Total War: Rome II - My Recommended Books (Road to Rome 2)

Hey, what's up guys? This is Oakley, and I figure I'd take a break from the Rome news thing I know it's exciting but I figure you know there's a bit more for those of you who Want to get even more prep for realm 2 total war and I know a lot of you are probably you know Historically inclined or who want to know a lot more about the period either you've already looked into it Or maybe you just want to get you know more detail on the ancient historical battles and the context I know total war personally got me really interested in ancient history So I'm going to go ahead and show you Books from my own personal collection And I'm going to share with you kind of what I would recommend based off different reading levels different authors different time periods and different Subject matter so let's go ahead and get started basically what I want you to do is Definitely go for Steven Pressfield so right here Steven Pressfield has written a lot of these books and he's basically they've been bestsellers these are critically acclaimed books he writes in terms of Fictional characters, but in terms of like historical battles, so it's a blend It's historical not our fiction. I should say so for example. He'll cover in this book This is the gates of fire the battle of Thermopylae now while all the events in the book or the main ones in the book Will be historical you know he makes up the characters the flavors the dialogue of course a lot of history We can't know so he fills in the details And he fills them to an incredible amount of detail these books are a blast to read It's almost like you have a war reporter right there who took down notes of everything everyone was saying Everything is to such a high degree of historical authenticity in terms of details of the weapons Training how it goes into high detail about Spartan Society and warrior culture, so if you want to know more about Sparta, please please read this book Not only does it cover Sparta in a more realistic way than the movie 300 with the bare-chested You know Gerard Butler's, but this is just this goes into the dynamics of the Spartan society their culture their relationship with the helots It follows young Spartans who rise up who witness Battles of the veteran Spartan soldiers you see their tails you see them fight in the Olympics you see sort of the Greek Mentality mentality, and it really comes to life in this book and it epitomizes Basically it comes to a you know a pinnacle at the Battle of Thermopylae at the end of course in the interim You get a lot of battles in between and a lot of preparation sort of preparing for war Diving you into this world the Hellenic world and when it comes to the battle you can't put this book down It's so good And it's not like the battle the movie 300 where you know it's kind of cheesy And you're like how could these Spartans have survived that would have gotten slaughtered well this book goes and sort of puts it in High-detail it puts out every sort of battle Spartans holding the lion their allies their Cyclical ways that they would replace their troops it puts the blood the sweat the tears the death Everything right in front of your eyes. This is a tremendously good book. I recommend it. It's very easy to read This is a great book to get you started on ancient history on getting to know Stephen Pressfield's writing style And I'm getting to know this kind of writing that takes his history in a historical context and puts these you know realistic characters Now following alongside that what I would recommend is his two books that he has covering Alexander the Great the first one is called Virtues or the virtues of war I should say His covers Alexander the Great it puts you of course in the Macedonian princes Campaign so it starts off setting the scene and it talks about Sort of when he witnesses battles of his father Philip you see those you see kind of how he conquered the Greeks and then sort of the management of the Greeks as Macedon started to sort of you know revive itself and try and put its Ambitions into play and then all of sudden Alexander comes to leave his army, and this is really sort of a treatise on Leadership Alexander's character is very very well done in this you grow to love him. He's very very lovable He has huge depth the spirit of the army is really well put into this you can see it's almost like if you were to See like a war movie today, you know it's high detail you see everyone interacting people joke There's all these like idiosyncrasies of the characters of the each battle. It's not like oh this battle here There were 5,000 men, and they flanked no it's it talks about those men rushing the shields hard on them men yelling the Banners you know waving all this stuff. He really brings you into these battles And so this is great you get to see the battle of Isis of Gagamela all the various battles capture of Babylon And all the way until his battles against King Porus and sort of when his troops turned against them And it's this sort of conflict that Alexander has with himself This is a really great book now to follow up with that what I would recommend is the Afghan campaign this focuses exclusively on Alexander's campaign in Sort of the country of where bacteria was where Afghanistan modernly is situated today And