Drach Book Reviews - Episode 002

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-08

[00:00:16]Hello everybody and welcome to well DRA book reviews episode2. It's been a little while since we did episode1 but in the grand scheme of things it's not too long and I have been obviously reading many books but I thought we're going to do the same format as we did last time with a few minor changes. So again let me know what you think of the format in the comments below. Little bits that I can improve etc. So today we're going to follow the same premise as before. We're going to look at two brand new books recently published and then an older book. Although in this case there is a little bit of a special circumstance cuz that older book is coming back into print which is quite nice. So our first subject for today is this book. This is obviously the Africa ship. Um move my hand there by Dominic.

[00:01:01]Now some of you may already know uh Mr. from the works that he's done on yubot warfare in the North Atlantic. Uh but while admittedly this is an as you might guess a zeppelin an airship and therefore it flies it's not a water-based vessel it is still incredibly interesting because one a lot of the zeppelin were actually under command of the German Navy and two well it's big so it's it's still a ship. Now, this is obviously talking primarily about the attempt to get an as German Zeppelin to German East Africa. Uh, German East Africa and that situation not being one of the most written about sections of World War I. However, uh, I would like to draw your attention to a few features I find really, really nice.

[00:01:48]So, I'm just going to open it up here.

[00:01:50]Now, one of the things which you'll probably know from my own videos and my own book so far is I really like bringing the accounts of people who are actually there to the four. So, if I just open on a random page, this is page 78 in case anyone's interested. You can see there there is a whole ton of direct quotes from various people. Uh where's my finger? There it is. So this book is littered with direct quotes from reports and evidence and recounts given by the people who are actually there. So not only is it telling you the story of what happened and where the ship went and what various incidents they had, but it's also telling you about the people, you know, what they thought, what they experienced and also, you know, those little details that personal recounts can bring about that an overall history might not. Now, broadly speaking, it is apart from a couple of tables and a handful of maps, a text book, as in literally it's just has text. But there is a rather nice insert section in the middle which has uh different paper and a bunch of photos in it, which is useful if you want a reference as to what these airships look like and some of the exploits that they got up to. and it provides a very useful prologue in that it talks about the exploits of some of the crew and the German airships before the main mission.

[00:03:20]So you get an idea of what you're dealing with before they head off on this attempted voyage to Africa. Now, one of the other things which I find exceptionally good is I'm just going to split the book there.

[00:03:34]So this section is the main text of the book and this section is all the appendixes, sources and bibliographies.

[00:03:43]So there's a good chunk of that which I really appreciate. Now in the actual book itself again hopefully I'll be putting a better version of this on on screen for you. Um you can hopefully see for example there you see there's a little number which in this case is a number eight and this is all the footnotes for the sourcing. So then we go past the appendixes where there's a bunch of rather useful maps there's ballast charts there's uh the various people involved the flights of the airship involved and so forth. But you then get to the end notes which is ahead of the bibliography.

[00:04:25]And in the end notes just open up here again you can see there's in some cases a little bit of further information about whatever has been talked about in the paragraph but also as relevant all the various sources and it's not just the source of where the information has come from. For example, this one which just here that's Leto Vorbeck's actual uh biography or autobiography, but it also includes the page number. So if you get a copy of, you know, letter VC's biography if you want to have a further look into his experience directly, you don't have to go searching through the entire thing to find out which particular element in the book is supported by that. You just go, "Ah, page 180. I'll go there then." Um and that's a most of that latter section of the book is this endote section. And then there is an extensive bibliography as well which is a nice feature. So again you can you can chase down all the various sources that have been used but I really like that format and it's a very entertaining and interesting read as well. So yeah, the Africa ship by Dominic Zold. Very definitely a recommend and video on that coming at some point in the future cuz yes, I do cover airships. I just haven't to a great extent so far, but I do want to. Now, second book from the relatively new books is this one, the first world war in the Baltic Sea, volume one, as you can see up to February 1915. So, not not a huge amount of time covered, just the second half of 1914. And this one's by Mark Harris.

[00:06:08]Now, I must say, first off, I'm really looking forward to volume two based on volume 1. And this follows a slightly different format to the previous book.

[00:06:19]So, it opens quite helpfully with maps of the Baltic, which can be quite useful for people who perhaps not so familiar with that area of operations.

[00:06:28]that starts off with an overview of the v various naval policies of the people who'd actually be involved in the Baltic side of World War I, which is quite again quite useful because you get to know you know what were the ideas of these various navies, how were they trying to execute them, what equipment and ships did they have and also bases and defenses because this is a very narrow sea.

[00:06:51]Now this has photos and maps throughout unlike the Africa ship which concentrates them into appendixes in the central section. It's a publishing choice. Either way works to be perfectly honest and in this case the as with the Africa ship the reproduction of the pictures and maps is very high quality.

[00:07:12]There are still my favorite quotes from people as you can see here quotes from actual people. And this actually follows a slightly different format for the end notes. So whereas the Africa ship has the end notes at the back and you just go back and forth with the numbers, this has a slightly different version. This is a if you've ever read any of the books by DK Brown where he has marginal notes instead of end notes. This follows a similar thing but except it's kind of kind of a hybrid between footnote and end note. So for example here um you can see we've got this section so there's a number there and then directly beneath you've got the quotation of the sources etc etc and there's multiple sources cited and one of the interesting things that's I think really important to say about this book is that not only is the Baltic in order to one a subject that's not particularly heavily covered but also when you look at this there's Not just English sources, there's lots of German sources, surprisingly un well unsurprisingly listed, but there's also a lot of Russian language sources who of course the other side mostly in the Baltic campaign given the amount of cerillic that's in here. There's been a lot of Russian sources consulted, which is very good because obviously it means that both sides are being equally represented.

