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Class of 1957 Book Review Site. ©2007. To add a Book Review, or to comment on a book already in this listing, send your material or review to Sam Coulbourn at Persnav@shore.net. Photo at top of each page shows ENS Arleigh Burke beneath 14-inch gun aboard Battleship USS Arizona, 1923. Revised 27 March 2008. |
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WAR HISTORY Voices of Courage, the Battle for Khe Sanh, Vietnam
By Ronald Drez and Douglas Brinkley, 2005.
A story of one of the most heroic efforts in American military history. - A 77 day struggle in 1968 for the remoter Khe Sanh Combat Base- during which 6,000 Marines withstood the onslaught of a superior enemy force. A stark condemnation of the policies of Secretary McNamara and President Johnson.
WAR HISTORY Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders
By Gerhard Weinberg, 2005.
Describes the war aims of eight WW2 leaders, and Hitler is the lead-off piece. Among other things Weinberg describes Hitler's plan as being true "world domination" achieved by a series of wars. He proposes that Hitler's greatest personal retrospective regret was that Chamberlain "caved" to him in 1938 because he (Hitler) WANTED to precipitate his European (first phase) war then, not later. He thought that if he started then (instead of 1939) he would have won that phase, and that is not far fetched. His world domination plan had as its centerpiece a racial/ethnic "revision." (to put it nicely).
WAR HISTORY DC Confidential-- The Controversial Memoirs of Britain's Ambassador to U.S. At the Time of 9/11 and the Iraq War
By Christopher Meyer, 2005.
The author, an experienced diplomat and journalist, relates experiences as ambassador from 1997 to 2003 in Washington culminating in his retirement after 31 years on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. He provides fascinating perspectives of British and American diplomacy and politics under PMs Major and Blair and Presidents Clinton and Bush. He doesn't hold back in his disagreements with any of the four, but is perhaps harshest on Clinton. It is surprisingly candid and well worth the time to read.
WAR HISTORY Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
By Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard Trainor, (USMC), 2006.
A detailed history about the Iraq War and events leading up to invasion. Gordon, who is military correspondent for NY Times and Trainor give a negative account of intelligence info before and during war explaining that even Iraq Generals thought Saddam had WMDs prior to invasion and did not believe him even after he told them that they had been destroyed. Our troops also thought that they would be gassed and that the Iraq's would welcome them in the south. Authors argue that Rumsfeld pushed hard for reduced troop level in spite of advice from many military experts that more troops would be needed both during and after takeover. General Franks also was given poor review for his attitude and lack of planning for post war situation. Bremer also received very negative review. Military operations are covered in excruciating detail and reveal many mistakes in planning and coordination.
WAR HISTORY The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece
By Victor Davis Hanson, 2000, University of California Press, 303 pp.
Victor Hanson undertakes to translate the ambiguity and enormity of Greek warfare into the realism of the individual experience and sensation. Through detailed examination of the hoplite’s armor, social structure, drinking habits and more, Hanson attempts to personalize a style of warfare far more gruesome and, as he sees it, more glorious than that of modern day. To support his claim he utilizes extensive imagery from ancient literature, sculpture, and pottery paintings as well as comparisons to more modern and familiar history. Unfortunately, in his efforts to make his conjectures appear irrefutable, he distracts the reader with excessive and repetitive referencing. However, when taken as a whole, Hanson’s book does present two points particularly effectively. The first is his opinion of the Greek hoplite himself. Hanson not only brings realism to Greek warfare, but to the Greek warrior as well. He presents details of historical and literary accounts to emphasize the short comings, as well as the qualities of the Greek hoplite. He discusses instances of drunkenness during battle, of involuntary urination and defecation due to fear (even of the Spartans), and of occurrences of cowards fleeing the field of battle. He does not do this to degrade the hoplite but rather to show that the Greeks were simply men, and no more. Once accepted, this fact allows the reader to appreciate even more keenly the characteristics of heroism and valor they displayed. It dispels the argument that the Greeks were somehow a different breed of men and in so doing allows the reader to relate to these ancient warriors. The second point of note within Hanson’s text was the inherently gruesome nature of war. Hanson wishes to dispel the perception that war of Ancient Greece was a litany of Achilles and Hectors dueling honorably for the beautiful Helen. He preferred General Sherman’s view: “There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.” Hanson believes that no one presented this more accurately than the Greeks within the confines of the Greek “dance floor.” He spends much of the book explaining the distasteful elements of warfare from the discomfort of the panoply and the limited vision on the battlefield to the stench of the dead and the mounds of dead three deep. He emphasizes the emotional turmoil after a battle as well, explaining that the soldiers were likely to have known much of the army on a personal level, making their loss all the more painful. Yet underlying his remonstrations of war is the recognition that the Greeks seem to have managed to use these horrific ordeals for a greater good. Hanson repeatedly explains that the Greek “rules of war,” allowed for a short brutal “war” between equal opponents on even footing, where the winner took all. Simply put, Hanson implies that the Greeks had established a level of humanity within warfare. By minimizing the length of campaigns and accepting the decisions of the battlefield, the Greek city-states used war as a political and social tool without leaving any disastrous impressions on their society or culture. He presents this civility of war as a direct contrast to modern wars. He warns of the danger of a post-infantry world that does not respect war in which he believes the Greeks were able to. He believes that such disrespect presents the prospect of a much greater horror than that of the Greek death in “no man’s land.”
