Generals book series in reading order

Stephen E. Ambrose

36 books• 4 series

Stephen Edward Ambrose, January 10, 1936 to October 13, 2002, was an American historian whose books concentrate on the Second World War, the American West, and the presidencies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Ambrose taught history from 1960 to 1995, joined the University of New Orleans in 1971 and became Boyd Professor of History there in 1989. Ambrose founded the Eisenhower Center at that university and was a co-founder of the National D-Day Museum, since renamed the National World War II Museum. The catalogue holds 36 books from Halleck (1962) to This Vast Land (2003), with Nixon and Eisenhower recorded as multi-volume series.

John Buchan

84 books• 4 series

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (26 August 1875 to 11 February 1940), was a Scottish novelist, historian, army officer and Unionist politician who served as the 15th Governor General of Canada. Buchan published a first novel in 1895, the year of Sir Quixote of the Moors, the earliest catalogued title, and went on to write more than a hundred books, The Thirty-Nine Steps the best known among them. Series include Richard Hannay, the Leithen Stories and Dickson McCunn. Buchan studied at Glasgow and Oxford, practised as a barrister, and in 1901 was private secretary to Lord Milner in southern Africa near the end of the Boer War. Subjects include the First World War, the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, the intelligence service and Scotland.

Who HQ is the credit on 429 children's nonfiction biographies in the catalogue, published from 2002 to 2026. The run opens with Who Was Albert Einstein?, Who Was Amelia Earhart? and Who Was Ben Franklin? (all 2002) and reaches Who Is Vera Wang (2026). Subjects include biography, history and juvenile nonfiction for readers aged 8 to 12. Other names credited on some of the books include Megan Stine (7), John Hinderliter (7) and Nico Medina (4).

Adrian Goldsworthy

32 books• 6 series

Adrian Goldsworthy is a British historian and novelist, born in 1969, who specialises in the history of ancient Rome. The catalogue holds 32 books from The Roman Army At War (1996) to Athens and Sparta (2026). Titles include The Punic Wars (2000), Caesar's Civil War (2002), Caesar (2006) and Cannae (2007). Series listed for Goldsworthy are Napoleonic Wars, Vindolanda and City Of Victory, and subjects cover the Roman army, the Punic Wars and the Peninsular War of 1807 to 1814.

Conn Iggulden writes historical fiction about empires and wars: the Emperor books on Rome, the Conqueror series around Genghis Khan, the Wars of the Roses, the Athenian novels and a Nero trilogy. The Gates of Rome (2002) opens a catalogue of 42 books reaching Inferno in 2026, and The Dangerous Book for Boys (2006) heads the non-fiction. The Empire of Salt fantasy appeared under the name C.F. Iggulden.

Jeff Shaara writes historical war fiction, and the 21 catalogued books cover the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War II and the Korean War. Gods and Generals (1996) opens the list, followed by The Last Full Measure (1998) and Gone for Soldiers (2000). Series lines group the novels by conflict, among them World War II: 1939-1945 and Civil War: 1861-1865, Western Theater. The Unfinished Work of Abraham Lincoln (2026) is the newest title. Born Jeffrey M. Shaara on February 21, 1952, Shaara is the son of the Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Shaara.

Victor Davis Hanson

30 books• 3 series

Military history and classical Greece run through the 30 catalogued books of Victor Davis Hanson, an American classicist, military historian and conservative political commentator born September 5, 1953. The Western Way of War (1989) comes first, followed by Hoplites (1991), The Other Greeks (1995), Fields Without Dreams (1996), Who Killed Homer (1998) and Carnage and Culture (2001); The Counterrevolution (2026) is the newest. Hanson is professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a visiting professor at Hillsdale College. Hanson received the National Humanities Medal in 2007, and agriculture and family farms also appear among the subjects.

Harry Turtledove

141 books• 28 series

Harry Turtledove, born June 14, 1949, is an American historian and novelist of alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction and mystery, based in Southern California. The catalogue counts 142 books, starting with Wereblood and Werenight (1979), published as Eric G. Iverson, and listing The Succulent Succubus for 2027. Other pen names are H. N. Turteltaub, Dan Chernenko and Mark Gordian. The Videssos Cycle, Southern Victory / Timeline-191, Worldwar, Colonization, Crosstime Traffic, The War That Came Early and Gerin the Fox are among the series. World War II and the American Civil War are frequent subjects.

Paul Doherty writes historical mysteries set largely in England, with 127 books catalogued from The Death of a King (1985) to The Meadows of Murder (2026). Recurring detectives include Hugh Corbett, Brother Athelstan, Kathryn Swinbrooke and Amerotke. Other series cover the Canterbury Tales Mysteries, Ancient Rome, Egyptian Mysteries, Nicholas Segalla, Mathilde of Westminster, Margaret Beaufort and Vlad Drakulya. Satan in St Mary's (1986) and Spy in Chancery (1988) are among the early titles.

Colleen McCullough

24 books• 2 series

Colleen McCullough was an Australian novelist, born in 1937 and died in 2015, who trained as a neurophysiologist before publishing fiction. Her 24 catalogued books span 1974 to 2013, opening with Tim, written while McCullough worked as a research assistant at the Yale School of Medicine, and closing with Bittersweet. The Thorn Birds (1977) sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and was adapted as a television miniseries. Masters of Rome is her Roman historical sequence, from The First Man in Rome (1990); Carmine Delmonico is her detective. The catalogue is likely complete.

