[veezer]

Anyone have any suggestions? Fiction or nonfiction. Not really looking for tech manuals but good stories to pass the time.

 

[missileer]

If you like classic American adventure about a young horse trader, try Horse Tradin, by Ben K. Green. All true short stories chronicled by the guy who lived the style of life in a time the rest of us can only imagine. Easy, light reading that immediately takes you away. His other books are equally as great!

 

[Old CooT]

I recently read " With the Old Breed" At Peleliu and Okinawa, by E. B. Sledge.

It is the memoirs of a Marine who was there,,, A very good read.


I had to order mine online.. none of the bookstores would stock it,,

 

[Dan Wilson]

Anything Heinlein!

Dan

 

[Shattered]

I gotta vote for Harry Turtledove. This is the guy that deals in historical "what ifs?"

He has several series out there. I'd start off with a single called "Guns of the South" Has to do with AK-47's showing up on Robert E. Lee's doorstep.

If that floats yer boat go for "The Great War". The years star at the WW1 era and so far have gotten right into WW2. It's a 10 book series broken into 3 groups. Just finishing up the last one and I'll be having withdrawl symptoms after this.

Also has another long series ( 8 books) called "The Worldwar Saga". World War 2 gets interrupted by an Alien Invasion.

 

[common762]

Three really good books are, Unintended Consequences, Atlas Shrugged, and or course George Orwell's 1984 much better than the movie.

 

[panzerfaust]

Great firearms history read.

Here is a fascinating book regarding the history of US small arms, from the Revolution right thru Vietnam. The author shows how the US military so often chose the WRONG gun, due to price or politics. Then they had to try and correct their mistakes, often by PLEADING with John Browning to design a better system. (sound familiar guys? Berretta 92?) The book is called "Misfire" by William Hallahan. (Simon & Schuster) Very interesting.

 

[Rory]

Three really good books are, Unintended Consequences, Atlas Shrugged, and or course George Orwell's 1984 much better than the movie.

eh i am almost finished with unintended consequences. as far as literature goes it is just ok. the writing is alright not great. there is good history in there but i think that most of us know at least most of what has been penned in there. and at close to a thousand pages, i am just not wedded to it. i will go later into details of my problems with the book but would rather complete it first.

r

 

[Shattered]

eh i am almost finished with unintended consequences .... the writing is alright not great. there is good history in there but i think that most of us know at least most of what has been penned in there.
r

I can appreciate that. It's a whole different ball game to read about something in a book rather than actually experienced the different things brought forth in the book.

I'm quite a bit older than you and can say that some of the stuff really hit home. Like going into the gun shop and the first thing that hit you was the smell of Hoppes. I remember that very distictly. Think I was perhaps 8 or 10 years old when my uncle took me to Kellers Gun Shop in New Britain, CT. The wood floors seems like a sponge for Hoppes and creaked ever so slightly as the oldsters creeked around. We actually went to Bannerman's in NYC and I couldn't beleive all the stuff there. Seemed like an E J Korvettes or G. Fox & CO. (read that as an olde timey downtown 5 to 10 story building) selling nothing but guns.

The part about the Solothurn 20mm on page 214? The year was 1959 or 1960. I begged my dad to buy that thing. I saw the ad in the back of a Popular Science magazine, it was also in the back of any American Rifleman magazine before 1968. It went for about $190 back then. Navy Arms had the same damn thing for $175, AP tracer ammo was $2.95 each or cheaper in quantity (case of 100 rds for $69). The cost of the ammo was the big "no" to my dad. He said a box of 50 rounds of .22 was only $.29 and I could do a lot more shooting. Ended up getting a Winchester 190 .22 auto ... sigh.

It makes a huge difference the way you look at "Unintended Consequences" when you're old enough to have actually lived a lot of the stuff. Most of the book brought back fond memories.

I'll have to pull it out again. My copy is a first edition signed by Ross at the Creek when it first came out. I had already done bidness with John and had bought a couple of submachine guns prior to finding out he was an author.

Much speculation has been around the net originally over who John Ross patterned Henry Bowman after. Every author does it and it was mentioned between the ancients, but I haven't found out... yet.

 

[glockhead]

Norman Podhoretz World War IV

Not a real long book. He writes well and he really gives it to the libs and the Islamic facists

 

[47lincsled]

books

I'm with Dan, I've always love Heinlein, especially "the Sixth Column" a future American survival story,I've read every thing he's written, he did get obsessed with sex in his later books but he had a lot of really good stories.

 

[PKw VI Tiger1]

Tigers In The Mud by Otto Carius is a pretty good book and it describes from a soldiers perspective how German Panzer Divisions fought During WWII.

Also If you can find them there's Department of the Army Pamphlet 20-260 Historical Study: The German Campaigns in the Balkans (Spring 41') printed 1953, and 20-230 Historical Study: Russian Combat Methods in WWII printed 1950. They both were compiled from German documents. The one on Germany tells of the planning of the war and it's process of being carried out.

Lastly there's Machine Gunners Handbook printed in 1942. It shows how 1917-A1 Heavy MGs were to be used in combat and drills including marksmanship, indirect fire, direct fire, servicing/maintenance, and how to use many of the accessories that pertain to it. I am in the process of copying it so that others may be able to read it because I haven't seen or heard of any others. It's good for understanding how some of the things for the gun were meant to be used.
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