Military history book series in reading order

Bernard Cornwell

67 books• 10 series

Bernard Cornwell is an English historical novelist, born on 23 February 1944, who has also written a history of the Waterloo campaign. The Richard Sharpe novels, about a rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars, are Cornwell's best-known work. The Saxon Stories run to thirteen novels about how England was unified. Cornwell's historical fiction draws mainly on English history across five series, alongside one series of contemporary thrillers, and the historical novels carry an end note comparing the story to the historical record. The catalogue lists 67 books from 1981, when Sharpe's Gold appeared, to Sharpe's Storm (2025).

W.E.B. Griffin was the best-known pen name of William Edmund Butterworth III (November 10, 1929 to February 12, 2019), an American author of military and detective fiction. Under the Griffin name Butterworth published 59 novels across seven series, 21 of them written with Butterworth's son, William E. Butterworth IV. The catalogue files 194 titles here, including 1960s books issued as W.E. Butterworth, Webb Beech and Walker E. Blake. Series include Brotherhood of War, Presidential Agent and M*A*S*H, and World War II and the U.S. Marine Corps recur in the subjects.

Harry Sidebottom writes historical fiction and history set in ancient Rome, with 22 books catalogued from Ancient Warfare (2004) to Those Who Are About to Die (2026). Warrior of Rome and Throne of the Caesars are the named series, and the character Ballista appears in the subjects. Fire in the East (2008), King of Kings (2009), Lion of the Sun (2010), The Caspian Gates (2011) and The Wolves of the North (2012) are among the novels. Iron And Rust (2014) and Blood and Steel (2015) follow.

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.

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.

Vivian V.A. Stuart has 78 catalogued books, beginning with Along Came Ann (1953), and several carry the names Alex Stuart and William Stuart Long. Early titles include The Captain's Table (1953), Ship's Nurse (1954) and Doctor in the Tropics (1955). Romance, doctors in fiction, the Royal Navy, naval history and the Crimean War appear among the subjects. The two series are Phillip Hazard and Alexander Sheridan.

Andrew Roberts

30 books• 1 series

Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia, born 13 January 1963, is an English popular historian and journalist whose research concentrates on English-speaking nations, particularly those socially tied to the United Kingdom. Roberts holds the Bonnie and Tom McCloskey Visiting Research Fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Lehrman Institute Distinguished Lectureship at the New York Historical Society, and was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in London from 2013 to 2021. The catalogue lists 30 titles, from 'The Holy Fox': The Life of Lord Halifax (1991) through Salisbury: Victorian Titan (2000), Napoleon and Wellington: The Long Duel (2001) and Waterloo: June 18, 1815 (2005) to Napoleon and His Marshals in 2026. Subjects name biography, military history, Winston Churchill, the Second World War and the Napoleonic wars.

Hampton Sides

10 books

Hampton Sides, born Wade Hampton Sides in 1962, is an American historian, journalist and author of narrative history and literary nonfiction. Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail and On Desperate Ground are among the ten Sides books catalogued between Stomping Grounds (1992) and The Wide Wide Sea (2024). Sides is editor-at-large for Outside magazine, and magazine work by Sides has twice been nominated for National Magazine Awards. Subjects on file include military history, campaigns and Martin Luther King Jr.

Edward Marston writes historical crime fiction, and the catalogue of 117 books runs to The Corpse on the Bristol Train (2026). Inspector Robert Colbeck, Elizabethan Theater, Domesday, Home Front Detective, Dillman & Masefield / Ocean Liner Mysteries, Christopher Redmayne, Captain Rawson and Bow Street Rivals are among the series. Nicholas Bracewell and Lord Westfield's Men appear in the subjects, together with theater, police work, railroad travel and World War I. Alan Saxon and Merlin Richards are further series, and Marston is still publishing.

Max Hastings

37 books• 1 series

Max Hastings is a British journalist and military historian, born in 1945, who reported abroad for the BBC, served as editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph and edited the Evening Standard. Histories of war make up most of the writing: Bomber Command (1979), Victory in Europe (1985), Armageddon (2004) and Sword Beach: D-Day Baptism by Fire (2025). Thirty-three books are catalogued from America 1968 (1969) onward. Hastings also writes a column for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes to The Times and The Sunday Times.

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.

Robert Leckie

30 books• 4 series

Robert Hugh Leckie, December 18, 1920 to December 24, 2001, was an American author and journalist who served in the United States Marine Corps during the Second World War. More than 40 books followed, in both non-fiction and fiction. The memoir Helmet for My Pillow, together with Eugene B. Sledge's With the Old Breed, supplied the basis for the HBO series The Pacific in 2010, where James Badge Dale plays Leckie. The catalogue lists 30 titles dated from 1957 to 2024, including Strong Men Armed (1961), Conflict: The History Of The Korean War (1962) and Challenge for the Pacific (1966), with Sandy Steele Adventures and Americans At War recorded as series.

