Flash of Steel Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Sitrep Hex and Violence Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsI just finished reading this early Osprey book, and while it’s well done, I don’t think I can recommend it. It covers the Battle of Agincourt, and the campaign that led up to it, quite well, but Osprey’s later Campaign[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Margaret Aston’s The Fifteenth Century is the second book I’ve read from the Library of World Civilization series, which seems to be pretty good in all. The books come with a large number of illustrations well placed with the text[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
In the introduction of Stephen Turnbull’s The Lone Samurai and the Martial Arts, he points out, “the figure of the lone samurai, whose popularity is never in doubt throughout history, stands in direct contrast to what are perceived as the[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Just finished reading Stephen Turnbull’s Battles of the Samurai today. While it is exactly what the title implies, a study of nine battles from Japanese history (ranging from Kurikara in 1183 to Sekigahara in 1600), it is also a good[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I’ve been interested in the Merovingian period of (proto-)France for some time. So I was very happy when I finally got Ian Wood’s The Merovingian Kingdoms for my birthday. It’s not a great book. Though I’d say for the period[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I finished reading Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror a couple days ago. I’ll admit I was a bit surprised when I started it. I wasn’t expecting a 600-page book in 8-point type in oversized paperback format. This is a long[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Ospery has been doing a bunch of ‘Battle Tactics’ books recently. I think it would have been neat if they’d made them their own line, instead of just part of the Elite series. I decided to start off with the[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Norwich’s A History of Venice is a good and thorough work covering from the initial colonization of the islands of the Rialto to the city’s fall to Napoleon (roughly 420 to 1797), but I found it a bit disappointing. However,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Late last year, I picked up Empires of the Silk Road, as it looked very interesting. And it is, I highly recommend it as an extremely well done history of a part of the world that most people just don’t[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Lost to the West is a very good readable brief history of the Byzantine Empire, and I recommend it as such to anyone who would like to familiarize themselves with the subject. However, the subtitle “The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…