I'd love to learn as much as I can about Subotai's military conquest and strategies. What books or sources would you recommend? Preferably reputable sources, not Carlin's badhistory.
I've already read :
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
The Mongol Art of War by Timothy May
But none of these really focus on Subotai himself. Thanks in advance!
Carl Fredrik Sverdrup, The Mongol Conquests: The Military Operations of Genghis Khan and Sübe'etei, Helion (2017).
A wonderful resource for Mongol warfare of the time at the operational level. This is the level where Subotai (and some other good Mongol commanders) really excelled. Partly, this was due to their good operational mobility - hard to excel in moving your armies around when your enemies are faster than you - but it isn't just a matter of moving faster than your enemies. You also have to move to the right places.
Also, covers the political and strategic level as much as reasonably possible, given the books focus on the operational level and the limits of the source material. Mongol strategy was not always effective, and results obtained on the battlefield would sometimes evaporate rather than lead to lasting gains for the Mongols.
I think that a good trick to get excellent value from this book would be to have maps of the area of the campaign being covered, place counters representing the various armies (don't need anything fancy like wargaming figures (but cheap plastic ones are cheap); anything of a suitable size will do). This will tell you one of two things:
It will give you an excellent overview of the movements of the armies, and a better appreciation of the decision made, or
You will find where we don't have enough detail in the sources to reconstruct the movements of the armies.
Subotai the Valiant, not my favorite book, not so sure about the sources but the whole book does revolve around Subotai. Over all it's pretty good.
Subotai the Valiant: Genghis Khan's greatest general - Richard A. Gabriel