Written by the victors: The best military history books of 2008

History begins in Central Asia. It is as though there were a rift somewhere in the steppe that belches out fierce tribes of horsemen. Each new arrival defeats and displaces those in the vicinity, who then defeat and displace their neighbours, and so on. The ripple effect continues until, eventually, the losers all end up in the same place: the British Isles. This has been the end of the line for everyone from the Angles and Jutes to the refugees of Bosnia and Somalia. Britain is the nation of the vanquished.

Somewhere in the middle of this eternal chain stand the Seljuk Turks of John Freely's Storm on Horseback (IB Tauris £18.99). The Seljuks (below), swept out of Iran and into Asia Minor in the 11th century, with the great Alp Arslan announcing his arrival in Anatolia by massacring the population of Ani and burning the city to the ground. Freely is a lover of all things Turkish and the rear half of his book is a travel guide to the setting of the first half. This is an original and useful format and it's refreshing to have a guide written by a former commando rather than the usual backpackers.

The Ottoman heirs of the Seljuks hacked and slashed out an empire as large as that of the Romans. In The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe (Bodley Head £20), Andrew Wheatcroft explains that the Habsburgs saw it as their destiny to reunite the Roman Empire eastwards, while the Turks, with some nerve it needs be said, thought theirs was to reunite it westwards. Mohammed's shock that the Christians and Jews would not accept him as their prophet was mirrored in the surprise of the Turks that they were not seen as the rightful heirs of the Roman Empire. However, they got half way with the bloody victories of Mehmet the Conqueror that included the capture of Constantinople.

It is ridiculous to feel patriotic about events that occurred 1,000 years ago, but impossible not to when reading The Battle of Hastings: The Fall of Anglo-Saxon England, by Harriet Harvey Wood (Atlantic £17.99). She writes that the battle "wiped out overnight a civilisation that, for its wealth, its political arrangements, its arts, its literature and its longevity, was unique in Dark Age Europe... In the general instability, lawlessness and savagery of the time, Anglo-Saxon England stood out as a beacon." William the Bastard was never again so successful on the battlefield, and his line died out within a century.

William is in trouble again in Charge! The Interesting Bits of Military History by Justin Pollard (John Murray £12.99) which contains a tale of him cutting off people's hands for calling him the son of a tanner. Pollard is a writer for the television show QI, and the chapters are laid out as questions. I doubt anyone has ever really wondered "What war started when the fat lady sang?" or "What is the shortest dispatch in history?" but the answers are worth hearing all the same. Others such as "Which military leader was generally understood to be a madman?" could generate any number of answers, but this is a good stocking filler.

Andrew Lambert's approach is very different. Admirals (Faber £20) is a well-argued tribute to 11 naval commanders who helped make Britain great, whether from the deck of a warship or a desk in the admiralty. It is not about dash here, but about building a navy and defining the role of admiral from the Elizabethan age to the Second World War. Drake and Cornwallis are out, and the author has already covered Nelson elsewhere, but Lord Howard of Effingham and a young King James II are in.

Lambert also writes the introduction to Scrimgeour's Small Scribbling Diary (Conway £20), the diary and letters of Alexander Scrimgeour, a naval officer who died, aged 19, at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. In one of the earliest entries he writes: "I have been looking forward to war ever since I was a baby, and considering there has been no naval warfare proper for over 100 years, we ought to think ourselves very lucky we have come in for it." In one of the last he complains about the months spent "waiting for nothing" in the North Sea.

Andrew Marr writes the foreword to Tommy's War, edited by Ronnie Scott (Harper Press £20), the beautifully reproduced diaries of Thomas Livingstone, a Glasgow shipping clerk declared medically unfit for armed service in 1914. This book of everyday working class life on the home front is illustrated with Livingstone's own cartoons, giving it the feel of a Raymond Briggs story.

The Day We Won the War by Charles Messenger (Weidenfeld £20) is a book to convince those who have never swallowed the revisionist view of Douglas Haig and refuse to accept that he might not have been an imbecile. The book recounts the battle of Amiens of 8 August 1918, when the British Army took seven miles of territory in a single day when progress was usually measured in yards. It involved both deception and blitzkrieg, with bombers flying over the advancing tanks to drown out the engines and retain the element of surprise. The western allies finally had the means and wherewithal to conduct warfare efficiently.

The United States provided the additional manpower. In Borrowed Soldiers (Oklahoma £26.95), Mitchell A Yockelson describes what the doughboys – many descended from Irish or German stock – made of their British instructors: not very much. However, they got on famously with the Australians, even after the latter were alleged to have robbed the bodies of their dead American comrades. Admittedly the Brits – like the French – had the cheek to expect their new allies to simply hand over their troops to bolster existing units rather than actually have an army of their own.

In Baghdad at Sunrise by Peter Mansoor (Yale £16.99), the former brigade commander for East Baghdad takes us through the American counter-insurgency effort. It is excellent in many ways – as a political analysis, a first- rate history and a collection of Black Hawk Down style intermissions. The author is adamant that the invasion presented an "opportunity" for Iraqis who found themselves at "the sunrise of a new existence" – even if that opportunity was not quite taken. But he also points out that it would have been easier for them to take it had Donald Rumsfeld provided enough troops from the outset.