No comments about Stephen Dodson Ramseur: Lee's Gallant General.

5 comments about One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey.

1. The author seems to have prided himself on his research and cites where he gets most of his information right in the text. This style disrupts the story telling, at least for me. But all in all, the book did a good job of telling the story of Neil Armstrong - the first man on the moon. I have not read any other biographies of Armstrong, but compared with biographies of other astronauts this book is fair.



2. I found this book similar to modern movies that are all special effects and no substance. Almost everything is told in an over dramatic way. The author tries to build excitement by creating it himself, rather than just telling the story. This book pales in comparison with astronaut Michael Collin's excellent autobiography, "Carrying the Fire".



3. If you want to know about Neil Armstrong - the real man, not the man conjured up in some author's mind - read "First Man" by James Hansen. Hansen actually sat down for 50+ hours of interviews with Armstrong himself.
   
   As they say - "from the horse's mouth".



4. What a terrible biography! Leon Wagener's book is full of inaccuracies, is based upon "interviews" conducted with those tied to Armstrong that many of the interviewees claim never occurred, and is yet another shameful example of a writer with marginal talent propagating the same tired, FALSE urban legends about the first man on the Moon that have been circulating for decades. I look forward to the day when Mr. Armstrong will allow a true writer to accurately and justly tell his remarkable story. Leon Wagoner should stick to his day job as a writer for Star Magazine!



5. The book cover tells us that Wagener was a journalist for 30 years. This book makes me wonder what kind of journalist he was. The book is full of inaccuracies. Some examples: he calls cosmonaut Alexi Leonov Alexi Leonor; he states that Christa McAuliffe was selected as the Teacher in Space because she won a "Why I Want to Go Into Space" essay. (cheapening her hard work and ultimate sacrifice); he writes the shuttle's solid rocket boosters fall into the ocean and are never used again even though they are recovered, refurbished, and reused. There is no documentation for statements he makes that contradict other records. This is poorly written and researched book. I have told my wife, who is the director of our local library, not to waste money buying the book. I won't donate my copy to the library. Ignore the book and read the books written by those who were a part of the effort of going to the moon.

1 comments about Split/Vision.

1. Compelling, magnificent, a masterpiece!
   
   John Wilbur returns to Viet Nam where his youthful patriotism once led him into hand-to-hand combat with the Viet Cong. He now relives the bloody battles and re-considers his role as a patriotic Navy Seal in a war which divided and gravely wounded the country he fought for. His retelling of the Vietnamese experience, personally and nationally, gives a wrenching account of what he was and what he did. Traveling through the country with Wilbur, you see and smell and taste Viet Nam as it is and as he knew it three decades before.
   
   Wilbur went to battle to become a hero. He now takes on history and himself with a personal mission to make moral sense of both. The descriptive writing is gripping and powerful, the action scenes unforgettably vivid.
   
   Anyone with an interest in the involvement of the U.S. in that war must read this to see what one of the first Navy Seals thinks now of his commitment to soldiering in a strange, foreboding and tragic land, a country he visits again with the tenderness and reverence he was forbidden to have as a youthful soldier.

2 comments about General William J. Hardee: Old Reliable (Southern Biography Series).

1. I feel that this biography was good, but not great. It could have been a bit longer and shed more light on Hardee after the Civil War for one thing. But overall I think the biography did a "reliable" job. Hardee's impressive Civil War career was handled very well I thought. Hughes focuses almost entirely on this and you can't help but wonder what might have happened if Hardee had been placed in command of the Army of Tennessee instead of Hood.........or if Hardee had accepted permanant command after Bragg resigned. When I think of Hardee I think of Longstreet, both seemed to be the good reliable corps commanders that could be counted on in their respected armies, but neither were able to reach the level of a Jackson, Thomas, or Hancock as corps commanders.



2. Hughes' biography of Hardee is not unlike its subject: competent, professional, and unspectacular. The focus is appropriately on Hardee's Civil War career. The post-war years receive especially light treatment. Hughes does an excellent job of assessing Hardee's performance during each campaign and battle. To his great credit, he is more inclined than most biographers to be critical of his subject when warranted. Hardee's personality emerges less vividly from the book than we might wish. Perhaps this is due to a lack of insightful source material, or to the fact that Hardee himself lacked the charisma to be an ideal subject. Whatever the reason, you won't find Hardee particularly likeable or loathesome, but you will learn a lot about his role in the Civil War.

5 comments about The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy: The Death of Stonewall Jackson and Other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia.

