Below is a list of the top 20 military books published by Military History Magazine in late 2008. I either already had or purchased most of these and I am slowly reading them. They are everything from military tactics to first hand accounts to fiction. Half-Price Books is a great place to start if you want to find these on the cheap, but I got a lot of them from Amazon. These books are keepers for anyone’s library so the new versions (hardback if you can find them) are preferable. I personally think there was one big hole in the list (Sun Tzu, The Art of War ) which I have added at the end of the list. The list is in order of the conflict in which they are most appropriate. Keep in mind that a lot of these books are around 1,000 pages so be ready for some long reading.
Ancient Greece
The Iliad by Homer
History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
Napoleon
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Prussia
On War by Carl von Clausewitz
Civil War
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Civil War: A Narrative Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote
The Civil War: A Narrative Vol 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian by Shelby Foote
The Civil War: A Narrative Vol 3: Red River to Appomattox by Shelby Foote
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant
World War I
The Face of Battle by John Keegan
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
World War II
Patton by Carlo D’Este
Goodbye, Darkness by William Manchester
The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer
With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge
Eisenhower’s Lieutenants by Russell F. Weigley
A World at Arms by Gerhard Weinberg
Vietnam
We were Soldiers Once…and Young by Lt. Gen. Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway
Fiction
From Here to Eternity by James Jones
Once an Eagle by Anton O. Myrer
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
Bonus
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
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