John C. McManus writes military history. Recorded subjects centre on the United States Army and the Second World War, taking in military campaigns, Normandy, military life and the history of the American armed forces. Sixteen books span 1998 to 2023, from The Deadly Brotherhood (1998) to To the End of the Earth (2023). The books are long, at a median of 464 pages across the 13 measured. Titles include The Americans at D-Day (2004), Alamo in the Ardennes (2007), Grunts (2010) and September Hope (2012).

Rick Atkinson

11 books• 2 series

Military history is Rick Atkinson's subject, researched at book length and published in trilogies. The Liberation Trilogy covers the Second World War in An Army at Dawn (2002), The Day of Battle (2007) and The Guns at Last Light (2013); the Revolution Trilogy turns to the American War of Independence and reaches The Fate of the Day in 2025. Earlier titles include The Long Gray Line (1989) and Crusade, on the Persian Gulf War. Atkinson's books are long, at a median of 644 pages.

R.F. Delderfield wrote English family sagas and popular history. The catalogue holds 55 titles published between 1946 and 1973, gathered into the Swann Family Saga, Horseman Riding By, Avenue and Diana. England, family life across generations, soldiers, the Napoleonic Wars and the Second World War supply the material, and Delderfield wrote history and biography alongside the novels. The 1950s were the busiest decade, and the run closes with Give Us This Day in 1973.

Matthew Hervey, an officer of the fictional British 6th Light Dragoons, carries Allan Mallinson's fiction from the late Napoleonic Wars into colonial campaigns in India, North America and South Africa. A Close Run Thing (1999) opens the sequence, followed by The Nizam's Daughters (2000), A Regimental Affair (2001), A Call to Arms (2002), The Sabre's Edge (2003) and Company of Spears (2006). Mallinson, born in 1949, is an English author and a retired British Army brigadier, and also writes military history, reaching the First World War. The catalogue holds 19 books through 2020, at a median 448 pages.

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.

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.

Manda Scott

21 books• 5 series

Manda Scott, born in 1962, trained as a veterinary surgeon at the University of Glasgow before becoming a novelist, columnist, blogger, podcaster and occasional broadcaster. Scott grew up in Glasgow and now lives in Shropshire. Her 21 books start with Hen's Teeth (1996). Dreaming the Eagle (2003), Dreaming the Bull, Dreaming the Hound and Dreaming the Serpent Spear followed, and the Iceni, Romans and Britons are listed subjects. Scott's series are Boudica, Rome, Kellen Stewart, Storycuts and Capitaine Inés Picaut, and Any Human Power (2024) is her newest book.

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.

Simon Scarrow

65 books• 11 series

Simon Scarrow writes historical fiction, most of it Roman. Quintus Licinius Cato and Lucius Cornelius Macro lead the Eagle series, which opens with Under the Eagle (2000). The Roman Arena, Gladiator and Pirata lines share that setting, while the Revolution Quartet and the Berlin wartime thrillers featuring CI Schenke move elsewhere. Sixty-six catalogued books reach The Sword of Rome, and Sons of the Reich is scheduled for 2027.

Arthur Conan Doyle

164 books• 18 series

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 to 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories about the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson. A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of Four (1890) and A Scandal in Bohemia (1891) are among the catalogued titles. The Lost World (1912) introduced Professor Challenger and gave its name to a subgenre of speculative fiction. Doyle also produced over 200 stories and articles, four volumes of poetry and stage works, and was knighted in the 1902 Coronation Honours. The Captain of the Polestar (1883) is the earliest catalogued title.

Captain Richard Woodman (1944-2024) was an English merchant navy officer, novelist and naval historian who served mainly with Trinity House and retired in 1997 after a 37-year career at sea to write full time. Nathaniel Drinkwater carries the Napoleonic naval fiction, opening with An Eye of the Fleet (1981) and running through A King's Cutter (1982), A Brig of War (1983), The Bomb Vessel (1985) and Baltic Mission (1986). William Kite, Kit Faulkner, James Dunbar and Sword of the State follow, with A History of the British Merchant Navy and Keepers of the Sea on the nonfiction side. The catalogue holds 74 books through 2023, at a median 250 pages.

Antony Beevor

21 books• 2 series

Sir Antony Beevor, born 14 December 1946, is a British military historian. Beevor's popular histories concentrate on the Second World War and the Spanish Civil War, and more recent work covers the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War. After Winchester College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Beevor commanded a tank troop in the 11th Hussars in Germany and left the British Army in 1970 to write. Beevor has been a visiting professor at Birkbeck, University of London, and the University of Kent. The catalogue lists 21 books from The Violent Brink (1975) to Rasputin: The Downfall of the Romanovs (2026), including Stalingrad and Berlin: The Downfall 1945.