Reviewed January, 2007 by Midshipman Charles Meyer, Student in the Class of Professor Wick Murray, Chair in Naval Heritage sponsored by the Class of 1957.
HISTORY
HISTORY Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
By Margaret MacMillan; Foreword by Richard Holbrooke. 2003. New York: Random House. 570 pp.
The author, Margaret MacMillan, received her PhD from Oxford University and is a provost of Trinity College and Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She is the great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George. This is the story of the elegant, elaborate peace conference hosted by the French, to settle the world after the turmoil of The Great War, which we now call World War I. The three key players at this conference were Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, who came with a widely publicized “Fourteen Points”; David Lloyd George, Britain’s Prime Minister; and Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France. For this particular review, I focused upon one of many topics in this book: The Rebirth of Poland. Poland at the end of the Great War was, as MacMillan writes, “a dream, not a reality.” Since late in the 18th century, it had been absorbed by Germany, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and there were Poles from the Baltic coast to deep in Ukraine, and south to Hungary and Romania. This Paris conference was Poland’s chance to be born again. There were three notable Poles who converged on Paris for this conference: Jozef Pilsudski, Roman Dmowski and the world’s most famous Pole, the pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Pilsudski (1867-1935) was an old soldier born in a patrician family in Wilno, now Vilnius, Lithuania. He fought the Russians desperately, even taking part in a plot with Lenin’s brother to assassinate the tsar in 1887. This earned him five years in prison in Siberia. Later he became an anti-Russian fund-raiser, mainly robbing banks and mail trains. During World War I he led Polish forces fighting on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to ensure defeat of Russia. When Russia fell apart with the Bolshevik Revolution, he withdrew his support from the Central Powers. Dmowski (1864-1939) was another Polish patriot who had been fighting for a new Poland, but opposed Pilsudski at every turn. He came from an impoverished urban background, and had been involved in political organizations even as a youth. He became a brilliant biologist, but he always had time to work for Poland, and against Pilsudski. Paderewski (1860-1941) was born in the Ukraine and by the time of the Paris Peace Conference he had gained world wide fame for his music. His role was to try to get Dmowski and Pilsudski to play off the same sheet of music. Wilson and Lloyd George were not thrilled about either Dmowski or Pilsudski, and it’s not hard to see why. They both hated the Germans and the Russians, but came at everything from different angles. No one knew what to do about the Bolsheviks during these days, and it was not even clear that they were really in charge of Russia. But the Americans and British didn’t want to create a Poland that would add to that contamination. Dmowski had spent a lot of time in Paris and Clemenceau and the French were much more receptive to the Poles. The American President Woodrow Wilson reported, “I saw M. Dmowski and M. Paderewski in Washington, and I asked them to define Poland for me, as they understood it, and they presented me with a map in which they claimed a large part of the earth.” The Polish Corridor was a way to connect the River Vistula and Polish railways to the Baltic coastline, and this was a major arguing point. The main city in this corridor would be Danzig (Gdansk), and whether this would be Polish or an international city, like they were talking about for Fiume in the Adriatic. Another big point of argument was Upper Silesia, whether it should be taken from Germany. It was rich with coal, iron and lead mines and iron and steel mills, and considered vital to Germany’s ability to pay the reparations that would be expected of them in the Peace Treaty. The Poles eventually won Upper Silesia, but this was one of the first things Hitler seized when he invaded Poland in 1939. In 1945 it went back to Poland. There were many more sticking points in the negotiation for rebirth of Poland, but it did happen, and Pilsudski went on to become its first leader, one way or another, including as its dictator, right up to 1935. Paderewski was its first Prime Minister, but he quit at the end of 1919. Dmowski never held office. Poland survived this difficult birth and even flourished for a time, until the summer of 1939 when it disappeared from the map again. When it surfaced again at the end of the Second World War, it was strangely altered and shrunken, emptied of its Jews by the Nazis and of its Germans by the Soviets, and moved 200 miles to the west. -- Review by Sam Coulbourn, March, 2008
HISTORY The Russian Tradition
By Tibor Szamuely, 1986.