it focuses on his three years that he spent in Afghanistan now this takes place sort of following one of the Macedonian soldiers who goes out to the front to join the sort of Alexander's armies as it progresses because of course it wasn't always the same court troops with Alexander He would recruit more troops from home So you get to see that you get to see this kind of innocent child going to war believing in the Macedonian cause Lead it you know following their leader to the ends of the world and sort of how he gets to you know comes to terms With really again. It's brutal conflict, and you see the parallels with today with the insurrectionists You see them trying to conquer this this kingdom in the mountains where there's all sorts of foreign tribes They can't tell who's against them who's with them has a lot of similarities to today's combats And it's just a brutal campaign you get lots of battles exterminations of cities of towns And it's really really gets you into the The idea of these battles as being no drawn-out wars, and this is mostly focused on hit-and-run tactics Not really these huge set-piece battles, but a lot of like maneuvering ambushes This is a really good read to follow up on Alexander's campaigns next that is also by Cian Pressfield I will recommend is going to be tides of war now this follows Instead of the Macedonians as we saw the previous ones this goes back to covering the Greeks now This is going to be covering the Peloponnesian wars between sort of the empiric cause of Athens and her allies against What would have been Sparta and her allies and this is a really really good book all the characters as always are brought to full Life you can see here. It's pretty thick it goes through a lot of details of course You know some of this is his history the rest is kind of you know made up But it's not necessarily made up as in it's fantastical. It's really you know bringing again the characters to life It's really great. You see the failed invasion of Sicily why they might have lost the UC night battles night raids different sort of how the armies lived how they interacted how they had their provisions and how morale worked how the inspirational leaders would have you know really defined the history the Spartan command the Athenian command these the Athenian tactics of having their high walls in the fleets speaking of fleets this has a lot about Naval combat in here. It's really really great something the other books Don't really cover too much this puts you in the seat of the rower of the captain of the various triremes the ramming tactics This is a really good read for that. I would recommend it any of the works by Steven's press Steven Pressfield are exquisite. They're really good 10 out of 10 I would recommend these as you know your starter kits to get into this type of history Next in the series that is also a little more towards the fiction side of historical nonfiction is going to be the warrior of Rome Series now these are kind of like the game Rome where it starts off in historical context And then it kind of weaves its way with its own storyline. That's how these work now These are written by Harry side bottom I know it's unfortunate, but they follow sort of in the later Roman Empire and 270 80 I believe or somewhere around there anyway It's a later Roman Empire and it starts off firing the east so you follow the character Maximus Claudius Ballista and he's a northern barbarian who was raised among the Romans as sort of a political hostage for his his Germanic father And so he was raised in the ways of Romans And he makes his way up the ranks And it's kind of like following gladiator with Maximus you really get to love the character for his leadership for his courage for his honor For his martial prowess and this has five books. It's amazing So warrior Luis puts you in the east and he's you know master of horse He rate there's all these political intrigue and battles and tactics and again as with the books by Stephen Pressfield You really get a sense of what it would have been like on the front line again It's as if you were there all the characters have their own idiosyncrasies each battle is highly detailed you learn about you know Roman mentality how they would have fought and all this stuff It's not like a history book where they say this battle happened here this many troops are here they flanked again It's like you know bringing you with the troops as they go flanking and it's got an extensive Look at all sorts of combat because it's more fiction. He has more ability to Change the subject matter and of course to write five books. He's got to change it up so you see all sorts of dynamics Particularly what I loved was the various sieges you see in this There's like I think I've gone through like six five or six huge siege battles all put out in details You see the planning so instead of you know just jumping right into the attack you see the planning how they would have had like earthworks behind their walls to brace for impact of Catapults the mines and counter mines that would have had the rationing and all this stuff the preparations of the legions And all that stuff. This is a really really good series of books Again the warrior of Rome series by Harry side bottom there five of them I strongly recommend these and they're very easy reads So now