Steven Pressfield

23 books

Steven Pressfield writes historical fiction and nonfiction. The catalogue opens with The Legend of Bagger Vance (1995), a novel about golfers, and runs to 23 books through 2026. The fiction takes in the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, the Second World War and military history generally, across titles such as Gates of Fire (1998), The Virtues of War (2004) and Killing Rommel (2008). The nonfiction turns to creative work and the resistance that blocks it, in The War of Art (2002) and Do the Work (2011).

Mary Renault

17 books• 2 series

Mary Renault was the pen name of Eileen Mary Challans, a British novelist best known for historical fiction set in ancient Greece. Renault studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford, worked as a nurse and began with contemporary romances such as Purposes of Love (1939). The ancient-Greek novels followed, among them The Last of the Wine (1956) and The King Must Die (1958), which opens the Theseus series. A move to South Africa in 1948 with her partner, Julie Mullard, let Renault write openly gay characters away from English censorship. The Alexander the Great novels close the 17-title catalogue at Funeral Games (1981).

Daniel Abraham

17 books• 5 series

Daniel Abraham (Daniel James Abraham, born November 14, 1969) is an American novelist, comic book writer, screenwriter and television producer who also writes as M. L. N. Hanover and, with Ty Franck, as James S. A. Corey. The Long Price Quartet and The Dagger and the Coin are fantasy series, and The Expanse, co-written with Franck, became a television series (2015 to 2022). A Shadow in Summer (2006) is the first of 18 catalogued books. Kithamar is another series, and Judge of Worlds is due in 2027.

William Shakespeare

49 books• 5 series

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor, born around 23 April 1564 and died on 23 April 1616. Shakespeare is widely ranked as the greatest writer in English and the leading dramatist in the world, and is called England's national poet and the Bard of Avon. The surviving works, collaborations included, number about 39 plays, 154 sonnets and 3 long narrative poems. The plays exist in every major living language and are staged more often than those of any other playwright. The catalogue sorts the plays into Comedy Plays, Tragedy Plays and History Plays, with titles such as King John, Richard II, Henry V, The Tempest and The Comedy of Errors.

H.W. Brands writes history and biography centred on American presidents, the Cold War and United States foreign relations. The catalogue lists 48 books from Cold Warriors (1988) to American Patriarch (2026), and includes the series Foreign Relations and the Presidency. Early titles are India and the United States, The Specter of Neutralism, Inside the Cold War, Bound to Empire, The Devil We Knew and The Reckless Decade. Brands is still publishing.

Charles Whiting (18 December 1926 to 24 July 2007) was a British writer and military historian credited with some 350 fiction and non-fiction books. Besides the Whiting name, the pseudonyms used include Duncan Harding, Ian Harding, John Kerrigan, Leo Kessler, Klaus Konrad, K.N. Kostov and Duncan Stirling. Subjects include the Second World War, the Battle of the Ardennes, military campaigns, biography and the secret service. The catalogue holds 152 books under the Whiting name, starting with The Frat Wagon (1954), and includes Decision at St. Vith, Patton, Bradley and Skorzeny. Series include T-Force, Assault Troop, Stuka Squadron, Special Boat Squadron and Spymaster.

Brad Strickland, born William Bradley Strickland on 27 October 1947, is an American writer mainly of fantasy and science fiction, using the name Brad Strickland for all but one novel, written as Will Bradley. Strickland's The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer (2008) concluded the Lewis Barnavelt series created by John Bellairs, and Johnny Dixon also appears among the catalogue's characters. The catalogue lists 63 books from To Stand Beneath the Sun (1986) to The Stone, the Cipher, and the Shadows (2022). Series include Pirate Hunter, Thaumia, Mars Year One, Grimoire, King Kong of Skull Island and Dinotopia Digest. Subjects include children's fiction, magic, pirates, dogs and the supernatural.

Stephen Dando-Collins

36 books• 1 series

Stephen Dando-Collins, born 1950, is an Australian historical author writing on antiquity, on American, Australian, British and French history, and on the two world wars. The Roman legions supply his best-known subject, in Caesar's Legion, Nero's Killing Machine, Cleopatra's Kidnappers and Rebels Against Rome. Standing Bear Is a Person turns to Native American legal history, and Caesar the War Dog is his children's series. 36 titles run from 1986 to 2023.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee on 1 August 1957, Madison Smartt Bell is an American novelist whose three novels on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution appeared between 1995 and 2004; the catalogue files them as the Haitian Revolutionary Trilogy. Earlier fiction established Bell as a writer, beginning with The Washington Square Ensemble (1983) and continuing through Waiting for the End of the World (1985), Straight Cut (1986) and The Year of Silence (1987). The 27 catalogued titles reach Child of Light: A Biography of Robert Stone (2020), and slave insurrections, Haiti, history, terrorists and American short stories appear among the subjects.

Winston Groom

24 books• 2 series

Forrest Gump (1986) is the best known novel by Winston Groom (1943–2020), an American author. The book became a 1990s film directed by Robert Zemeckis with Tom Hanks, and Groom followed it with the sequel Gump & Co. in 1995. Groom also wrote 15 nonfiction books, five of them biographies, on topics including the Civil War. El Paso (2016) was his final novel, and The Patriots (2020) is the last of 24 catalogued books.

Thomas E. Ricks

12 books• 1 series

Thomas E. Ricks, born September 25, 1955, is an American journalist and author covering the military and national security. Ricks shared the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting twice, with Wall Street Journal (2000) and Washington Post (2002) teams, and has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia and Kosovo. The catalogue lists 12 books from 1997 to 2026, including Making the Corps (1997), Fiasco (2006), The Generals (2012) and Churchill and Orwell (2017), along with the Ryan Tapia series. Big Money, Small Town (2026) is the newest.