Osprey Books — Blog — Stuart Ellis-Gorman

The Frozen Chosen by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

The breakout from Chosin Reservoir is one of those almost-mythical moments in the history of the United States Marine Corps that shows their very best and most impressive qualities against the face of adversity. It was also undoubtedly the result of a colossal fuck up by US high command, an example of disastrous strategic thinking that needlessly endangered the troops on the ground. It’s hard not to be a little triumphalist about the Marine Corps’ (and their allies’) achievements in November and December 1950, but in doing so it is too easy to fall into the trap of making the Korean War about Americans and losing sight of what any of it meant. The Frozen Chosen is a pop history* account of the Chosin Breakout, as well as the war up to that point and up through MacArthur’s firing after, and while I had a reasonably good time reading it I can’t say it blew me away. It has strange priorities in places and the narrative is not as coherent as it should be, but it also does a good job at sharing the blame for the disastrous strategy without falling into overly simplistic narratives.

Crécy: Battle of the Five Kings by Michael Livingston

If you were to ask me to explain the Battle of Crécy to you, I would most likely make some kind of sucking noise, stare into the middle distance, and say something like “Oh boy, where do I even start?” Despite, or possibly because of, being one of the most famous battles of the Middle Ages, the story of Crécy is hopelessly difficult to unpack. The sources describing the battle are so extensive that Michael Livingston and Kelly DeVries published an entire book, the invaluable Crécy Sourcebook, that just contained ones from the roughly fifty years after the battle. There is so much information around Crécy and so much of it contradictory that putting together a coherent narrative is a challenge for even the greatest of scholars. That also means that it is a battle ripe for reinterpretation. Enter Michael Livingston, of the aforementioned sourcebook, and his new history of the battle, Crécy: Battle of the Five Kings. This is a new popular history of the battle wherein Livingston advances some probably quite contentious views on the history of Crécy.