10 Desert Island Books

[Essex Boy]

Book One - Charge. The best book ever written. And it still smells great.
Book Two - 1815: The Armies at Waterloo, Ugo Pericoli. A truly awesome book.
Book Three - European Weapons & Warfare 1618 - 1648, Eduard Wagner. Wonderful illustrations.
Book Four - Firepower (with a crafty friend), Major General B P Hughes. Proved to be a bit of an eye-opener.
Book Five - Uniforms of the Seven Years War, Greenwood & Ball. Couldn't believe my luck when these came out.
Book Six - Military Uniforms of the World, Blandford. I could only dream of having armies in these uniforms. Now I can.
Book Seven - The Face of Battle, Keegan. Another eye-opener.
Book Eight - The Smoke and the Fire, John Terraine. Thought provoking.

[Jeremy]

Would an ‘anti-myth’ be a fact?

[Jeremy]

Book Two - 1815: The Armies at Waterloo, Ugo Pericoli. A truly awesome book.

The first ‘Wargames book’ I acquired when I started all this 32 years ago. It’s been read so many times that sadly it is falling apart. It is indeed excellent.

[tim.w]

Has anyone got George Gush's Introduction to Wargaming or his rules for Renaissance periods? Tempted to get hold of them, some cheap copies going on faceybee.

[FreddBloggs]

Both in the John Curry series I think.

[Jeremy]

I did. Left them behind in SA

[Vintage Wargaming]

Both in the John Curry series I think.

A) won’t be cheap
B) will have clunky “editorial” intrusions
C) aren’t as satisfying on your shelves as originals, however tatty they might be

Don’t forget his Renaissance Armies book - based on his long running series of articles in Airfix Magazine. There is also the excellent little Shire book on English Civil War gaming, which had John Tunstill’s name on the cover but much of the content was by GG. This along with the Gush/Windrow Airfix Magazine Guide was what got me really thinkIng hard about ECW Wargaming.

I think he might be a bit pigeonholed in the 16th and 17th centuries now but he has been more widely influential in his time.

I have all of these books and wouldn’t be parted from any of them

[World2dave]

This thread would suggest that pretty much everything that's worth reading was written before about 1990. Is that a statement about how crap all subsequent books have been, or perhaps a hint that wargamers are a very nostalgic bunch!?

[goat major]

Just like TV programmes really

[FreddBloggs]

I think some of it is that 1990 on, you are into the warhammer era, along with 3 wargames magazines. Other than Henrys Companion, when was the last time a generic wargames book was done?