How to Obtain a Review Copy
Please submit review copy requests along with a preferred mailing address to Joshua Cline at josh.cline@armyhistory.org
All reviewers are limited to one book per request. Book reviews for On Point must be submitted within the three-month review period. All reviews must be submitted in Microsoft Word and must not exceed 700 words. Please download the submission template and sample files provided and follow the format accordingly. If you are quoting from the text, please provide the page number as well.
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Books Currently Available
Advice and Support: The Middle Years: January 1964 – June 1965. By Andrew J. Birtle, Ph.D., U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2024. 730 pages in length, this is the thirteenth volume of the official U.S. Army history of the Vietnam War.
The Airborne Mafia: The Paratroopers Who Shaped America’s Cold War Army. By Robert F. Williams, Cornell University Press, 2025. Williams explores the small but powerful cadre of Airborne general officers who established an unprecedented impact on the Cold War US Army, dominating the values and beliefs of army doctrine in the mid-1950s.
Arming the World: American Gun-Makers in the Gilded Age. By Geoffrey S. Stewart, Lyons Press, 2024. A focused view on American small arms industry, more specifically, the manufacturers who supplied the world’s revolution in breech-loading rifles that followed the Civil War. Particular focus is on the names that did not survive to the 20th Century, who had their heyday and downfall alike in the Gilded Age.
The Army That Never Was: George S. Patton and the Deception of Operation Fortitude. By Taylor Downing, Pegasus Books, 2024. The largest deception operation of World War II was Operation FORTITUDE, the plan to mislead the Third Reich into believing the Allies would land at Pas-de-Calais, instead of Normandy. Written by a prominent British historian, this presents General George S. Patton’s faked army that contributed to the successful deception.
The Army Under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era. By Cecily N. Zander, Louisiana State University Press, 2024. Scrutinizes the extent that antimilitarism had during and after the Civil War, particularly during Reconstruction, and how such attitudes were affected or utilized for political goals.
Battle Flags of the Wars for North America, 1754-1783: Foreign Armies and Regiments. By Steven W. Hill, Stackpole Books, 2025. Covers the regimental flags of Britain, France, Germany and Spain in the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War.
The Battlin’ Bastards of Bravo: Bravo Company, 1/506th, 101st Airborne, in Vietnam and Beyond. By Melissa Ziobro, Casemate Publishers, 2025. Company B, 1/506th, was deployed to the Republic of Vietnam 1968-1971. Inspired by reunions on the approach to the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Ziobro wrote it from interviews and archival research, preserving their stories for future generations.
Black Yanks: Defending Leroy Henry in D-Day Britain. By Kate Werran, History Press, 2024. On 26 May 1944, with D-Day eleven days away, black soldier Leroy Henry was found guilty of rape and sentenced to death; a crime he did not commit. An unprecedented campaign across Britain led to a 33,132-strong signed petition being handed to Eisenhower, pleading for Henry’s life just after D-Day. Never before told in such detail, Black Yanks sheds light on the “first significant, if uncelebrated, win in the civil rights movement.”
Boots On The Ground: Modern Land Warfare From Iraq to Ukraine. By Leigh Neville, Osprey Publishing, 2025. Focuses on how the armies and the land battlefields of the near future may look, with each chapter focusing on key details of modern land warfare. It asserts the rising importance of uncrewed vehicles, drones, electronic warfare and cyber operations; while pointing out the continued importance of combined arms.
Born From War: A Soldier’s Quest to Understand Vietnam, Iraq, and the Generational Impact of Conflict. By Patrick W. Naughton, Jr., Casemate Publishers, 2025. An intergenerational memoir written by an Iraq War veteran, whose father was in the Vietnam War. It weaves together their experiences, three decades apart yet still strikingly similar.
Cape May County and the Civil War. By Ray Rebmann, The History Press, 2025. Focuses on the men who called Cape May County, New Jersey home, those of whom who fought in the Civil War predominantly fighting for the Union.
A Centennial Perspective on Texas in the Civil War. By Stephen S. Cure, Texas A&M University Press, 2024. The culminating work of the Texas Historical Commission to mark the centennial of American entry into the Great War, A Centennial Perspective offers the background importance of the conflict to Texas and the U.S., as well as providing a record of memorialization of World War I in Texas up to 2017.
