Inside GMT Flash of Steel Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Grumble Jones Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsAmphibious Thing is another Kindle book that I picked up on sale, though I was uncertain that I’d care much about the life of an early Eighteenth Century person I’d never heard of. Thankfully, the book is well-written and fairly[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Osprey’s book on siege weapons does it’s intended job of introducing the subject, but that’s about it. Sam Thompson’s gouache illustrations show a nice variety of specific examples of machines, but the rest of the book tends to be unspecific[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Massie’s book on Catherine the Great is first and foremost a biography, and never loses sight of this fact. As an empress, there is a temptation to equate her with the state, and end up with more of a history[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Peter Heather’s study of Western Europe after the fall of Rome comes in four parts, with the first three being similar, and the fourth different. Each one is about a separate attempt to restore ‘imperial’ rule to the Western Roman[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The end of the Western Roman Empire is a hard subject to get a real grasp on. Ian Huges’ book about one of the final magister militums of the western empire does a lot to explain conditions during the beginning[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Osprey’s Campaign book on the Battle of Manzikert continues their proud tradition of featuring just about every military disaster Rome had. (Well, yes, we are just a bit ‘post-Rome’ here, though it’s still the Roman Empire.) As usual, it’s a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Adrian Goldworthy’s In the Name of Rome is something of a mixed bag. It purports itself as being an examination of the Roman style of command by looking at several of its most prominent generals. The selection is constrained to[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
In 91 BC, the Roman Republic found itself fighting a not-quite civil war, when a large part of Rome’s allies and conquered peoples in Italy rebelled and tried to bring down the Roman Republic. Cataclysm 90 BC is about this[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
One of my interests for some time has been getting a better idea of just what happened after Alexander the Great’s death. Often that time period ends up ignored or summarized until Rome comes on the scene. So a book[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Adrienne Mayor starts with, intelligently, expanding the normal contemporary definition of ‘chemical and biological’ weapons to include pretty much anything that causes biological harm, such as poisons, noxious chemicals, and beyond, to the use of animals, heated sand, and other[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…