If you are looking for a holiday gift idea, check out The New York Times Book Review‘s 100 Notable Books of the Year 2005, along with its lists for 2004 and 2003. For a time, you can review the Times’ notable book lists from 1997 through 2002 here.
Houston's Clear Thinkers
Longtime Houston attorney Tom Kirkendall's observations on developments in law, business, medicine, culture, sports, and other matters of general interest to the Houston business, professional, and academic communities.
I’d definitely recommend Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945(Max Hastings), which shows up on the New York Times list this year. An excellent account of the last months of the European war, and sort of a sequel to his book on the Normandy campaign “Overlord.”
Hastings is an extremely competent military historian, although not terribly partial to Americans. His central argument is that the soldiers of the Western Allies, man for man, particularly at the junior officer/NCO level, were simply not the equal of the German or Soviet Armies, with the exception of certain elite formations such as the Airborne Divisions. He says this was simply inherent in the nature of a free society versus that of a dictatorship.
He makes a good argument, but I’m not sure I buy it. The Germans simply had more experience than we did. We built an astonishingly good army out of virtually nothing (unlike the Soviets and Germans),and had the war run on a few more years, I suspect we would have shown considerable improvement.
Still, no WW II student will want to miss this book.