(This article originally appeared in the July 2026 issue of Military Officer, a magazine available to all MOAA Premium and Life members who can log in to access our digital version and archive. Basic members can save on a membership upgrade and access the magazine.)

 

With the sun shining and the beaches calling, it’s time to dive into some epic tales of espionage, ambushes, and stratagem — historically accurate or otherwise. Our annual summer reading list by Military Officer book reviewer Col. William D. Bushnell, USMC (Ret), covers both nonfiction and fiction, focused on such topics as battlefield tactics, post-war recovery, scientific endeavors, and geopolitical relations.

 

Many of these suggested reads include audio versions, meaning you’ll have something to listen to while traveling for vacation or on a walk, enjoying the beautiful weather.

 

You can purchase the books at the links in the titles below. MOAA is an Amazon Associate and earns money from qualifying purchases, with the revenue supporting MOAA Charities.

 

Our nonfiction entries:

 

The Wolf

By Richard Guilliat and Peter Hohnen. Free Press, 2010. Audio version available.

 

The Wolf was a disguised German warship that made a 64,000-mile voyage, crossing three oceans from 1916 to 1917 as a raider attacking British freighters, surviving at sea on captured food and fuel, avoiding Allied pursuit, and commanded by a captain skilled in the rules of naval warfare.

 

The Wake of HMS Challenger

By Gillen D’Arcy Wood. Princeton University Press, 2025. Audio version available.

 

In 1872, HMS Challenger began a four-year oceanographic voyage around the world, exploring, charting, and studying sea life, currents, temperatures, and chemistry, collecting more than 5,000 creatures and plants for scientific study. This is a remarkable voyage of discovery.

 

Hero City

By Prit Buttar. Osprey Publishing, 2024. Audio version available.

 

Prolific World War II historian Buttar adds this second volume to his history of the battle for Leningrad (after To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941-42, also available in an audio version). This is a stark, grim portrayal of a key Russian city suffering from starvation, destruction, and constant attack by a German army also enduring harsh conditions, hopeless offensives, and a breakdown of morale and discipline. This is not for the squeamish reader.

 

Sentinels by the Sea

By Michael G. Laramie. Westholme Publishing, 2026. No audio version.

 

North American colonial warfare between England and France, from 1689 to 1763, was war of position, “a war of forts,” as brilliantly explored by historian Laramie. From Boston to Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, he tells how forts were sited, built, attacked, and defended and why colonial fortresses were keys to imperial victory or defeat.

 

The Wounded Generation

By David Nasaw. Penguin Press, 2025. Audio version available.

 

The fighting might have ended in 1945, but nothing would be the same for veterans returning home — facing racism, unemployment, divorce, displacement, the struggle of recovering from devastating wounds of the body and mind (misunderstood PTSD). Pulitzer Prize finalist Nasaw paints a vivid, sobering picture of the challenges facing returning veterans.

 

Korea: War Without End

By Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman. Osprey Publishing, 2025. Audio version available.

 

The Korean War (1950-1953) will not be the “forgotten war” thanks to these two British military historians. They offer an excellent single volume that covers the political, military, and cultural causes for the war, with special emphasis on North Korea’s misunderstanding of the West’s resolve in defense of South Korea, and how allied hubris and Chinese nerves created a brutal, costly conflict that still simmers today.

 

A Matter of Honour

By Philip Mason. Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1974. No audio version.

 

Mason clearly describes how British soldiers and Indian sepoys managed to control the entire Indian subcontinent in the 19th century — until the sepoy mutiny in 1857 — and how the social, political, and military structures were rebuilt into an independent India. This is colonialism well described.

 

[RELATED: MOAA's Military Professional Reading List]

 

The Last Adieu

By Ryan L. Cole. Harper Horizon, 2025. Audio version available.

 

In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to the America he had left 40 years before, hailed as a hero of the American Revolution. He traveled to every state, was received as the “nation’s guest,” and learned of the young nation’s struggles with its democratic ideals, slavery, and economic turmoil but was buoyed with the nation’s growth and optimism.

 

A Fate Worse Than Hell

By W. Fitzhugh Brundage. W.W. Norton & Co., 2026. Audio version available.

 

Brundage, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, exposes the dark, untold story of the two dozen Union and Confederate prison camps operated during the Civil War and how their creation, organization, supervision, and widespread neglect and cruelty contributed to the formation of the first formal laws of war and the treatment of prisoners. Stories abound of both brutality and human dignity.

