Beyond expectations!

Everybody loves a trainwreck, right? And yes, this book ends with trainwrecks, but in a very good way. We all know how it ends – with duty, honor, courage, defeats, little victories, explosions, derailments, disaster – after all, it does end in September 1939 with the German invasion outcome. But from 1921 to 1939, it chronicles the continued saga of national defense after the Poles kicked invading Russians out against all odds, using armored trains as mobile artillery and troop transports, until these trains became one of the first victims of blitzkrieg. This book is jam-packed with such detail, photos, illustrations, maps, and color plates (by the author) there is almost zero open white spaces and not much text. A quick read, and with all the visual content, you’ll spend hours being transported to what life was like on Polish war trains. A bonus – you’ll learn train lingo too.

This landscaped, hardback book is the fourth in a new series of books by renowned and prolific photograph collector and author Jon Feenstra, published through PeKo Publishing of Hungary. This volume continues its proven formula of amazing photographs, many previously unpublished, of armored and soft skin vehicles in depots, in the field and post combat. Each page reveals more surprises than the previous. Previous editions of this great series have been reviewed:

The first volume in this series was reviewed here at WW2 Vehicles Through the Lens Vol.1.

Number 64 in Helion’s Africa @ War Series details the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping efforts for the past 20+ years from the former on-the-ground head of the UN mission. The book illustrates what it is like to oversee trying to keep groups of nomadic tribes that have been warring for centuries over some of the most inhospitable areas on planet Earth from continuing the process. Not pretty or heroic. A treatise on absurdity. This book was painful to read, but a reviewer’s duty and morbid curiosity won out. Tip: the history chapter alone is worth the effort to read this book!