As I undertook a Spring cleaning of the RockyMountainNavy home office, I realized that I took in a pile of books since the new year that I have maybe mentioned elsewhere on social media but not necessarily discussed here. As my reading and wargaming are often closely related I thought I could share the books that entered my collection and humbly offer a few thoughts on each.
Written by Christopher Lawrence of The Dupuy Institute, I was interested in Lawrence’s perspective of the war given their work in Historical Analysis. Please see my thoughts at “Draft history in The Battle of Kyiv: The Fight for Ukraine’s Capital by Christopher A. Lawrence” at The Armchair Dragoons.
I took in The Wargame Development’s Handbook because I wanted some insight into the wargaming scene in the UK from both a hobbyist and wargame practitioner’s perspective. My full thoughts were published (again) at The Armchair Dragoons in “Old-New Wargamer Perspectives in The Wargame Developments Handbook, Third Edition.” Part of the response to that post was a generous offer to join the WDG which I need to get done sooner than later.
As I was playing the wargame World at War 85: Storming the Gap (Lock n’ Load Publishing, 2019) I realized that I had lost/misplaced my copy of Team Yankee. Now fixed.
As I read the Wargames Development Handbook (above) I came to realize that I had read references to Dr. Griffith’s writings but had never actually read any of their books. This is a first attempt to correct that oversight on my part.
Over Open Sights was acquired as part of my research into the Imperial German Navy’s Seekriegsspiel which ended up as another article, “Seekriegsspiel – The Other German Wargame,” again for The Armchair Dragoons.
I thought Fletcher Pratt’s Naval Wargame would be relevant to my Seekriegsspiel article but discovered that Pratt’s game came much later in the process. Still a worthy acquisition for the history of naval wargaming…
Purchased to help cover a gap in my knowledge of the Vietnam War as I was looking at the wargame The Fast Carriers: Air-Sea Operations 1941-77 by Jim Dunnigan from SPI in 1975. My full thoughts on The Fast Carriers is forthcoming at—you guessed it—The Armchair Dragoons.
My present real world job demands I improve my data literacy skills and this is a first step in that direction.
My guilty pleasure reading. I love Gannon’s Terran Republic setting as it comes closest to being what I imagine my personal Traveller roleplaying game should be.
Acquired to fulfill both personal hobby gaming and professional learning needs.
As a long-time U.S. Naval Institute member I am ashamed to say I totally missed this title in the past seven years:
In 1914, as Germany mobilized for war, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg remarked to the country’s legislators, “If the iron dice must roll, then God help us.” War has often been compared to a game of dice or a lottery. But just as frequently, war has been compared to a game of pure strategy like chess. In reality, the business of negotiating with adversaries, fighting wars, and ending wars is far more complicated than a game of chess, where each player can see all the pieces on the board and knows the possible moves that they can make. War is far more chaotic and unpredictable. And yet, international bargaining and international conflict is not a simple dice game either, where human beings have no control over the outcome.
Justin Conrad bets that war is more like a game of poker. Gambling and War: Risk, Reward, and Chance in International Conflict brings readers a war college course taught at a Las Vegas casino. To succeed in poker, it is not enough to simply anticipate the actions of other players and try to outsmart them. A successful player must also understand and appreciate the role of randomness. Additionally, players must confront the reality that all human beings are prone to errors in judgment, which causes them to make suboptimal choices under many circumstances. Taken together, these challenges make poker a fascinating and highly unpredictable game, much like the challenges of international conflicts. Any comprehensive analysis of why wars occur and how they are fought must take into account a variety of factors including strategy, human error, and dumb luck. Gambling and War applies lessons learned from poker, blackjack, roulette, and other games of chance to the study of international conflict. Drawing on scholarly insights from a variety of fields, including probability, statistics, political science, psychology, and economics, Conrad offers thoughts on how we can better manage and prevent international conflict, the costliest game of all.
Publisher’s blurb
Feature image by RMN
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