Book Reading Group? Corbett's "The Campaign of Trafalgar"

[ObiQuiet]

Would anyone be interested in reading and discussing Corbett’s The Campaign of Trafalgar together in this forum?

 

It’s a well researched “Staff-level” study of just about every topic from the continental political situation, the land-based military strategies, naval strategy, fleet tactics, to individual cruiser ship movements.   Corbett discusses who knew what, and when, at all levels of the command chain from Pitt, Napoleon, and the Czar all the way down to individual captains.    Details include the signal logs from the battle, charts of individual ship movements in the months and weeks leading up to the battle, and information collected from the best French and Spanish sources to give them a fair hand too.   (Of course, he may have got things wrong in some instances.)

 

The book covers a wide range of topics in 400 pages and 26 chapters, so I thought maybe a two-weeks-per-chapter schedule would work.  It would take about a year.

 

Kind of like a book club – clarifying, discussing, criticizing, speculating, learning… I know there are a few who are similarly twisted.

 

If this intrigues you, take a look at the Preface and the Table of Contents and let me know what you think and how we might approach it.

 

I’d also be open to choosing a different book.

 

Your obt. servant, etc.

 

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P.S. For those interested, there are two editions of the book that I know of:

 

·      The one I have is the 1910 edition

·      A later two-volume edition

 

Despite Google’s claims to “carefully” scan their books, they don’t scan the fold-out plates.  And, many library copies have had plates cut out and stolen.  Of course, the plates won’t show up in a print-on-demand version either.

 

About a year ago, I acquired a real copy and I can scan the dozen or so maps that are not visible in the ebook.   Here’s one of them for Calder's retreat, a 16MB PDF.    It takes some careful reading with the text to sort it out, but it gives you a good idea of the depth of research in this book.  (Animations would help a lot – hmm, an idea(!))

[Grim DeGrim]

This sounds really interesting, and therefore, I am interested.

How do I download it from the link provided? I've had this challenge with Google play, dispite being logged in.

I'm the opposite of a speed reader, so I'd like to tackle a chapter to see how it reads.

[ObiQuiet]

After you click on the cover to open the book, there's a gear icon at the top right for downloading:

Edited March 15, 2015 by Lt. Obiquiet

[Grim DeGrim]

Ah, perhaps my cell phone is the issue. I shall try it from home. Tyvm

[Jeremiah O'Brien]

Sounds quite interesting, I'll look into it.