The Republic by Plato

Have you done your annual re-reading of The Republic?

The Prince by Machiavelli

Finally got around to reading this classic. A short read and well worth the time.

Nietzsche by Walter Kaufmann

I generally try to read great philosophers first before reading secondary literature, so I don't read the greats through the lens of lesser minds. There is a reason the great philosophers are great, right? I've read some of Nietzsche - Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals - but have to admit I never quite got what he was getting at, certainly not the way Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript made immediate sense to me.  That's been cleared up for me by Kaufmann's book - which I found in a used book store for $1.99 a few months ago. It still gives me a thrill to browse used book stores for such cheap treasures.

Verdun by John Mosier

Interesting take on the Battle of Verdun in WW1 that takes on the conventional wisdom. Mosier makes a strong case that it was not, nor was intended to be, a battle of attrition. He points out things like the fact that the German casualty rate was no lower before and after the battle than during it. He also makes a good case that the first German Chief of Staff, von Falkenhayn, was way ahead of everyone else (both in Germany and among the Allied nations) in understanding the nature of the war.