Death Before Dismount: U.S. Army Tanks in Iraq. By Dr. Andrew Eric Wright Sr., Casemate Publishers, 2025. Discusses the use of tanks in the “Thunder Run,” the 2nd Battle of Fallujah; Ramadi, 2006; Baqubah, 2007; and Sadr City, 2008. Included are first-hand accounts of tankers from the 1st, 2d, 3d Infantry Divisions and the 1st Cavalry Division.
A Debt of Gratitude: How Jimmy Carter Put Vietnam Veterans’ Issues on the National Agenda. By Glenn Robins, University Press of Kansas, 2025. On the cusp of the 1973 peace treaty between the United States and North Vietnam, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter joined the debate on American society’s obligations to Vietnam veterans. Robins covers the 1970s from governor to presidency, asserting Carter as instrumental on Vietnam veteran policy.
The Devil’s Playground: The Story of Two Charlie and the Arghandab River Valley. By Andrew Bragg, Casemate Publishers, 2024. Charlie Company, 2d Platoon, 2-508th PIR deployed to the Arghandab River Valley in Afghanistan in 2009-10. ‘The Devil’s Playground’ was everything south of the second canal. “There was never a dull moment in the Arghandab.” Over the course of the deployment, 2d Platoon’s numbers dwindled and the fighting only got harder. “In the end, the valley always wins.”
Don Troiani’s Black Soldiers in America’s Wars, 1754-1865. By Don Troiani and John U. Rees, James L. Kochan contributing, Stackpole Books, 2025. Battle paintings of the African-American soldiers of the French and Indian War, War of Independence, and Civil War, combined with a historian’s studies of Black soldiers over the course of a century in early America.
Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War. By Lesley J. Gordon, Cambridge University Press, 2025. The label of ‘coward’ was both insult and crime punishable by death during the Civil War. Dread Danger examines the fear of combat through one Union and one Confederate regiment to consider broader questions about the war.
Dying Hard: Company B, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th US Infantry Division in WWII. By COL. French L. MacLean (USA-Ret.), Schiffer Publishing, 2024. “In the mold of the classic Band of Brothers,” Dying Hard focuses on a single Army company infantry unit through the Second World War via highly personal vignettes. Only 7% of the unit’s enlisted men when it formed in 1941 were still there in May 1945. MacLean’s personal connection is through his father, who fought with Company B in the Battle of the Bulge.
The Fabric of Civil War Society: Uniforms, Badges, and Flags, 1859-1939. By Shae Smith Cox, Louisiana State University Press, 2024. Shae Smith Cox argues that the material items of the Civil War has more importance than previous scholarship has depicted; logistically and financially, politically and meaning, and tracing their change from practicalities of warfare to sentimental symbols of remembrance.
From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War. By John R. Maass, Osprey Publishing, 2025. Mass writes upon five key events of the Revolutionary War; from obvious military victories like Trenton, Princeton, and Yorktown, to less obvious but necessary reforms and decisions such as Washington at Valley Forge and King Louis XVI supplying the Continental Army in the Saratoga Campaign.
Frontier Rangers of Colonial New England: From King Philip’s War to the American Revolution. By Anthony Phillip Blasi, The History Press, 2025. This “seeks to tell the stories of the generations of frontiersmen of northwest New England who became masters of wilderness warfare,” from King Philip’s War to the War of 1812.
Garden of Ruins: Occupied Louisiana in the Civil War. By J. Matthew Ward, Louisiana State University Press, 2024. A social and military history of the first Confederate state to be partially occupied by the Union in Spring 1862, during the early Civil War. Ward examines the use, tempered or abusive alike, of power in both Union occupied and Confederate held territory within Louisiana. “The work to preserve democracy,” viewed by both blue and gray.
A Grand Opening Squandered: The Battle for Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864. By Sean Michael Chick, Savas Beatie, 2025. The first in a multi-volume set and part of the Emerging Civil War Series, which focuses on easy to understand, entry-level looks into notable events of the Civil War. This focuses on the Union Army’s failure to take Petersburg at the climax of the Overland Campaign, forcing the long siege that followed.
Great American World War II Stories. Edited by Tom McCarthy, Lyons Press, 2024. Ten true stories of the Second World War on air, land, and sea; from Omaha Beach to Mount Suribachi, the air over Tokyo to stalking enemy ships from below the ocean surface.
