How good are the books published by osprey, especially if they deal with the war in vietnam ? Regards, Che
I've normally found them, in general, to be pretty good. Usually written by respected authors (they do not accept unsolicited manuscripts apparently), and very good as jumping-off points for learning more. They also usually give a bibliography in the back for follow-up reading.
I agree with with Oli. If you are using them for serious research material, I suggest getting books from other sources as well. Sometimes mistakes are made even in the best books and you will many times be able to pick up on them if you have several sources of material. For more casual reading or entertainment, they are quite good.
They are good, but they sometimes suffer from forcing the subject of the book into a an already established number of pages. Take the New Vanguard series for example. I recently read 'US Submarines 1941-45', which was quite good but suffered from having a topic which was far too vast for 48 pages. It did provide me with a platform for further reading though. Another New Vanguard book I recently read, 'T-54 and T-55 Main Battle Tanks 1944-2004', was on the other hand a great read. As it was narrowed down to MBTs only, excluding all non-MBT variants like for example recovery vehicles, it had plenty of room left for details in those 48 pages. Another example of failure is the Campaign 16, 'Kursk 1943'. Kursk is far too big a battle to be cramped into the amount of pages the Campaign series allowes for. Other titles in the Campaign series are very good though.
