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As the title suggests, what are your favourite biographies/autobiographies? Personally, I don't normally read too many of them, however I have a couple that have really stuck with me: The Sea Devil - The Story Of Count Felix Von Luckner, The German War Raider by Lowell Thomas This is all about the titular Count Felix von Luckner. The author writes about the good Count's life growing up and as a young adult while traveling the world alone, after running away from his cushy home. All of what he did at this point is amazing in itself, but then he joins the German navy during WW1 as the captain of a Q-ship. (So, a military ship disguised as a cargo ship. Often they start off as cargo ships, but are modified to have concealed weapons, etc.) But that's not even the best bit! The ship he commands is a sailing ship! And they're actually quite successful at commerce raiding during the war. To top it off, they do so without actually killing anyone, (I think one person dies accidentally, at one point?) as they take the merchant crews prisoner and then drop them off at neutral ports later on. Treating them rather well all the while, apparently. We Few and Whispers in the Tall Grass by Nick Brokhausen These two books follow Nick's tour in the Vietnam War, as part of the notorious MACV-SOG. He's roped into signing up for it by a friend (as it's definitely an easy spec forces gig! 100%!), but ends up making a lot of buddies. It's very crazy to read, as many of their missions (particularly later in the war) don't last long at all, before the NVA brings in battalions of men to take out a couple of squads. But with the assistance of the air force and a lot of ammunition for their weapons, they're able to scrape through mission after mission.
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Apr 1, 2023 09:24
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Major Isoor posted:
This sounds unbelievably cool I love spike milligans war memoirs. Think I've read Adolf Hitler: my part in his downfall about a million times since it's such an easy read. Also taught me at an early age how boring it is to be a soldier most of the time and that the heroic defenders of democracy were just a bunch of horny idiots who spent most of the war messing about *puts on TRP hat* Jonathan Wilson rarely puts out a book that's not worth reading but Nobody Ever Says Thank You is an excellent biography of Brian Clough, one of England's most colourful footballing personalities
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Apr 1, 2023 10:22
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Major Isoor posted:The Sea Devil - The Story Of Count Felix Von Luckner, The German War Raider by Lowell Thomas Another good read on sailing is Two Years Before the Mast, an account by Richard Henry Dana Jr on his days as a sailor; a great look at what life was like on a ship in the early 1800s. His reference book on sailing terminology, procedure and law is a good supplementary read on the subject.
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Apr 1, 2023 11:13
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Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (by Ray Monk). I didn't really know anything about Wittgenstein before reading this and was continually surprised, he was a really fascinating person (his sister's wedding portrait was done by Klimt!!! I actually saw it, or possibly another portrait of her by Klimt in an art gallery by accident after reading this and was so pumped). His philosophy was also revelatory to me, I had never understood why philosophers were so interested in words ("surely the meaning of words we use can't tell us anything about actual reality" etc) but this book plus some further reading helped me understand how I'd been totally missing the point. Wittgenstein was obviously a very difficult person to be around, but as the subject of a biography he's a great character.
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Apr 2, 2023 20:51
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Serious recommendation, it's fantastic: The Baron's Cloak by Willard Sunderland. It's an academic biography of everybody's favourite insane nobleman, Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, the crazy guy who tried to restore the Mongol Empire during the Russian Civil War, but it's extremely readable and Sunderland uses Ungern's life as a way to explore the complexities of empire in the early twentieth century. Instead of doing the sensationalist thing and filling in blank spots in Ungern's biography with speculation or apocryphal stories, he fills in the blank spots with deeply-researched history of empire using the baron as your window into a very different world. It's terrific work and you don't have to be an academic to appreciate it.
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Apr 3, 2023 02:33
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