• Napoleon's WarsFascinating new approach to this period
• The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War [contempory tactical analysis
• The Mask of Command; John Keegan [Waterloo]
• The Price of Admiralty : The Evolution of Naval Warfare; John Keegan  [Trafalgar]
• David Chandler's Campaigns of Napoleon remains the best single volume study of Napoleon's strategies, equivalent to Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants for the Civil War

Bernard Cornwell -  The Sharpe series gives a landsman's view of the Napoleonic war (along with battle of Trafalgar which can stand with the best of O'Brian).  These books trace the adventures of light infantryman Richard Sharpe in Portugal, Spain and France 1805-1815.

Patrick O'Brian, Julian Stockwin & other naval - nautical fiction

Susan Sontag - The Volcano Lover