that we've covered these two so tides of war in the Stephen Pressfield novels are going to be more You know the Hellenic type of things so either going over mass it on Alexander or sort of Sparta in Athens Then you have more historical nonfiction But now if you want to get the two into the meat of the reality and the historic parts of Rome Here's let's go into this so the first one that you're gonna want to read or maybe if you want to do is Chronologically, it's going to be the rise of Rome by Anthony Everett So this one is a really good job of starting off with as it says the rise of Rome So it's broken up the book into various sections going through the history of Rome starting from its Foundation around 753 all the way up until sort of the rise of the Empire so this book Starts off at the beginning with basically the legends so it starts off with the foundation of Rome It starts off with the legends of our own Romulus and Remus and Neos and stuff like that so, uh, you know what Neos for example was supposed to be a Trojan prince who it Prince who escaped and later went to Carthage started off what would later become the Punic Wars because of the intervention of gods and what he did in Carthage and then he goes But that's all like myths and legends that they created to tie themselves to the Greek Civilization in order to sort of legitimize Romans, so there's all this early legends and Basically, what he does is he lays it out for you for you and says this is what the legends say about Rome And then he goes ahead and picks it apart and talks to you about this is what's most likely true This is what is most likely to have happened And then he talks about the early rule of the Kings talks about which ones do we know are true? What would have happened? And it's really really great and then he walks you through like the invasion how Rome was sacked Brennus who comes in he has all these little anecdotes and stuff like that He's talks about Brennus you know when he sacked Rome and the Romans had to pile on and on the gold until he was able to leave and The the barbarians were you know They were doing scales to measure how much the Romans had to pay in gold and the barbarians King Brennus would throw on his sword to obviously disbalance Throw off the balance of the gold so they would have to pay more and they said dude come on That's completely unfair and he says famously vei victis woe to the vanquished and that's a really famous quote So he has all these parts and details in here. It's really really great Excuse me, which is the highest honor that a Roman Soldier or a general could receive which is where in single combat the Roman leader would have to defeat the enemy general strip him of his armor and return victorious so Talks about a couple cases of that And the first ones was of course supposed to have been Romulus, but that's probably not very credible Otherwise, it would have been a general fighting against the Etruscans at bay. So this is really great So again, it starts off with early history and then builds up until more and more High detail until you reach sort of the the rise of the Roman Empire and you know as that goes on Of course, there's more history because as Rome became more powerful powerful. Everyone was like, oh my god. Look at these guys They're so great and particularly the Greeks were astounded by how this upstart colony You know in a in the center of Italy eventually ruled the Mediterranean what seemed like, you know It just jumped out of nowhere And so people started getting at the time Very interested in Rome either Roman historians themselves or the Greeks and they started writing more histories and taking more records about Rome and actually doing you know Retrospective analysis of old Roman history and so you get to see more and more of that anyways That's going to be a cursory look at the beginnings of Rome and also some really Good details about the Etruscans the war with the Samnites. This is the only one where you really see battles against the Samnites This is really good in the Etruscans in early history. This is a good start for getting you into the beginnings of Rome Then what you want to do is you want to follow up and keep going with Adrian Goldsworthy. He's a really great author So this one if those of you who are coming here and who enjoy Rome because of the battles This is where you're going to want to take a look at again sort of another treatise on Leadership this one is going to be in the name of Rome again Adrian Goldsworthy and this basically goes through all the famous Roman generals throughout Roman history in the Roman Republican Empire and not only does it go through the famous ones of Julius Caesar the Scipios and all that stuff But it goes through basically all of them throughout Roman history whether you know of them or not Whether there's a lot of historical information or not He goes through and basically tells tells you about you know, what were the things the Romans were facing? How did this particular general revive his army conquer the people he was supposed to conquer? What was the political intrigue around him? How did he change the legions? What were his battles? What were his tactics? This is really good for covering Roman generalship and also the evolution of Rome's armies now It doesn't really follow, you know a continuous