 

Over the Edge of the World

By Laurence Bergreen. Mariner Books, 2009. Audio version available.

 

Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) was the first explorer to circumnavigate the world on a daring and deadly three-year voyage, from 1519 to 1522. Five Spanish ships started the journey of discovery, but only one ship and 18 men survived the ordeal (Magellan was not one of them). The reader can expect a harrowing story of bold exploration.

 

Mediterranean Sweep

By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. Osprey Publishing, 2025. Audio version available.

 

Prolific aviation historian Cleaver tells the dramatic story of the U.S. Army Air Forces’ (USAAF’s) air action in the Italian campaign of World War II, from 1943 onward. He vividly describes how tactical air power was applied in the brutal slugfest on the Italian mainland — the USAAF’s fighters and bombers versus the Luftwaffe — and Operation Bingo, an interdiction of German resupply to the Gothic line. This is aerial combat well told.

 

Blind Man’s Bluff

By Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew. PublicAffairs, 2016. Audio version available.

 

Originally published in 1998, journalists Sontag and Drew tell the exciting story of American submarine operations during the Cold War, hidden under the sea, conducting secret spy activities like tracking Soviet ship and submarine movements, tapping undersea cables, and stealing information and material.

 

This dangerous work was not done without hazards, including submarine collisions, deaths, and careful disinformation.

 

Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower

By Andrew Bayliss. W.W. Norton & Co., 2026. Audio version available.

 

Sparta, the oligarchy that dominated the city-states of the Peloponnesian world for four centuries, was not the all-powerful entity often believed. Bayliss’ excellent history reveals Sparta’s remarkable (and illusionary) strengths but also its most telling weaknesses: hubris, slavery, too few “citizens,” not enough heroes. This is a fascinating history.

 

Forgotten Souls

By Cheryl W. Thompson. Dafina, 2026. Audio version available.

 

Thompson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, now telling the little-known story of the 27 Tuskegee airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group lost in air combat over Europe in World War II. Those men disappeared, never recovered, lost to memory, until now. Thompson recognizes them as heroes, forgotten no more.

 

Tournament of Shadows

By Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac. Basic Books, 2006. No audio version.

 

American journalist Meyer and documentary producer Brysac present an excellent history of imperial competition in the 19th century to conquer and control Central Asia, thought to be “one of the greatest geopolitical conflicts in history.” Russia and Britain were the major players, but Americans, Germans, and Chinese also played important roles in this endless competition.

 

The Battle of the Atlantic

By Terry Hughes and John Costello. Dial Press, 1977. No audio version.

 

Hughes and Costello tell the dramatic story of the ships, submarines, planes, and men who fought a naval war on, under, and above the sea — a merciless battle throughout the Atlantic Ocean, and one the Allies could not afford to lose. Convoys, escorts, U-boats, surface warships, and aircraft are well presented, supplemented with excellent maps, diagrams, and hundreds of photographs.

 

Beyond the Outpost

By Ross A. Berkoff. Savas Beatie, 2025. Audio version available.

 

Berkoff fought in Afghanistan as a lieutenant scout platoon leader in 2003 and again as a captain intelligence officer from 2006 to 2007 in the 10th Mountain Division, operating against the Taliban.

 

This is a gritty, “raw and unfiltered” memoir of soldiers fighting a skilled enemy in harsh terrain and weather, with patrols, outposts, firefights, ambushes, deaths and wounds, and small-unit leadership in a remote, unforgiving environment.

 

The Siege of Loyalty House

By Jessie Childs. Pegasus Books, 2023. Audio version available.

 

Childs tells an incredible story of the English Civil War in this well-crafted history of the siege and fighting around Basing House in Hampshire, a royalist stronghold fought over during the 1643-1645 time frame.

 

Prepare yourself for a marvelous historical narrative about a little-known, brutal civil war.

 

Over Cold War Seas

By Michael Napier. Osprey Publishing, 2025. No audio version.

 

Combat veteran aviator and aviation historian Napier presents an extensively illustrated 40-year history of both Soviet and NATO naval aircraft platforms, uses, and deployments, including land-based and carrier-based aircraft.

 

Focusing on naval air operations in the North Atlantic Ocean as well as the Norwegian and Mediterranean seas, he smartly discusses aircraft development, characteristics, weapons, and tactical and strategic employment.

 

The Conquest of a Continent  

By W. Bruce Lincoln. Cornell University Press, 2007. No audio version.

 

Lincoln first published this book in 1993, telling how imperial Russia expanded its dominion east all the way to Siberia in just 60 years starting in the 1580s.

