Books: Military Blunders

Just a quick book recommendation today. I have had The Guinness Book of Military Blunders by Geoffrey Regan on my shelf for some 15 years or so, a gift from my father, and I have read it cover to cover countless times. For those that are unaware of this truly excellent book I will elaborate.

The book contains a myriad of Military Blunders committed by various commanders, of various nations armies predominantly from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. The content is very well presented and deals with errors of all types from the stupid, through to a failure to plan and supply forces in the field.

Each "Blunder" is very well presented with supporting pictures or drawings where possible. This is a very easy to read book, and the way each section is presented means you can easily open a page read for half an hour and then put it down again. The content is nicely written and has a story quality to its writing meaning it does not become bogged down in figures, statistics or unnecessary information.

I highly recommend this book to those with even a passing interest in Military History as it provides a fascinating insight into that subject many commanders so often gloss over, Defeat, and the causes of it.

Book Review - The Return Man

I'm currently working away on a Christmas project for the wife, and she reads the blog from time to time cannot post pictures of it here. However I thought I would post up a quick review of a book I have just finished reading.

As the picture suggests the book is The Return Man by V.M.Zito, as far as I can see this is the authors first, certainly main stream, novel. Feel free to correct me on that point if you know better.

Its a Zombie apoc novel, I don't want to spoil the book but the basic plot is that the main character is living and working in the "evacuated states" with the surviving parts of america in the "Safe States" on the east coast. The main character finds the zombie version of lost loved ones and basically puts them out of their misery for surviving family members. The character is hired by a shady government type to find a former colleague and I can't really say much more than that without spoiling the plot.

I found this to be a great book, nicely written, pacy and funny. The things I have always liked most in post-apoc books is hearing about the fall of society, and what the world looks afterwards, and there is plenty of that level of explanation here. If your looking for a good and engaging Zombie apoc book I really recommend this, I couldn't put it down and thought it felt a bit different to other "escape and survive" Zombie novels.