Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power – more a straight bio of Jefferson than the nitty-gritty study one would expect from the title. Meacham’s admiration for Jefferson seems to obscure some of the actual workings by which Jefferson promoted his power, such as the promotion of anti-Federalist newspapers in the 1790s.
Michael Jones, Stalingrad: How the Red Army Triumphed - there’s yet to be an adequate one-volume account in English of the great battle, it seems, but Jones’s book has a good reputation for clearing up myths and misunderstandings about the Soviet side. People whose notions were formed by Beevor’s book should pick this one up.
Lee Child, Die Trying - picked this up after seeing an ad for the Jack Reacher movie (which I never went to; heard it was poor). The book follows the kidnapping of Reacher, the baddest-ass military policeman ever, along with an FBI agent who turns out to have some fairly disappointing secrets that have led some fairly disappointing bad guys to grab her (and Reacher, who just happens to be on the scene). Child is the kind of author who builds suspense during a target-shooting contest by dumping three pages of notes on ballistics into his description. Won’t be reading any more of these, I think.
Eric Bergerud, Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific - not a battle narrative but more a topical account of some of the worst fighting in the worst war, where the jungle was much more likely to kill you than the Japanese were. Maybe still preferable to hugging the bank of the Volga with Germans shooting at you, but only just.
… Aaaand rereading several Aubrey-Maturin novels. My favorite sea fight in those books has to be the eerie duel with the Dutchman in Desolation Island.
I had a friend whose dad kept a war diary of his time with the Air Corps in the South Pacific (I think and hope he’s preparing it for publication; it’s worthy of it). One weird way to die he encountered: On whatever island, there was this huge field with very tall (like 9 feet) grass, and the planes liked to fly just over it, and dip their wings into the grass one side then the other, watching waves ripple out over the field. This went fine until a wing tip caught a seven or eight foot stump hiding in the grass.
Jeez, that’s brutal. Let us know if he publishes; he should at least put it online, where historians can find it.