The First Battle of Bull Run: Campaign of First Manassas, a 20-page, full-color battlefield guidebook, created by Dana Lombardy, features detailed tactical maps and illustrated orders-of-battle. Read the backstory on this guidebook.
Available in our Shop in both print and downloadable versions.
In 1991 The First Battle of Bull Run booklet was published and over the next several years sold successfully at the Manassas National Battlefield Park visitor center. Despite selling 5,000 copies no further guides were produced. Why?
The creation of Bull Run was a “proof of concept” project designed by Dana Lombardy in conjunction with the Chief Historians and Park Rangers at the Park and written by John Hill. It was enthusiastically endorsed by them, and we hoped it would be the first in the “American Civil War Notebook Series” of graphic booklets for other Parks—useful guides for visitors, reference material for wargamers, and user-friendly introductions to Civil War battles.
Unfortunately, the project was brought to a standstill higher up in the National Park Service. NPS decides what will be sold at the parks and later released its own “guides.” These did not contain detailed color maps, color orders-of-battle, or as many historical illustrations as our Bull Run.
The lesson learned: don’t try to sell something to the U.S. government unless you have “inside” support.
Dana went on to design and publish (in 2014) the first full-size book in the Map Study Series: Grant Rising, Mapping the Career of a Great Commander Through 1862.
The First Battle of Bull Run remains a unique and unmatched battlefield guide booklet and is available for purchase as a print edition or pdf from our Shop.
I am an avid collector of books on military equipment and history. I currently have over 3000 volumes in my library of which I have over 800 books on tanks and AFV’s. And I can say the two World of Tanks books on the T34 and SU 152 are the best, most informative and fact filled of any books I have. They are scholarly efforts that provide information not written about in any other book I have.
Anybody buying these will have spent their money well. Congrats to World of Tanks for raising the bar on historical accounts of tank design and warfare!
– Brian Willis
NOW IN PRINT AND PDF!
For the first time in English — Photos and drawings from secret Soviet archives and museums — many never previously published! Recently translated documents are used to present the true stories of the T-34 and SU-152! (This is why we call them “The Russian View.”)
In “The SU-152 and Related Vehicles,” you will learn about the design and evolution of the legendary self-propelled gun on the KV chassis, including many little-known prototypes and proposed alternate models. Called the “beast killer” at Kursk for its ability to destroy German Tiger and Panther tanks. What disaster led to the shortage of these “bunker busters” in the final push into Germany in 1945?
“The T-34 Goes to War” chronicles the real story of the celebrated medium tank, from its troubled conception to its first, desperate combat actions in the cauldron of Barbarossa. Thousands of T-34s were available in June 1941 – why did they fail to stop the German panzer groups? Soviet archival records admit to some astonishing problems.
Both books are richly illustrated with photos, blueprints, and cutaway diagrams.
Click to enlarge
Buy the SU-152 and T-34 eBooks (Print), and receive this SPECIAL BONUS ITEM.
SU-152 Illustrated Reference & Tutorial: 8-page graphic history and World of Tanks player tips guide sent with the hardback books.
CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW FROM LOMBARDY STUDIOS SHOP
Download FREE 8-page “Sneak Peek” SU-152 PDF
Download FREE 8-page “Sneak Peek” T-34 PDF
PANZER 38t KICKSTARTER COMING in 2021!
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“Grant Rising is breathtaking. How I wish I had this book when doing Grant Moves South or working on the Shiloh game for West End! I love the way it emphasizes the command organizations, both in the maps and in the diagrams. This is too often neglected—armies are treated as a big pile of Rebels against a bigger heap of Yankees, not the way it was at all. Your clear color diagrams of the army organizations are a beautiful sight for anyone who’s worked his way through the small print of Battles & Leaders! I also love the way your campaign maps clearly indicate dates as the armies progressed, as this is critical to understanding the action at that level. It’s a beautiful volume and I will treasure it”
—Jonathan Southard, multiple award–winning designer of Grant Moves South, The Battle of Shiloh, and numerous other wargames.
“Grant Rising offers up the best map renderings of the U.S.–Mexican War and early Civil War Western Theater operations ever published. It illustrates the classic marches and battles that we have all studied, but the terrain features, color and attention to detail help to unlock dozens of books on these subjects.”
—Evan C. Jones, editor of Gateway to the Confederacy: New Perspectives on the Chickamauga and Chattanooga Campaigns, 1862–1863.
Available in our Shop in both print and downloadable versions.
Lombardy Studios announces that the series of books first mentioned in 2015 under the name Napoleon’s Last Army is officially cancelled. Instead, two exciting new publications centered on Napoleon’s Hundred Days reign are now well underway.
1983 edition of Scott Bowden’s ‘Armies at Waterloo’
The first, an elegant one-volume second edition of the famous Armies at Waterloo first published in 1983 by award-winning historian and author Scott Bowden is scheduled for release in late 2021. The greatly expanded second edition includes additional research developed over the past 37 years, with fresh detailed analysis of the 1815 Waterloo campaign and battle, beautifully illustrated with a number of color images, newly commissioned color maps, and previously unpublished paintings by renowned historical artist Keith Rocco.
The second book is a completely new one-volume work titled, Napoleon’s Last Armies: A Detailed Analysis of the Organization and Composition of the 1815 French Imperial Armies, that will follow in 2022. This original work by Scott Bowden will present and examine the archival records of the last Imperial armies fielded during the Hundred Days, including the complete story of the armies that were des Alpes, du Jura, de la Loire, de la Moselle, du Nord, des Pyrénées, du Rhin and du Var.
Stunning new original maps, full-color images, artwork and more will enhance this Herculean effort.
More details concerning these two landmark projects will be shared on the Lombardy Studios Facebook page and LombardyStudios.com.
Read Scott’s first blog entry detailing what will be different and exciting about the second edition of Armies at Waterloo here.