history of Roman It kind of jumps through between the generals But this is a really good read if you want to jump directly to Roman leadership and Roman battles now next this is Kind of my favorite or it is my favorite period of Roman history is going to be the Punic Wars These are the books you want to read? So again, Adrian Goldsworthy the fall of Carthage and this one is going to be the ghost of Cannae by Robert L O'Connell, so they're both covering the Punic Wars This one focuses more on setting the stage and then exploring the second Punic War Whereas this one is one the first second and third Punic Wars. They're both really good this one I would say I would start with this one because it covers all the Punic Wars It's really good high detail season by season week by week battle by battle It goes through all of it follows the various generals of both sides talks about tactics. It includes maps plans of the various battles and battle sites the tactics employed Yeah, let me try and pick out one of the ones here it talks about the various campaigns how the war started the sort of interim Time between the wars it talks about the generals as I said and then here for example You can see the siege of Syracuse it goes through sets up the battles the approach of the Romans the defenses It's a really great book that covers all of these as I said season by season and when both of these when you get to Hannibal, it's just really awesome. I can't get enough He's one of my favorite generals and this is where you're gonna go to learn about Hannibal Of course, there's more specific books about Hannibal I'll recommend later But these are more about you know Broadly the Punic Wars and I would recommend these this one for all three and then go ahead and follow up with this one this is Specifically about the Battle of Cannae and the legacy of Hannibal going over the second Punic Wars Not all only battles and strategies But kind of what happened to Rome how it changed and was able to turn the tide of war in both of these Lake Trebia battle of Trasimene battle of Cannae The failed invasion of Africa by Regulus and then all this stuff. It's really really great So this would uh, this would cover your your thirst for the Punic War history Next you get soldiers and ghosts by J. E. Lendon. This one's pretty good. It's a little more Weighty and a bit harder to read the beginning part of it You can see it's already pretty thick the beginning part of it kind of takes a more scholarly approach to it. It's basically a Theory that's trying to explain why the the ancient Greeks who so much were in love with Homer and the idea of individual combat the warrior ethos Singling out another guy fighting man-on-man the the honor of that How could these people who so embraced Homer's way of fighting and that whole warrior? Mentality, how could they go from this one-on-one combat to fighting in massed phalanx? How did they make that connection? How could they still claim to inherit Homer's ideals while fighting as a basically a blob of men? So it goes into talking about that then it goes into talking about Rome and Roman early Roman warfare and going through progressively Roman warfare. It has these cool sketches Throughout artwork kind of showing you what the Roman legions were like It starts from the early sort of masses of Romans who were Who early on fought in the style of the Greeks with sort of hoplites then it goes through the early? Legions and the the manipular army of Rome and then it goes into the cohorts later on you get these awesome drawings here that kind of identified the different Roman armor and stuff like that you get some Siege of Jerusalem is really really in-depth in this one And then you also get some some of the Gallic campaigns and stuff like that throughout here You get the description of the legions as I said weapons tactics all that stuff this is a good read if you want to focus a bit more on more the scholastic analysis of Warfare it's a bit thick though. I'll warn you Next on the list is gonna be Caesar. I personally have not read this one yet, but it's by Adrian Goldsworthy So I'm really really excited to read this learn more about the Gallic campaign now I've done my own research on Gaul, Vercingetorix and All the battles at Alesia. It's very very impressive, and I want to learn more so you know if you've read this book Let me know in the comments below what you thought of it Let me know actually what you think about all these books if you recommend any other books Leave you know something in the comments below If you've read these and you'd like them if you recommend other ones that would be great to share and in the description below I'll link you to where you can get all of these you can get them online anyway at Amazon for like five to ten bucks Each you get them used they're all good condition. You know I find that people who get these history books you treat them kindly So yeah, I get this whole thing It'll get you ready for Rome Get you into that historical mindset learn a lot more about Rome and that game will be so much more enjoyable If you know the full context of it, and you can really appreciate the details that are in Rome, too Anyways, thanks so much guys for listening for so long. I will see you next time peace out Actually, I'll end with this Delinda Escartago. Thank you