEW – A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith During the First World War
The First World War created new experiences of pain and suffering, and had profound consequences for the shape of wars to come. But in one respect the Great War of 1914-1918 was curiously old-fashioned and traditional – and that was in the realms of spirituality, superstition, and religious faith.
REVIEW – The Allure of Battle: A History of how Wars have been Won and Lost
How important are ‘decisive battles’ in the history of war? This is the central question addressed by Cathal Nolan in this magisterial survey of more than 2,000 years of military history.
REVIEW – The Lion and the Dragon: Britain’s Opium Wars with China, 1839 – 1860
There can be little doubt that the export of opium from India to China by, among others, the Honourable East India Company is hard to condone. Indeed, Mark Simner makes the point that the trade was always kept quiet in Britain and, to a lesser extent, China.
REVIEW – Panzer Commander Hermann Balck: Germany’s master tactician
Hermann Balch has been described as the ‘greatest German general no one ever heard of’. Stephen Robinson, a graduate of the Australian Command and Staff College, has attempted to address this paradox, but with only partial success.
REVIEW – Trinity: the treachery and pursuit of the most dangerous spy in history
Neil Faulkner reviews this compelling biography of Klaus Fuchs, a brilliant academic physicist and refugee from Nazi Germany, who has been described as both ‘the spy of the century’ and ‘the most dangerous spy in history’.
REVIEW – The Vietnam War: an intimate history
By the time the Viet Cong flag was being raised across Saigon on 30 April 1975, the United States had spent the best part of 30 years conducting a programme of sustained financial, political, and military assaults against Vietnam in order to prevent the country from becoming a Communist state.
REVIEW – Normandy ’44: D-Day and the Battle for France
The truth is that the Normandy Campaign was a vast enterprise, of engineering, logistics, strategy, and planning, but it was also, once under way, driven by events that could not be foreseen.
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