Appendices

Reading List

Someone is interested in wargames because someone is interested in history. The play of wargames and the study of written material go hand in hand. Quite normally, the interest in one begets an increasing interest in the other.

It is common for someone to have read something about a particular historical event and then to seek out a game on a similar event: You then use the game to enlarge your insight and understanding of the historical situation. The gamer is just as likely to pick up a game without really knowing anything about the historical situation and, using the experience with the game, read more and study more of the subject.

There are primarily two kinds of research materials the hobbyist can use: general surveys and specific sources. The general surveys are quite important as they give a shape to one's researches.

The specific sources are needed when one gets down to a particular game.

Most of the specific sources, as well as the reasons for someone getting interested in a particular subject, are the result of their reading a recent book on the subject. It is new books such as that, which get into most people's hands and, although it often happens that someone stumbles across an old classic and becomes inflamed about, say, the Thirty Years War, it is more likely that a spate of books on that war will generate far more interest than the chance encounters with older works.

History is constantly being revised. Otherwise all historians would pretty much be out of business. Your best bet to keep up on what is currently being produced is to frequent your local bookstore. If there is no bookstore in your town, contact the History Book Club or the Military Book Club through the mail. If you are not satisfied with what is being displayed in the bookstore, ask to look through the store's copy of Books in Print and/or Paperback Books in Print. Any book that is listed in these two volumes the store should be able to get for you.

There are a few basic sources that will aid you in maintaining a sense of where you are in military history. Probably the single most valuable work is Dupuy and Dupuy's Encyclopedia of World Military History. This is a massive survey of warfare from prehistory to the present and gives considerable detail on campaigns, battles and military systems in general. For starters, before you get down to specific cases in any particular period, you should concentrate on the survey-type works. David Chandler has done three excellent survey books. The best known is probably The Campaigns of Napoleon, but he also did two on the early 18th-century general, Marlborough: The Art of War in the Age of Marlborough and Marlborough as Military Commander. An excellent series of Atlases is to be found in Esposito and Elting's A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars as well as Esposito's two-volume The West Point Atlas of American Wars.

It is quite common for the gamer to specialize in one or a few particular periods. This is advisable. It increases one's enjoyment of both the books and the games on that era.

One of the more popular aspects of wargaming is the study of the contemporary age as well as the use of games for covering that same ground. This is history in the making and there are a large number of periodicals addressing this subject in considerable detail. A good research library will have copies of the following to peruse, and from which you can obtain current subscription information.

The International Defense Review is a gold mine of excellent, up-to-date information on contemporary military affairs and is not likely to be found anywhere else.

Infantry magazine (Box 2005, Fort Benning, Georgia 31905) and Armor magazine (Box 0, Fort Knox, Kentucky 40021) and The Field Artillery Journal (Fort Sill, Oklahoma) are all U.S. Army publications that provide very current information and contemporary and historical items within each magazine's area of interest. Military Review (USACGSC, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027) is the Army's highest level professional journal and contains many "think" pieces as well as some good items on tactics, strategy, foreign armies and military history.

Army magazine (1529 Eighteenth Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036) features contemporary and historical articles of interest to the Army Reserve officer (for whom it is published). Air Force magazine (1750 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006) is similar to Army magazine, although it usually has more meaty articles. The US Naval Institute Proceedings (Annapolis, Maryland 21402) is an excellent periodical for naval affairs.