What do you think of Osprey military history books

Very brief and not enough, when the book finish , I feel I red a newspaper, but a good project

 

The last post was mine but somehow it took it as guest.

The stuff on early imperial China is reasonably good, but the "Medieval" and "Late Imperial" volumes are very inaccurate.

I got one on the Hussite Wars and it was pretty good. I haven't checked out any other ones though.

Osprey books vary a lot in quality. The quality ranges from pure crap to great sources of learning. I have some 30 books, a few are really bad, most are mediochre and a handful are great. Of the books I own the worst are written by David Nicolle and Stephen Turnbull. Both authors tend to be careless with facts and in the case of Nicolle - way too fictious and speculative.

The older books tend to be boring (dry texts and unimaginative illustrations) and contain outdated facts, especially if they deal with ancient times. The illustrators and their works also vary in quality - Angus McBride is a great artist but his numerous illustrations tend to be very fictious and historical inaccurate. Graham Turner on the other hand is one of the world's top military illustrators whose illustrations are both beautifuly realistic and historical accurate. Please check out his webpage btw. 

i have 2 Campaign books Yarmuk by Nicolle and Kalka River by Shpakovski & Nicolle, both are of the highest quality, don't know about Constantinople or Hattin but the medieval age and especially the Islamic world is were Nicolles excells.

I find the Osprey series more than decent, especially the MaA and Elites series, but I am fairly dissapointed with the campaign series. So far I've read two of them (lended from a friend to write some articles) by the same author (D. Nicols) about the sack of Constantinople and Hattin and they are both not quite good. Many innacuracies, mediocre descriptions, lack of background, lack of analytical thinking... Perhaps it's just the particular author (even though he's considered one of the top writers that work for Osprey) or the very tight-ass military orientation of those books (when describing an event as Hattin or Constantinople needs a solid background of general knowledge pertaining the particular periods and events).

The plates are top-quality though and fairly accurate. Although in the Ancient Greeks series they have numerous innacuracies (for instance, Osprey's books is one of the most infleuental factors in the spread of the utterly false idea that Spartans fought butt-naked).

What do you think of "Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars"?
Is this book good?

Originally posted by axeman Titles are-- from men at arms: The Armies of Islam 7th - 11th Centuries The Age of Charlemagne

Good choices..
Both older books but very good.  Armies of Islam is a bit superficial but that is because it is covering a vast range of states. Age of Charlemen is excellent.

Almost all the Osprey books are good value for money, however there are overlaps and many of the texts are dated so include errors that you may not be aware of.  The Medieval European books are very good, the Chinese try to do too much (Though I think Chris did an outstanding job in the space available).
You should be aware that for most books the text is written by one author, the illustrations added by an editor and the colour plates comissioned from an artist soth the three can be a bit disparate.

The 'Men at Arms', 'New Vanguard', 'Warrior' and 'Elite' books are small but often contain a very large amount of useful information.  The 'Essential Histoeies' series I'm less impressed with, I prefer academic texts, and find the Ospreys a bit too short. Some prople love the 'Campaigns' series but I've never been excited enough to buy one.

They occasionaly do some 'specials' that are basically three 'Men at Arms' titiles published as a single book, these are very good value.

Again,  for more specific advice let us know the titles you are considering for a first purchase, or a specific subject.


Edited by tadamson