 

From Peter the Great to Gorbachev, Russian leaders and unrestrained hubris created the world’s largest land empire — but at tremendous cost.

 

Kennedy’s Coup

By Jack Cheevers. Simon & Schuster, 2026. Audio version available.

 

Cheevers reveals the secret political and military scheming and infighting in Washington and South Vietnam that pushed U.S. President John F. Kennedy into a 1963 military coup, an assassination, and a war he did not want — with disastrous consequences for America.

 

This is an excellent historical read.

 

Crucible of War

By Fred Anderson. Vintage, 2001. Audio version available.

 

A dynastic European war had its most impact in North America, as well explained by Anderson, pitting Britain, France, Indians, and colonial settlers all mixed into savage frontier warfare.

 

This period of conflict served as a clear prelude to the American Revolution.

 

[RELATED: Here’s Where You Can Board a World War II German U-Boat]

 

Smoke and Mirrors

By Deborah Lake. Sutton, 2006. No audio version.

 

To combat the U-boat menace in World War I, the British employed Q-ships, armed merchant vessels disguised as harmless freighters, to draw German submarines to the surface to be attacked.

 

This book includes excellent accounts of unusual naval action, including violations of the laws of war.

 

Our fiction entries:

 

The African Queen

By C.S. Forester. Rare Treasure Editions, 2024. Audio version available.

 

Originally published in 1935, this original tale by a premier historical novelist tells the story of a prim missionary and a salty steamboat captain guiding the leaky African Queen on a riverine mission across German-controlled territory in Africa during World War I, in a desperate plan to torpedo a German gunboat on Lake Victoria. The 1951 movie starred Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

 

The Quiet American

By Graham Greene. Penguin Classics, 2004. Audio version available.

 

In Greene’s most controversial novel, originally published in 1955, a naïve, young American agent is sent to Saigon in 1955 on a secret mission in French Indochina. He becomes involved in a deadly triangle with a beautiful Vietnamese woman and a desperate British journalist. It was adapted into two movies: in 1958 with Audie Murphy and in 2002 with Michael Caine.

 

Elkhorn Tavern

By Douglas C. Jones. New American Library, 2010. No audio version.

 

This Civil War fiction is about a northwestern Arkansas farming family (made up of a woman and two children) struggling to survive in 1862 as Union and Confederate forces collide in the Battle of Pea Ridge, exposing the family to the horrors of war and the depredations of renegades and bushwhackers. You’re in for a powerful tale.

 

The Demon of Unrest

By Erik Larson. Crown, 2024. Audio version available.

 

Prolific historical novelist Larson (author of The Devil in the White City) sets this novel in the 1860-1861 time frame, the chaotic and uncertain five months before the start of the Civil War. Featured are President Abraham Lincoln, the wife of a South Carolina planter, a zealous radical, and the Union commander of Fort Sumter. Complex personal interactions bring destructive history to life.

 

Thunder at Noon

By Brian McGowan. Independently published, 2014. No audio version.

 

McGowan’s historical fiction tells of Waterloo in 1815 as viewed by men and women who participate in the days up to and including the battle. This novel, based on one of the world’s most iconic battles, blends history with romance, danger, courage, and passion.

 

The Jøssing Affair

By J.L. Oakley. Fairchance Press, 2016. Audio version available.

 

In Norway during World War II, a Norwegian intelligence agent attempts to set up a resistance network in a coastal village, but hardcore Nazis and quisling traitors deal brutally with locals.

 

Betrayal awaits in this excellent wartime fiction.

 

[RELATED: Discovering the Wartime Past of Paris]

 

Red Tide

By M.P. Woodward. Naval Institute Press, 2025. Audio version available.

 

Popular novelist Woodward’s latest book is a timely story of modern naval warfare and geopolitics — the U.S. versus China in the Pacific theater, fighting for dominance, survival, and the recapture of Taiwan.

 

It’s a naval war of attrition, but who is winning?

 

Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome

By Steven Saylor. St. Martin’s Press, 2007. Audio version available.

 

An author of numerous novels about Rome and its empire, Saylor here covers a thousand years of fictionalized early Roman history, including the city’s founding; the ascent to global power; invasions by the Gauls and Hannibal; and politics and power struggles among historical figures like Romulus and Remus, Coriolanus, and Julius Caesar.

 

This hefty novel of over 500 pages offers exciting historical fiction.

 

Col. William D. Bushnell, USMC (Ret), is a regular contributor to Military Officer.