Reply To: Sources for historicals: where, who, what?

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Osprey as others have said is a great place to start.  Be aware that they are not necessarily perfect, but also be aware that those picking holes are often ill-informed themselves, and pretentious know-it-alls, so best ignored!  If you may have miscoloured the facings of your Prussian Jaegers, then it’s up to you how much that bothers you.

A great thing to remember when looking at periods that have “uniforms” is that even if a book says that the colour should be whatever, a) they may be out of date and subsequent research has changed the accepted view, b) they may have made a mistake, due to translation, typo, etc, c) the original source they are relying on may not be accurate (even back in the day reporters made things up to suit their purposes, or simply because they didn’t view accuracy as important), d) just because the official colour was whatever it was, doesn’t mean that in the field after a short time on campaign, that those colours/styles remained in use – battlefield exigency, weather, etc., all took their toll on uniforms, so by the end of the campaign a unit may have looked anything other than “uniform”. e) it’s meant to be “fun” – if research is ceasing to be fun then quit and go with what looks good to you and a quick google can inform!

With that in mind, a good store (beyond Jeff Bezos’ retail empire) to look for books covering all sorts of periods and topics of interest to the military historian and wargamer is Caliver Books: https://caliverbooks.com/ He also tours shows (or did before Covid…) so there is always a chance of a good browse at his stand.  A special shout out to Partizan Press publications (Caliver’s in-house imprint) https://www.caliverbooks.com/Partizan%20Press/partizan_historical.shtml which has some good, accessible guides for uniforms and military dress.  Caliver also do a second hand section, which is always worth a browse.