This month, the Military History Book Club took a break from established tradition and allowed each member to pick their own different book to read. This was great summertime fun, and I’m very much looking forward to the discussions this evening, hosted by a member in his backyard rather than our usual spelunking location: the Cave […]
Antony Beevor’s The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 was the subject of our most recent session of Saskatoon’s best military history bookclub. This updated version of a decades-old work of Beevor’s has received widespread acclaim, due mostly to new research and a more compelling narrative. Beevor’s book was a welcome education for […]
Tonight my Military History Book Club will be discussing John Lukacs’s The Legacy of the Second World War. I had not previously been acquainted with John Lukacs, so I was surprised by the manner in which this book was written. The narrative is flowing and readable, but rather loosely structured. His argument is quite nuanced […]
Our local Military History Bookclub is currently reading the two-volume history of the Canadian Corps in World War I by Tim Cook. We’ll be reviewing the first volume, At the Sharp End, in January. Volume two, Shock Troops, will follow in February. And in an excellent coincidence, author Tim Cook will be visiting the University […]
Our Military History Bookclub is currently reading The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer, first published in French as Le Soldat Oublie in 1967. The book is the memoir of Guy Sajer who served as a young conscript (16 or 17) in Germany’s army on the Eastern Front in World War II. This book is standard […]
Military History Bookclub: founded in early 2009 by three chaps who work at the University of Saskatchewan. There are eight current members. Currently Reading: The Forgotten Solider, by Guy Sajer. (The Forgotten Soldier, Fact or Fiction?) Next in Queue: A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (1988), by Neil Sheehan. Completed: […]
Next up for our military book club is Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 by Catherine Merridale (US edition, published by Henry Holt & Co.). Catherine Merridale is the author of the 2002 book Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia, a book that “explores Russian perceptions of death […]