The Gulf War: George H.W. Bush and American Grand Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era. By Spencer D. Bakich, University Press of Kansas, 2024. Part of the Landmark Presidential Decisions series, this work focuses on the role of military force in George H.W. Bush’s administration, with particular focus on Operation DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM.
High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor. By Edwin P. Rutan II, Kent State University Press, 2024. Focuses on the recruits to the Union Army after the draft was adopted and higher bounties for service were offered. Historically portrayed as mercenary, greedy, and an inferior soldier to those who volunteered earlier in the war, as Rutan puts it, “a reappraisal–based on data–is in order.”
Hollywood’s Imperial Wars: The Vietnam Generation and the American Myth of Heroic Continuity. By Armando José Prats, University of Oklahoma Press, 2024. Describing the ‘American Myth of Heroic Continuity’ as a belief that there is heroism in victory, and victory was inevitable, Hollywood’s Imperial Wars explores how this culturally significant myth was propagated by Hollywood film, and how the Vietnam War resulted in a drastic change away from the previously mythic heroism.
How To Lose A War: the Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan. By Amin Saikal, Yale University Press, 2024. Emeritus professor and founding director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at Australian National University depicts a “compelling and meticulously documented” analysis of how the US failed to achieve its aims in the war in Afghanistan.
John J. Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, 1917-1919: March 21-May 19, 1918, Volume 4. Edited by John T. Greenwood, University Press of Kentucky, 2024. The fourth volume of a long running project focusing on Pershing’s corresponded as commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I.
Kansas and Kansans in World War I: Service at Home and Abroad. By Blake A. Watson, University Press of Kansas, 2024. Depicts the Kansas home front and Kansans abroad in the First World War – National Guard, Regular Army, National Army, including African Americans in and from Kansas.
The Lead Mine Men: The Enduring 45th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. By Thomas B. Mack, Southern Illinois University Press, 2024. The soldiers of the 45th, nicknamed The Lead Mine Men for many of their members’ origins in the iron ore mines of Galena, Illinois, never broke throughout their service in the Civil War. Dr. Mack recounts their history as a professional development of his doctoral thesis work.
Mekong Memoirs: A GI in Tan Tru, Long An Province, 1969-1970. By L. Glen Inabinet, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2025. A retired educator, historical writer and Vietnam veteran who served 1968-1970 wrote this personal memoir. It begins with basic training, arriving in the Republic of Vietnam on 11 March 1969 assigned to Battery C, 2d Battalion, 4th Field Artillery. It ends upon returning home from the war.
The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals. Edited by Timothy D. Johnson, Louisiana State University Press, 2024. Twelve essays depicting twelve American officers in the Mexican-American War who went on to fight in the Civil War; six Union, six Confederate. For most of them it was their first combat experience, a laboratory and crucible of combat action that defined who they were before the Civil War.
More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee. By Jonathan Engel, Kent State University Press, 2025. The title originates from a statement made by General William T. Sherman shortly after capturing Atlanta, Georgia: “We have good corporals and sergeants, and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals.” This study focuses on two neglected topics: the Army of the Tennessee, and junior officers in the Civil War, previously ignored in historiography in favor of those above or below them.
My Toughest Battle: A Soldier’s Lifelong Struggle with Polio. By Major General William M. Matz, Jr. (USA-Ret.), Casemate Publishers, 2024. The memoir of Major General Matz, who had polio as a child and overcame paralysis to become a ranger tabbed paratrooper. Wounded in the Tet Offensive, recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, leader of troops in Panama, Matz’ accomplishments all happened while wearing a specially fitted combat boot on an atrophied leg. He retired from the Army in 1995 and had a final retirement in 2021.
Never A Dull Moment: The 80th Airborne Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion in World War II. By LTC Arthur ‘Ben’ Powers (USA-Ret.), Casemate Publishers, 2024. Gliderborne anti-aircraft and anti-tank support to the 82d Airborne Division in the Second World War, the 80th Airborne AAA Battalion were Coast Artillery troops that fought beside the Airborne with 57mm cannons. They faced the enemy side by side with the infantry through Italy, Operation Neptune, Market Garden, Normandy, Holland, and the Battle of the Bulge.