[00:08:36]Also got some really really nice u photos. Some of them I haven't seen before, like there's battle line of the Russian pre-dreadnots, which looks pretty cool. And you can see various maps and formation layouts, etc. Now, as you might expect, it is very dense in detail because it's not even covering quite a full year. It's there's the background element and then, you know, eight six to eight months of the war. uh depending on if you classify it by when the war actually breaks out or you classify it by when actual active naval operations are going on. But there is a huge amount of detail involved. And that's really good because that means that virtually no operation in the Baltic is left uncovered, which is very handy because again, you know, perhaps with uh history of the North Sea, for example, you could reasonably expect an interested reader to know about some of the engagements. So you could mention them in passing and people, oh yeah, I know what happened there. Not so much for this area. And so covering almost everything that happens is a really good idea and very well executed again very very readable at least for the naval history enthusiast. Um now again there is a appendix section which I'm just heading towards look right so you've got uh in the appendixes you've got the organization of the Baltic fleet which is quite handy to know you know who's in not not just the various ships but also who's in charge of the various ships in their various formations um more charts of warships so tonnage arament etc. etc. for both sides, the German and the Russian.

[00:10:22]Then you've got a bibliography, lots of archival sources. Again, you know, a bunch of English, a bunch of German, a bunch of cerillic. So, someone's been doing a lot of research, although not that I can understand the cerillic, but there you go. And also another feature I like of good reference works, a really, really good index. So, awful lot of specific things that you might be looking for in this conflict.

[00:10:47]all nicely itemized. So if you want to for example uh look at the cruiser raid on the Gulf of Bnia tells you where that is generally but then it also goes through specific elements of that raid.

[00:11:02]So spies, submarine reports, reinforcements, support fleets, use of sea planes. So if you know that there's an operation, you can look in the index.

[00:11:12]Okay. And then you can look under that operation. Oh, this is all the individual parts. So if you've heard about oh well at this operation on this date someone did this it's very easy to find the reference for it in this book which is very very handy and as I said I look forward to volume two and beyond.

[00:11:29]And then we come on to our final entry which is a book that has been out in public publication for a while and that's this monstrous thing cruisers and naval legends. And you may recognize this from few years ago when it came out published by World of Warships.

[00:11:50]Now, quick uh declaration of minor interest. I did actually get asked to do some of the sense checking um sort of spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. for the English edition when back when it came out a while ago. Now unlike the other two which are obviously very focused on specific instances obviously the Afric voyage of that zeppelin and the few months of the Baltic war. This book is a more general book. So you might some people call it coffee table book intro book general you know introduction to things. So you start off this thing is so ridiculously heavy. You start off with uh looking at ancient ships, Roman and Greek.

[00:12:38]You go through the age of sail, which is always fun, the Dutch there, and then you get into kind of the main period of cruiser warfare. And it looks at all sorts of things. So, if we're looking at say the armored uh and protected cruiser section, looks at the various different developments that are on hand. And of course, being all the warships, they've got access to all their models. So, they can do all sorts of fancy fun graphics like this. This is the Aurora. And as we keep on going, there's little sections on various battles. This one is of course the battle of Jutland. Me trying to hide behind the whole thing. Um and it goes obviously the bulk of this is looking at World War I, World War II.

[00:13:37]Um so and oh yeah, you've got these little foldouts. So, one of the reasons for the bulk of things is you get these little fancy fancy little foldout bits which tell you in this case a bit about the project 83 proposed Russian cruiser.

[00:13:58]Turns out this is not how you're supposed to read a book.

[00:14:07]Got Battle of the Java Sea there. uh turn a there's a couple of really nice uh foldout graphics. So, kind of halfway between a plan and full graphic. Again, this is not how you're supposed to manipulate your book. Come this way, you think? There we go. Um and uh so it goes on. It's got little intro bits on specific weapon systems.

[00:14:37]So, if you've wanted to know where everybody in a 5-in 38 turret goes, they've got that. Um, and it goes on obviously into the Cold War era.

[00:14:44]Cruisers were still a thing back then, uh, in the Cold War period. And then you've got, uh, a glossery. So, there's various terms that are used. For example, um, what is an oscilloscope?

[00:14:57]There's there's an entry in the glossery for that. And this copy came with this thing in the back.

[00:15:06]And funnily enough, talking about the 5 in 38, it's a really big poster on the 5 in 38.

[00:15:17]The graphic is also in the book, but uh that's a fun little thing you can also have. So, this book, as I said, it it came out, there was a campaign, you could order it, etc., and then it it's kind of been out of print unless you got a secondhand copy uh later later on on eBay or something but uh it is coming back into print now. So or there so there's another campaign for it obviously various rewards going on um similar to the the last time. So if you didn't get a chance to pick it up before and you want a kind of broad sweep of the history of cruisers, their systems, where they were used, etc., etc., then yeah go uh go go and try and pick it up and if you want to do that then there is a link in the video description below and so follow that link and it'll take you to the campaign. Um, also if you mention somewhere relevant in that uh link or uh if you choose to back it that Dra sent you, then there is a little bit of extra reward going in there for you um from me. Uh which will also be a little bit of a spoiler alert for things that are potentially happening hopefully later this year. So that's my three books for book review.

[00:16:34]Uh if you have or if you know of new books coming up uh then for book review, then let me know. Obviously, I'm going to be choosing pre-existing books for the pre-existing book slot, but there are two slots for new upcoming books.

[00:16:47]There are a few that I have shortlisted for potentially for book review, but of course, 006. And if there's a particularly nice one, I can obviously bump a book from 003 onwards. So yeah, more book reviews coming on probably an ad hoc basis as and when I one, you know, read a bunch of new books and two remember that this is actually a format that I do occasionally. Other than that, thank you very much for listening once more and uh see you again in another video.