Your WORST military history book?

[Dr Dave]

We've all got one I'm sure. The book that turned out to be utter rubbish and nonsense. All emotion, feelings and no evidence. Revisionist clap trap or just daft - what's the one to avoid in your collection?

For me it's "The Spanish Navy and Trafalgar" by a chap called Hebron. A real hoot of fibs, silliness and half truths.

[jimduncanuk]

Quite a few on my Kindle, got them as 'free' books.

Some were so bad I couldn't even get to the end of Chapter 1.

They were deleted.

Jim

To be fair one of them must have been translated into English from a foreign language by someone with very poor English skills. It was a naval book and every ship was a 'battleship' even when it was obviously a destroyer.

[pierre the shy]

I got a book out of our local library about the fall of Singapore, a great big thick tome which covered the whole campaign day by day in a somewhat potted manner using a multitude of sources.

I rolled my eyes when this book, published 70 years after the event, claimed that the Japanese were operating German Ju87 Stuka dive bombers and Ju88 twin engined bombers or copies thereof.....really?    

Think that myth came about as some of the British and Commonwealth fighter pilots flying in the defence of Singapore had previously served in Europe....(one combat report even claimed that they engaged Me 109's over Singapore!!) and that at the time information about Japanese aircraft was scarce.  :-

While the Japanese aircraft may have superficially looked like the German ones, even basic research will show that the Japanese did not actually use any of the above types in combat.

     

[Steve J]

I can't remember the authors name, but it was a book on the Battle in the Hurtgen Forest I bought cheaply at a second hand bookshop. Simply unreadable. I think I re-sold it the following week.

[Leman]

I mentioned this quite recently - Jackboot: a History of the German soldier. I made it to just short of halfway. Not entirely sure what the author's objective was, as the bulk of what I read was little more than a potted history of Prussia from the C18th to 1914. It then went into WWI (less than halfway through) and delved into the use of German junior officers' letters to demonstrate that they were not unfeeling automatons. It is definitely a peculiar book with a very strange opening chapter - along the lines of Germans are only happy when they are preparing for or going to war. The book was published in 1964.

[SV52]

Ian Grimble's book on Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald.  An amazing story wasted.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

A thing called Killer Elite, anyone want it ?

[FierceKitty]

Either Greer's Armies and Enemies of Ancient China,  or Pohl's Aztec, Mixtec and Zapotec Armies (missing comma not my fault). This latter includes gems like observing that a Tlaxcalan army could easily wipe out attackers with a barrage or arrows, and had melee troops to protect the archers against the survivors, who would otherwise destroy them; that the archers were armed for melee so as to be just as good as the melee troops assigned to do their melee work for them; and that copper weapons could be honed to a razor sharpness (yeah, right; try shaving with a copper blade. I'll take you to hospital afterwards).

[d_Guy]

... or Pohl's Aztec, Mixtec and Zapotec Armies (missing comma not my fault).

<groan> Just bought this 2nd hand (mainly for McBride's illustration which I hope are more accurate?)

The missing comma is the streamlined American way.

[d_Guy]

I am not sufficiently expert (yet  ) but James Michael Hill's "Celtic Warfare" helps perpetuate some Victorian mythology and studiously ignores facts that don't support the primary thesis of the book which includes its rather tenuous application Confederate infantry in the ACW.
It does give some rather good narrative from time to time.

[clibinarium]

Either Greer's Armies and Enemies of Ancient China,  or Pohl's Aztec, Mixtec and Zapotec Armies (missing comma not my fault).

Greer's book may have been the best information available at the time, but certainly its a very ropey book today. I like the Phol Osprey, but like a lot of Ospreys I have it was bought for the pretty Angus pictures, and I've not actually read it.

[FierceKitty]

<groan> Just bought this 2nd hand (mainly for McBride's illustration which I hope are more accurate?)

The missing comma is the streamlined American way.

McBride's pictures are a major compensation. And there is useful info in the book; it just needed some ruthless editing. (Note absence of commas in this post - concession to Americans in their hour of trouble).

[d_Guy]

 
Thanks for the additional info, don't know enough yet about our feathered friends to sort out errors.
You also used a semi-colon, which is way beyond my skill set.

[Leman]

Understanding the First World War - more accurately the British on the Western Front. I knew I'd made a bad purchase when only a few pages in it began to talk about the Russo-Japanese War of 1906!!!!

[KTravlos]

Hmm this is  hard question. This is because even the most problematic military history books that I have, marred with biases or terrible english (the Hellenic General Staff, Army History Directory "A Concise History of the Campaign in Asia Minor 1919-1922", or Dusan Babac "The Serbian Army in the Wars of Independence against Turkey 1876-1878", the Osprey MMA on the Czech Legion) still have a lot of useful information that makes them worth reading. And the one book I have had a hard time getting through, "The German Army in the Spring Offensives of 1917" is a good book, just the info it contains is not what I look for in military history. Since I agree with James Fearon that counterfactual's can be a useful tool for the study of history, I will have to go with "Over the Top: Alternate Histories of WW1". While a number of the coutner-factuals are done in good scholarly way (Chapters 6 and , too many of them are essentially teenage nationalist fan-fiction, and especially the four done by the co-editor Peter Tsouras are disgusting(and those are 4 out of the 10). Avoid it at all costs. Truly a detestable little effort barring Chapters 6 and 8.