King George, Lords North and Germain, Generals Clinton, Cornwallis, Howe, Burgoyne, the Earl of Sandwich, and Admiral Rodney are The Men Who Lost America according to Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy (now that's a catchy moniker!). The book is both a biography and a chronology of the key British figures in the prosecution of the war against the American rebels. Lots of interesting information: I had not realized how quickly many of the players discovered the war unwinnable. However, the structure of the book leads to a lot of repetition and the writing is pedestrian.
I've written a couple of prior posts about my readings on slavery (here's one) and this year read Atlantic Cataclysm: Rethinking the Atlantic Slave Trades by David Eltis, described by Henry Louis Gates Jr of Harvard as "a tour de force by the world's leading scholar of the slave trade". It is the reflection of a life's work by the author and he reaches some surprising conclusions. I'd previously read The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas by Eltis, covering the period from the early 1500s to the early 18th century.
Slavery in part of the Old World is the subject of Justin Marozzi's Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World. Though covering a longer period (1,000 years compared to 350) the number of Africans trafficked in the respective trades are similar. I will be writing a longer piece reflecting on the Eltis and Marozzi books in 2026. Both are highly recommended.
Not surprisingly, I did a lot of Civil War related reading in 2025, particularly as I often purchase books by our Roundtable speakers.
The Great Partnership: Lee, Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy by Christian Keller, professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. was a very interesting study of the close relationship forged between the two over the eleven months between the Seven Days and Jackson's death at Chancellorsville. I thought I knew everything already about that relationship but Keller brings out details, particularly about Lee and Jackson's shared religious faith, that explains their unique bond.
Alex Rossino's investigation of the Calamity at Frederick: Lee, Special Orders No. 191, and Confederate Misfortune on the Road to Antietam was a revelation. His methodical research process identifies the leading suspect responsible for the loss of Lee's Order 191, which when discovered by Federal soldiers revealed the position of Lee's scattered army to General George McClellan.
I'd always found the two-week Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864 to be confusing. Chris Mackowski's book, A Tempest of Fire and Lead, brought some needed clarity to those events. Chris has an engaging writing style that is accessible to the non-specialist.
Everyone has heard of Jesse James. While Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War covers his entire life, author TJ Stiles explains how Jesse's fighting experience during the Civil War shaped the remainder of his life. There's some myth busting in this book, as Stiles shows how post-war Missouri politics assisted James in his escapades.
In 1862, slave Robert Smalls was sent by his master to Charleston Harbor to work on a Confederate naval boat. Smalls managed to steal the boat, smuggle his wife and two children on board and, with the help of fellow slaves, sailed it out to join the Union fleet blockading the harbor. That story and more is the subject of Be Free or Die by Cate Lineberry. Smalls went on to become the first black commander of vessel in the history of the U.S. Navy. After the war, Smalls was elected to the U.S. Congress during reconstruction and purchased his former owner's house.
Was President Franklin Roosevelt effective in ending the Great Depression? That's the topic of False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery 1933-47 by George Selgin. I grew up thinking that the answer was "of course he was!" but over the years there has been a growing controversy about the right answer. Selgin approaches the question analytically, making a distinction between FDR's policies intended to provide relief, or to institute longer-term reforms, versus those designed in whole, or in part, to end the economic downturn. Too much of the literature on FDR has been polemical, both pro and con, and it was helpful to have a more analytical approach. Selgin's verdict is mixed but the topic is important and complex enough that I plan on a post devoted to the book.
I've read a good deal on the Spanish Civil War, both histories and personal accounts. The latter have all been from the Republican perspective (including Alan Furst's outstanding historical novels). Mine Were of Trouble by Peter Kemp is the first from someone who fought on the Nationalist side. Kemp was a British law student who volunteered to fight in the conflict because he was an anti-communist and heard about the atrocities committed at the start of the war. His account is very well written and while explaining why he fought and the details of battles, it does not shy away from sordid acts committed by some of Franco's units, and provides insight into the factional disputes among groups forming the Nationalist coalition. Kemp was badly wounded and returned to Britain; with the advent of World War II, he joined the Special Operations Executive and was infiltrated into Albania to help the partisans fight the Germans, and later into Poland, events he recounted in No Colours or Crest: The Secret Struggle for Europe, which I have also read. No Colours or Crest is quite good but Mine Were of Trouble is definitely the one to read if you have a choice.
James Holland and his partner Al Murray run one of my favorite podcasts, We Have Ways Of Making You Talk, all about World War Two. He is also a prolific author (see here for an example) and his latest is Cassino '44, covering the Italian campaign from January 1944 through the liberation of Rome in early June of the same year. Something I particularly appreciate about Holland's books is that he uses documents written at the time, not accounts from years later, which gives his books an immediacy. He also nicely balances strategic discussions with the personal intimate accounts by soldiers on the ground in that grinding campaign. Northwest Europe with Normandy and the Bulge gets more attention and celebration but we owe a lot to the Allied soldiers in the Italian campaign.
I'm currently reading Vietnam's American War by Pierre Asselin. In Dereliction of Duty (HR McMaster's indictment of the process by which American ground forces became engaged in Vietnam) I referenced a previous book by Asselin, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War: 1954-65. Asselin speaks and reads Vietnamese and has access to the archives of the Vietnam government, which have become available to researchers over the past thirty years. His work focuses on the perspective of the Vietnam communists, and often upsets the neat story told by Western academics. His new book takes us back into the ancient history of Vietnam, along with its colonization by France before America's involvement begins in 1954. That background is essential because Asselin's thesis is that Vietnam was engaged in a civil war between communists/nationalists and anticommunists/nationalists into which America got dragged, rather than a conflict between patriotic Vietnamese (who happened to be commies) and the Americans and their Vietnamese puppets. Another book I will be writing more on.
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