May 2008 Mailbag

By Armchair General

The Good, The Bad … and The Sinister
First of all, thank you for publishing my Mailbag envelope in the Dec/Jan 2008 issue of Armchair General magazine. Seeing it there really made my day!

Secondly, the four new departments are wonderful, especially "Forgotten History "[by Peter Tsouras] and "Badges of Honor "[by Peter Suciu]. They enhance the quality and appeal of the magazine a great deal – much more so than Ralph Peters’ "Crisis Watch" and Casper Weinberger’s "The Presidio Wall," which, despite containing some interesting and useful information, are too full of hubris and an overly militaristic, uber-partriotic attitude.

Also, please pass along my thanks to Andrew Summersgill [aka “Dr. Sinister”] for all of his work on the ACG website.

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Thanks again and keep up the good work!

Alexander Wilson, Batesville, IN

Thanks very much for your feedback. We always want to hear what readers think – good and bad – on our articles and appreciate you taking the time to provide yours.

Andrew Summersgill truly is the “Iron Man” of our ACG website and all of us, particularly our Webmaster, Brian King, are thrilled to have “Dr. Sinister” on our team – I’d hate to have him working against us!

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Not AWOL
Dear Col. Morelock,

I wonder if your editors missed a trick by not selecting John Keegan’s Face of Battle in place of the three other titles that cover the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme [“50 Battles – 50 Books” March 2008 ACG]. Face of Battle is the book that could be said to have launched modern military history literature as we know it today. In addition, the book provides a better bang for the buck when covering all three of these battles as it does. Keegan’s Face of Battle is in fact a must for any military history library and is one of the best "good reads" bar none. Also, selecting Face of Battle would have enabled your editors to slot in two other titles!

 Dr. Andrew H. Hershey

Andy, please check out number 9 on our list of “50 Battles – 50 Books.” John Keegan’s ground-breaking Face of Battle book is indeed included in our recommended “good reads” and definitely is not AWOL. By the way, your suggestion that using Keegan’s Face of Battle book for one of the three battles he covers frees us to pick two others for the other two battles was exactly our reasoning in this case – i.e., by matching it with Agincourt, we were able to cite two other books for Waterloo and The Somme – great minds, I guess.

 

 

 

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