A review by raghuiyer
The Battle of the Tanks: Kursk, 1943 by Lloyd Clark

4.0

This is one of the better operational books of the Second World War that I have read. The battle for Kursk has always been a fascinating one for me because of the size of the armies involved and magnitude of the repercussions to the Eastern Front( there was even a CoD level :) ) For one thing the book focuses on just the one battle, which means the ground is pretty much well tramped on by the time you get through reading about the initial skirmishing. Operational books tend to be very disconcerting for the casual reader and this is a nice exception. Secondly, this one tackles the logistics of the battle pretty well - there is a good amount of discussion on the resources involved - from their initial roles in initial deployments, their tactics, the overall strategy and the armaments involved. The book also does well in trying to present first hand accounts of combatants on both sides for the same battle. The book falters a little by spending up a little too much time in setting up the road to Kursk. It quickly walks over the Battle for Moscow and sundry operations up North which might give the false impression that these battles were distractions, which they were emphatically not.

Overall though, if you are a casual reader and have never read an operational book, I cannot think of any better introduction to that genre of military non-fiction.