No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944. By Rona Simmons, University of Missouri Press, 2024. A seemingly normal day during the Second World War saw 2600 Americans perish across the world in military action, nine times the average per day. Rona Simmons tells the stories of three dozen of October 24’s fallen – soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen all, depicting through them one uncommon day of the world at war.
Non-Hostile: How 1,400 American Soldiers Died During My Year in Vietnam. By John R. Walker, Self-Published, 2025. Veteran of the 1st Infantry Division, Walker noted that almost twenty percent of American fatalities in Vietnam were from non-hostile causes; nearly one in five. Selecting the year he was in Vietnam himself, Walker uses the 1,083 non-hostile cause and 318 friendly fire fatalities the Army suffered during those 365 days as a case study to examine why these men died, what killed them, and where, while simultaneously depicting his own Vietnam War experience. (uncorrected pre-release PDF copy only)
Patton’s Shadow: The Making of a Hero in Modern Memory. By Nathan C. Jones, University of Alabama Press, 2024. Curator of the General Patton Museum wrote this in studying the phenomenon of Patton’s legend, “an attempt to demonstrate how heroes become legends and how legends are used.” It is not a biography of General George S. Patton, Jr., or an analysis of his career; it is examining the legends and myths that have created the historical memory of what is now a man larger than life.
Playing At War: Identity and Memory in Civil War Video Games. Edited by Patrick A. Lewis and James Hill Welborn III, Louisiana State University Press, 2024. An anthology work of fifteen essays about how the Civil War has been depicted digitally in commercial videogames. Discusses with an analytical eye to how they educate – or don’t educate – those who play them, and how videogames influence the collective perception of the Civil War.
The “Rape” of Japan: The Myth of Mass Sexual Violence During the Allied Occupation. By Brian P. Walsh, P.hD, Naval Institute Press, 2024. Written by a scholar of Japanese national identity post-Second World War, this looks deep into the little-scrutinized history of sexual violence during the Occupation of Japan. It contests the popular narrative through looking at the sources, as well as examining how and why the narrative became widespread.
Red Arrow Across the Pacific: The Thirty-Second Infantry Division during World War II. By Mark D. Van Ells, Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2024. Written to shine light on a proud unit, the 32d Infantry Division, which served with honor in the Second World War but has not seen much of the limelight. It is first a combat chronicle of the Red Arrow Division, and second is to examine the unit in a social and cultural context.
Searching For Dr. Harris: The Life and Times of a Remarkable African American Physician. By Margaret Humphreys, University of North Carolina Press, 2024. The life of Dr. J.D. Harris, a contract surgeon for the Union Army and, following the Civil War, surgeon for the Freedmen’s Bureau in Virginia, used as a window to look into race and citizenship in the South in the Reconstruction Era. Harris was one of a scant few African Americans to become a doctor before Howard Medical School opened its doors.
Sharpen Your Bayonets!: A Biography of Lieutenant General John Wilson “Iron Mike” O’Daniel, Commander, 3rd Infantry Division in World War II. By Lt. Col. (Ret.) Timothy R. Stoy, Casemate Publishers, 2022. The first full-length biography of ‘Iron Mike’ O’Daniel, who served in World War I, World War II, Korea, and the early days of Vietnam; he commanded the 3d Infantry Division from Anzio to V-E Day.
Staying In The Fight: How War on Terror Veterans in Congress Are Shaping US Defense Policy. By Jeffrey S. Lantis, University Press of Kentucky, 2024. Speaks of how War on Terror veterans are an influential generation of policy activists in Congress, one of the first in-depth studies of the new cohort on Capitol Hill. Sixty-one of ninety-five military veteran members of Congress in the 118th Congress served during the Global War on Terror.
Surviving Three Shermans: With The 3rd Armored Division Into The Battle of the Bulge. By Walter Boston Stitt, Jr., Edited by Dr. Jessica L. George, Casemate Publishers, 2024. A memoir of a tank loader and gunner in the Second World War. The book is built around the censored letters sent home to his mother, who saved and treasured them until her death, and telling the real tale that Stitt couldn’t tell then.
A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8-21, 1864. By Chris Mackowski, Savas Beattie, 2024. A former historian of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park uses his meticulous knowledge of the landscape and primary sources to make this new study of the Civil War campaign.
