Book Recommendations

[El Cid]

Almost forgot - haven't read it yet but family has recommended "Crisis of Character." It's by a retired uniformed Secret Service officer and will scare the bejesus out of you if Hitlery is elected.

[Burn2shine]

Jonathan Maberry's Joe Ledger series is an X-files, meets "24"(Jack Bauer & company), Zero Dark 30 and the worse things one could imagine.


The series starts with Baltimore detective Joe Ledger world class smart ass, recruited to the top secret Department of Military Sciences to go save the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Maberry

"Patient Zero" is the first book and is a great place to start. I highly recommend the audio books, they are done very well.

[Robinson]

Larry Correia is at the top of my list. The Grimnoir trilogy isn't quite as good as the Monster Hunter series, but worth reading. Correia just released a collaboration with John Ringo in the MHI universe called Grunge. I'm normally not a huge fan of coauthored books, but this one was excellent.

Interesting. Even though I am a bigger fan of MHI, I think Grimnoir is actually stronger writing. I just read on Larry's site that Son of The Black Sword won Best Fantasy at DragonCon. I have no idea how significant that is though. Dead Six is still my favorite by Correia (co-authored).

[Lester Polfus]

When I was a mere slip of a lad, getting ready for my first Bering Sea patrol on my Coast Guard Cutter, Spike Walker's Working The Edge was handed to me as a good primer on what I was about to get into. We passed several copies of that book around the ship.

22 years later, I walked into the winery down the road from my house, and there was Spike, with several new books I knew nothing about. We chatted for quite a while, swapped sea stories (some of which were probably even true) and I bought two books from him: Coming Back Alive and On the Edge of Survival, which features one my old units.

I was up way to late that night, finishing On the Edge of Survival. While I certainly had a personal affinity for the story, it is a great adventure yarn in its own right.

I'd also recommend Thompson's Deadliest Sea. This is about the 2011 sinking of the F/V Alaska Ranger with 47 people on board, way the hell out in the Aleutians. I think one of the HH-60J crews broke the record for "most people crammed into a Jayhawk" on that one.

[Casey]

Interesting. Even though I am a bigger fan of MHI, I think Grimnoir is actually stronger writing. I just read on Larry's site that Son of The Black Sword won Best Fantasy at DragonCon. I have no idea how significant that is though. Dead Six is still my favorite by Correia (co-authored).

Grimnoir to me wasn't quite as funny as MHI. I also have a personal preference for books set in the present day for whatever reason, although the alternate history in Grimnoir was pretty interesting. Haven't read Black Sword yet; I understand that one is more hard fantasy, which I'm not sure I'll enjoy.

Dead Six series was good, but I preferred MHI.

[Cheap Shot]

When I was a mere slip of a lad, getting ready for my first Bering Sea patrol on my Coast Guard Cutter, Spike Walker's Working The Edge was handed to me as a good primer on what I was about to get into. We passed several copies of that book around the ship.

22 years later, I walked into the winery down the road from my house, and there was Spike, with several new books I knew nothing about. We chatted for quite a while, swapped sea stories (some of which were probably even true) and I bought two books from him: Coming Back Alive and On the Edge of Survival, which features one my old units.

I was up way to late that night, finishing On the Edge of Survival. While I certainly had a personal affinity for the story, it is a great adventure yarn in its own right.

I'd also recommend Thompson's Deadliest Sea. This is about the 2011 sinking of the F/V Alaska Ranger with 47 people on board, way the hell out in the Aleutians. I think one of the HH-60J crews broke the record for "most people crammed into a Jayhawk" on that one.

RESPECT

Working the Edge is a great book Ive read many times and loaned, bought and given to many people. And if you were a youngster when it came out out, you're STILL a young wippersnapper now. Relative to this poster

[JohnO]

A few books I really enjoyed.

Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution by Terry Golway

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters

[Shoresy]

The last book I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) was "The Mission, the Men, and Me" bye Pete Blaber. It's on the Delta Force ops in OIF/OEF.

If you haven't read them yet, you might also like either The Art of Intelligence (Henry Crumpton) or Jawbreaker (Gary Berntsen), which discuss the CIA's role in the initial push into Afghanistan.

[TDA]

Top of my list, though it's hard to find, is John Wray's South Sea Vagabonds.

It's the great depression, Auckland NZ, and Wray gets the sack. What he mostly wants to do is sail around the Pacific, but he hasn't a boat, or any money. So he learns to build a cruising sailboat on his parent's front lawn, out of materials he scavenges or steals.
It's a total shit show, but once the boat is in the water he never looks back. I love this book so much.

[DMF13]

Fiction;
If you haven't seen the movies yet; "The Martian" is an excellent read, and "Unbroken" the WWII survival story of the track athlete turned bomber crew member
Those books are so much better than the movies its crazy!!

"Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand is NON-Fiction. Louis Zamperini was a real person who passed away just two years ago, and led an amazing life.