This is not an easy book to find, but I included it because it ranks among a very small number of the most important books I have ever read. It is in part a history of the recurring “advances” that promoted regression throughout Russia’s history. It offers an enduring recipe for revolution, embodied especially in Nechaev’s Revolutionary Catechism, a code that provides the underpinning for ardent revolutionaries even today. It enunciates a theory and practice of terrorism as a pattern of asymmetrical warfare that enables a dedicated minority to topple a less committed majority. In a brilliant chapter on the “intelligentsia,” Szamuely provides thirteen fundamental premises held by all generations of the intelligentsia. These premises are powerful notions, many of which are still held to varying degrees by the political left in the West, a factor in the historical reluctance of the left to be sufficiently critical of Marxist atrocities (political as well as physical) over the last century, and continuing today. You may be able to order this book from specialized booksellers, or perhaps find it in your library. It is well worth the search.
Review by Paul Roush.
Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution
By Richard Gott, with photographs by Georges Bartoli, 2005.
Veteran correspondent Richard Gott is a former Latin American correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. Gott’s account is very positive, very optimistic. He has produced an adoring, perhaps fawning story of Venezuela’s controversial and charismatic leader. Chavez has been plotting and stirring up a coup d’état in Venezuela for years, and he finally attempted it in 1992, but all the players didn’t show up, and it failed. However, it did allow him to capture the attention of the public, so that his face and name became familiar, and in December 1998 when he was elected president. In early 2002 Caracas was convulsed with angry demonstrations both for and against Chávez. Groups of retired officers, politicians from old political parties, union leaders and spokesmen for the Catholic hierarchy united to denounce his government; newspapers and private television stations kept up an “endless litany” of stories hostile to Chávez. A coup succeeded—Fidel Castro advised Chávez to preserve himself—and the opposition was seemingly in power. However, two days later, after army units captured key points, and his supporters rose up, Chávez was back in power, where he remains today. Gott’s account of this counter coup is detailed, and sounds like a comic opera. The political left of the world seem to admire Chávez, because he has championed the cause of the indigenous peoples, and all the poor, of Venezuela. He is openly anti-United States, and he has circled the globe gathering up friends amongst the opponents of the United States, notably Ahmadinejab of Iran, Castro of Cuba and Kim Jong-il of North Korea. He has formed a warm bond with Castro’s Cuba, and now provides that nation with oil at a bargain price, in return for a large-scale health-care program all over Venezuela, run by Cuban doctors and technicians, with medicine supplied from Cuba. There is little doubt that often the United States has backed dictators and despots in Latin America, often because they appeared to offer stability, but also perhaps because of cozy commercial ties. The question with Chávez is--- is his leadership actually producing economic and social improvement in his country? Hugo Chávez grew up in Barinas, in the foothills of the Andes, eight hours by bus from Caracas. He was born July 28, 1954. Both parents were schoolteachers. Chávez joined the army when he was 17, mostly because he saw it as a way to play baseball. He was a very good player. He entered the military academy and when he graduated, he received his sword from President Carlos Andres Pérez. Sixteen years later, in 1992, he tried to overthrow Pérez. As a country rich in oil wealth, with a young, bright and forceful leader, Venezuela could be a world leader. But will it, or will it be just another banana republic dictatorship, but with the extra money to make world-wide mischief?
Review by Sam Coulbourn, November 2006.
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