Three Cold Wars: A Vermont Citizen-Soldier’s Life in the Infantry. By R. V. Little, Jr., LTC (USA-Ret.), Self-Published, 2024. The biography of Major R. V. Little, Sr., written by his son. Beginning as a private in the Vermont National Guard in 1936, Major Little, Sr. served with quiet distinction in formerly under-reported battles of the Second World War and Korean War. As well, he served in three different post-WWII Occupations, and engaged in Troop Information and intelligence missions against nascent Cold War Communist threats.
Thunderbolt To The Rebels: The United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War. By Darin Wipperman, Stackpole Books, 2025. The elite green uniformed marksmen of the Union Army, this focuses on their combat performance instead of simply marveling at the distinctive uniforms and equipment; telling of how they lived, fought, and died in the Civil War.
Tubby: Raymond O. Barton and the US Army, 1889-1963. By Stephen A. Bourque, University of North Texas Press, 2024. Raymond “Tubby” O. Barton – named for his football and wrestling prowess at West Point – had a thirty-seven year Army career culminating in commanding the 4th Infantry Division in France during World War II. The first American general to enter Nazi Germany, he was physically unable to command after the Battle of the Bulge. Released in recognition of the 80th Anniversary of that battle, Bourque tells an inside picture with the extensive use of Tubby’s wartime diary.
Under Alien Skies: Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America. By Vaugn Scribner, University of North Carolina Press, 2024. Scribner asserts the Revolutionary War was, for Europeans, “exceptional in all the worst ways,” with focus on the hostile foreign environments British forces had to endure that encouraged death and disease.
Union Guerillas of Civil War Kansas: Jayhawkers and Red Legs. by Paul A. Thomas & Matt M. Matthews, The History Press, 2025. An account of six “Jayhawkers” in Bleeding Kansas and the Civil War, militants who fought proslavery forces prior to and during the Civil War.
US Battle Tanks 1917-1945. By Steven J. Zaloga, Osprey Publishing, 2024. The first of a two-volume illustrated set of the complete history of American armored tanks, from the first experiments to the end of the Second World War.
US Battle Tanks 1946-2025. By Steven J. Zaloga, Osprey Publishing, 2024. The second of a two-volume illustrated set of the complete history of American armored tanks, from the end of the Second World War to the modern day.
The Vietnam War: A Military History. By Geoffrey Wawro, Basic Books, 2025. The director of the University of North Texas’ Military History Center’s 539 page long account depicts the Vietnam War as a political war doomed from the very beginning, portraying the limits of American power.
We Dared to Fly: Dangerous Secret Missions During the Vietnam War. By COL William Reeder, Jr., Ph.D. (USA-Ret.), Lyons Press, 2024. A memoir depicting the 131st Surveillance Airplane Company’s secretive reconnaissance flights over Laos and North Vietnam, extremely lethal yet vital information gathering missions during the Vietnam War. COL Reeder was the last soldier taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese Army; having previously written on those experiences in his second tour, this book presents his first tour.
War Underground: The History of Military Mining in Siege Warfare. By Earl J. Hess, University Press of Kansas, 2025. Hess addresses military mining – the act of tunneling through or beneath the land to engage an enemy – from its earliest days to the 21st Century, with a chapter dedicated to the Civil War.
The World War One Diary & Art of Doughboy Cpl. Harold W. Pierce: Duty, Terror and Survival. Edited by William J. Welch, Pen & Sword Books, 2024. The diary of a young National Guard enlisted man, a small book he filled with 79,000 words while fighting in the 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Division. This is accompanied by six paintings Pierce put to canvas later in his life.
You’re A Good Man, Sergeant: The World War II Combat Memoir of an Armored Infantry in Patton’s Third Army. By Paul S. Porter, edited by Colleen C. Porter, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2024. A memoir written by an armored infantryman in Company B, 53d Armored Infantry Battalion, during the Second World War, edited by his daughter after his passing forty years ago. (PDF copy only)
Zouave Theaters: Transnational Military Fashion and Performance. By Carole E. Harrison & Thomas J. Brown, Louisiana State University Press, 2024. A military fashion fad of the 19th Century that brought with it a sub-culture of its own, Zouave uniforms were as much costume as uniform, coinciding with a rise of an imperial liberalism. Harrison and Brown give a global perspective of the Zouave uniform, fitting its presence in the Civil War to a worldwide narrative.
