Alright, thank you very much! I have to check them out then. :up:

Now reading David Stahel's second book in his trillogy, his first one was very good so this one should be as well.

KIEV 1941
Hitler's Battle for Supemacy in the East.

Good books those Essential Histories, got a few of them in. Good books to start reading up on without going to deep.

Agreed...not sure how many there are but I've got five.

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/essential_histories/

The Specials group together all in one like the one your reading jim in one large book.

Never realised there were so many :o

I've got The Pacific, Europe, War at Sea, The Mediterranean, Eastern Front and Northwest Europe.

My mistook, I have six.

I mentioned quite some time ago that I had started reading The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Human Thought, by Thomas S Kuhn. I never mentioned it again because somewhere along the line I put it down and didn't pick it back up. Now I have. A few days ago I found it sitting under a reference book and got interested again. What's great about it is that it's not just about astronomy, astrology and cosmology, it's about the history of those concepts. Professor Kuhn put the book together in 1957 from a series of lectures he had given on the subject(s).

He starts off describing the ancient concept of the two-sphere universe, and how easy it was for the people of that time to embrace what was to them obvious, that the Earth was the center of everything and everything revolved around it. What makes it entertaining is that he doesn't just describe these beliefs, he provides plenty of quotes from the material written at the time. He cites Plato, Vitruvius and Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinus and Dante. He nicely points out that at that time Astronomy and Astrology were pretty much the same thing, and it was easier to believe in the latter when all the heavens were contained in a supergiant sphere. He then goes on to show how concepts changed, and how they had to adapt to the observation that while the stars were constant, the five "Wanderers" (planets) sometimes stopped and moved backwards. New explanations created new spheres.

I said "at that time", because during the Roman era the research stopped, to be revived by the Muslims and then handed back to the Europeans, and in the late middle ages all the learning was consigned to "ancient wisdom" and hundreds of years of developing ideas were all considered to be one philosophy. I'm just getting to Copernicus and his contemporaries, so I can't relate any more fun stuff, but I'm now finding this book to be highly entertaining.

I'm not really that interested in astronomy, but I am interested in history and to me this is history at its best.

"Grey Wolf - A Novel In History" by David Huffman
 

Last night I finished "Grey Wolf - A Novel In History" by David Huffman. It seems as if it may be the start of a series from comments by the author.

At first I did not care for it, but I think that was because I was comparing it to Buchheim's "The Boat" and I doubt if anything will match that book. However, "Grey Wolf" did grow on me and I was sorry when it ended. The action takes place at the very beginning of WWII and it flows at a good pace with plenty of U-boat detail.

I obtained it free from the Amazon UK Kindle lending library and I enjoyed it so much I would definitely buy any follow-up.

About 2/3rds of the way through Max Hastings' Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945. Brutal and depressing, and kind of long, but certainly doesn't mince any words. Hastings doesn't hold back his opinions, and seems especially rough on Winston Churchill in particular. Of course, once you strip away the oratory and leadership skills of a lot of great politicians and military leaders, you start to seem them for what they really are.

Hey Guys. I started a new thread with this info, but then thought it might be more applicable here:

Steel Boat, Iron Hearts: A U-boat Crewman's Life Aboard U-505 by Hans Goebler with John Vanzo is available for download on your Kindle (or with any device that has a Kindle app) for just $3.99 through the month of November! Download here now: http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Boat-Iro...pr_product_top

Please feel free to share the info with others you know who would be interested. Amazon has selected this book for digital promotion three times now. It's great because each time it happens, we've created some more sub fans!

Read more: http://archive.constantcontact.com/f...505913307.html

Still showing as 8.96 USD for me. Has done since you first posted the other day.

I've finally started reading Stallingrad by Alan Clark, it's a biggun!

Ahh, sorry Herr-Berbunch. I should have included this info: Unfortunately, the $3.99 Kindle price only appears if you are in the US.

We'll be sure to work with Amazon on non-USA promotions in the future, but this one is just applicable if you have a USA Amazon account. Apologies for the misleading info.

Enjoy the Clark book!