Just read the classic historical essay "The Reason Why" by Cecil Woodham-Smith, about the Charge of the Light Brigade. Before that, I had read "The Day of Battle" by Rick Atkinson, a big tome on the WWII Italian Campaign (well, actually the first half of the campaign, the road to Rome) from the allies' point of view.
I don't think those book were intended to be anti-military, but after reading hundred of pages filled with idiotic, self-centered, boastful high officers, completely ok in sacrificing their men for petty disputes and personal glory, that's the main feeling I was left with.
Markus Aurelius Clarkus (as he was called) with his obsession with being the first in Rome and the carnage of the Rapido river; Christopher Vokes, the frontal assaults and the bloody urban battle the canadians fought for Ortona; Patton and his opinion on the combat fatigue (the famous slapping incidents) and his various excesses and peculiarities - a portrait of maniac. Not to mention the later episode of the Task Force Baum that he created and sacrificed in March 1945 to rescue his son-in-law from a german OFLAG (the episode is very well described in R. Atkinson's "The Guns at Last Light").
Not to mention the coleric victorian officers, often senile and inexperienced, in charge just because they had paid money for their rank. Lord Cardigan and Lord Lucan lives are described with rich detail. They were men of their time, but it's pretty hard to be indulgent towards them - and Woodham-Smith is not. Not to mention Lord Raglan and in general the terribly stupid direction of the campaign in Crimea - as described in the book; I'd be curious to know more.
I recommend both books.
"The Day of Battle" may be verbose and overwritten, but you'll know what those 150 and more pages of notes were for. Even the most irrelevant details are described - what did the general ate, how was the Palace of Caserta HQ organized - sometimes even to the detriment of a more in-depth strategic and tactical description. It's a lenghty but well written historical narrative and some of its thesis - a defence of Lucas and some point on the Valmontone pass, the occupation of it by Clark would have been, restrospectively, irrelevant - are pretty interesting.
"The Reason Why" is a classic and deservedly. Concise, but still incredibly detailed in its deptiction of the lives of Cardigan and Lucan and the battles of Alma and Balaklava. Also, it tells you a lot more than just the story of a famous military fiasco, is a vivid portrait of an era and you'll left wanting to know more about things so different and distant from the Crimean war, such as the Irish Famine (a long chapter deals with it.) To think that a book so incredibly rich even in anecdotical detail was written is 1954 is pretty impressive.
