I'm not sure if it's me looking in the wrong places but it seems to me that new books on WWII are fewer and far between compared to say 10/15 years ago. I don't see as many books on the airwar as I used to. What do you guys think? Is the internet a factor with info easy to source?
Trouble is, to write a book can take months or years. The manuscript for mine on a WW2 subject took me a long time of research and unfortunately some of the eye witnesses passed away already and I chased the families for help. Stefan. NB: please give me another year and I'll be ready.
Stefan, you make a valid point. I have been thinking about writing a book and thankfully, I interviewed or spoke to the relevant veterans some time ago. It would be difficult to start such a project now with so few left to talk to.
Amazon UK have circa 100 WW2 related books being released this year ( some in paperback to follow hardback) Penguin below with a few New Releases: World War II Military History Books | Penguin Random House
Not necessarily new titles, but may be of interest: http://bookshop.nationalarchives.gov.uk/Military-history/Second-world-war/
Pen & Sword keep emailing us with new titles to review but we did that awhile ago & it was more trouble than it was worth.
Jerry Murland is keeping us going with new slants on the 1940 campaign in France & Flanders....much more detail on individual actions than was available in the past, but the BEF had missed out on the level that more glamorous arms and actions received long ago. Maybe the air war has all been done, Arnhem as well, I suspect.
There are a decent number of titles across my fields of interest, but apart from a smattering of re-discovered memoirs and diaries we seem to be reaching the end of the flow of the first-hand accounts. What we have instead are on the one hand an awful lot of 'campaign' or 'theatre' books that cover some heavily-trodden ground at a fairly shallow level, and on the other postgraduate dissertations that pursue 'themes' across multiple wars and periods and are often as much sociology texts as military history. These can be excellent, but to be frank some scarcely cohere as single works and many require far more editorial work that they are given.
Wrong books often sent to volunteer reviewers. Reviewers didn't bother reviewing. I hated doing them myself as it felt like doing school homework.
On a positive note, I'm not running out of old books to buy yet. Still having to ration and prioritise...
I agree that the diminishing numbers of veterans is a factor here naturally. Not far off the ‘last of’ books that spiked with the remaining WW1 vets a while back. ‘Last of the Battle of Britain pilots’ will be a title before too long.
From my experience there are increasing barriers to entry, and many publishers are reprinting older works. There's also a lot of dross out there. 1. Archive costs have markedly increased. 2. Image fees from nationals remains prohibitive for a new generation of historians. 3. Said new generation having less cash/time to invest in publication. 4. Academics unable to write more popular works due to REF framework etc. 5. Aforementioned nationals publishing lavishly illustrated, frequently factoidal work, that historians can never dream of including. Such pressures do see more cheap and cheerful works hit the market, often treading the same ground.
