Wednesday Weapons Website of the Week: Jules Crittenden

OK, Jules’s blog, Forward Movement, which had two iterations (one as a chronicle of the invason of Iraq in 2003, and one as a more general-interest blog through 2008 or so) is long moribund, but one page occasionally gets updates, and it’s his book review and recommendation page.  Most of these books are military history and should appeal to the WeaponsMan reader.

There is more value on this page than on some entire blogs, even though most of it is nothing but lists of books by theme or war or era, linked to the actual books on Amazon. Jules’s taste in books agrees astonishingly well with ours, even to ownership of T.E. Lawrence first editions. He is a bit too lenient on other members of the Fourth Estate (he is an editor with the Boston Herald, the paper that’s not in bed with organized crime and the State House in Boston — but we repeat ourselves.

Here’s a taste from deep in the page (I think these lists have been copied properly so that Jules gets his taste if you buy a book from them):

The NEW WORLD:

1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, Charles Mann’s mythbuster. What the Americas were like, what happened when the Europeans arrived, and who is responsible for that.

Mayflower, a Story of Courage, Community and War by Nathaniel Philbrick, another mythbuster that goes deep on relations between the English and the Wampanoag, Narragansett, etal, from the Pilgrims through King Phillip’s War, including Benjamin Church’s innovative development of hybrid English-Indian units and tactics, the birth of modern counterinsurgency.

Letters from Mexico Hernan Cortes

The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico Miguel Leon-Portillo

The Discovery And Conquest Of Mexico Bernal Diaz Del Castillo

History of the Conquest of Mexico & History of the Conquest of PeruWilliam H. Prescott

The story of Cortes and Moctezuma is an epic that could use a cinematic update, in the right hands. Meanwhile, some viewing: Apocalypto, the Mel Gibson masterpiece.

The rest of the blog, particularly his live reporting from the invasion of Iraq, bears reading. Dude can write.

Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds.