I agree. I began reading
Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942 (Modern War Studies), but had to put it down after about 2/3 of the way. The carnage was horrific.
The Mars Campaign suffered almost an equal amount of losses as the entire allied effort in WWII.
From the first book review:
Amazingly, Zhukov continued to order frontal assaults for three weeks, even though the offensive was obviously failing to achieve its objectives in the first four days. Soviet losses in the three week offensive on this front totaled at least 100,000 killed, 235,00 wounded and about 1,800 tanks. German counterattacks cut off and eliminated three Soviet corps (one tank, one mechanized, and one rifle). After the Stalingrad operation succeeded and Operation Mars failed, Soviet historians erased all mention of Zhukov's attack and instead re-wrote history to make it appear that Stalingrad always was the main effort.