1. Although this book has a number of good points, like the section on Jackson, this is really just another rant about Longstreet by the king of the anti-Longstreet cabal. Robert Krick is an excellent writer, but he has over the years unjustly presented Longstreet as the "loose cannon" of the South. Krick has made a living preaching the gospel of Longstreet . . . a severely flawed man with and equaly flawed ego, and he probably thinks it's too late to back down now. In spite of the multitude of new books and new evidence establishing Longstreet as one of the best generals in the Southern states during the Civil War, Krick continues his uneven and vitrolic diatribe about one of the South's greatest generals. He's like the energizer bunny . . . he just keeps on and on . . . repeating variations of the lies established so long ago by the Lee Cult conspirators. He doesn't seem to be able to write anything without trying to put the boot to Longstreet. I guess Lee, Johnston, Grant, and a host of others got it all wrong about Longstreet being a "capital soldier". Robert Krick is one of a group of rapidly shrinking notable historians who---dispite the evidence---have blindly painted themselves into a niffty little historical "catch-22". They're d***d if they say they had it all wrong... and they'll be d***d if they don't. But, since they've made a long living bashing Longstreet, don't expect any sudden confessions. Too bad though. What a waste. He's a great writer.
   Metaphorically speaking, Krick and other historians of similiar ilk, are "cherry pickers". They use individual cases or data that seem to confirm their position, while ignoring a significant number of related cases or data that contradict that position. They belong to a class of anti-apologists or a "cabal" whose common goal is to bash Longstreet as often and as hard as they can.
   A true historian is a neutral one. He presents the facts in an unbiased manner. He doesn't deal in half-truths---statements that may be partly true or even totally true, but represent only part of the whole truth. The intent of the these "anti-apologists" is to blame, not educate. It's to entertain, not illuminate. Having said all this, I will leave you with the following quote by one of the greatest historians of all time.
   
   "It is the first and fundamental law of history
   that it should neither dare to say anything that is false,
   nor fear to say anything that is true, nor give any just
   suspicion of favor or dissatisfaction."
   
   Cicero



2. Award-winning author Robert Krick has written a number of well-received books on the Civil War. Civil War enthusiasts should enjoy this collection of 10 Krick essays published by the Lousiana State University Press.
   
   By and large, the essays deal with various aspects of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The opening essay is an exhaustive account of Stonewall Jackson's wounding and death. Wonderfully researched and well written, it's a marvelous opener to the book. Other essays deal with the ever-controversial James Longstreet, the death of General Robert Rodes, the fiery secessionist General Maxcy Gregg, Jubal Early's cavalry troubles in 1864, good & bad books on the Confederacy, locating & using Confederate army records, etc.
   
   I enjoyed Krick's book tremendously. His essays are interesting, informative, and thought-provoking. Civil War enthusiasts will want to pick up this book. It provides not only interesting reading but much food for thought not to mention heated arguments over how good or bad certain Civil War generals really were!



3. Well, I myself couldn't quite understand what the previous reviewer was even saying, but I found this book to be rather good.
   
   Obviously, some of the more interesting essays are those about Longstreet. The one conserning Knoxville I don't think is really all that controversial, because most Longstreet apologist books cover the total bungle in a few sentences or find some amusing way of justifying the monumental failure it was. (supplies! Ha!)
   
   To get to the most controversial essay, about Getysberg. Well, I personally didn't see anything particularly glaringly wrong about it. I know enough to know that the author isn't merely making stuff up, Krick is not some amatuer historian, and most of his statements ring fairly true. I'm not really sure what the previous reviewer was trying to say about the third day, the writing was a little incomprehensible, but I have seen some recent research suggesting that Longstreet's real failure came on the evening of the second day into the third. (a not from some Lee glorifier)
   
   I can't say that I remember anyone being written off as a Longstreet apologist, but whatever fits, eh? And to point out something the previous reviewer failed to notice, Krick uses some statments from soldiers who had no real axe to grind, such as Wilcox, who critisized the general in private letters, with no hidden agenda. Krick points out he had NO hidden agenda, because he wrote very little and what Krick took were from private letters! Perhaps the most amusing statement from previous reviews is that Krick's sources have been debunked as pre-meditated smear--yeah, by Longstreet apologists no doubt, whose list of great generals begins with Longstreet. After all, there is at the very least one that is no pre-meditated smear--it was private correspondance! For pete's sake, let's be rational human beings here. And don't go jumping on me as some sort of Lost Cause Lee glorifier, because I think Longstreet was a better general than Lee--but that does not make him god almighty, the all great, all powerful military genius. He most certaily was not.
   
   And another thing to keep in mind when evaluating some of these statements. There is good reason not to take Longstreet at his word, because he simply was a notorious blame-shifter. After totally bungling the battle of Seven Pines (and I mean total), he proceeded to place the blame on others, actually emerging with a better reputation, when his actions should have gotten him removed from command. (As pointed out by Stephen W. Sears, a very level-headed historian. Perhaps some of the critisizers of Longstreet have hidden agendas--but so does the man himself. I'd say Longstreet is probably just as guilty of any pre-meditated smear as any of those evil Longstreet bashers and Lost Causers. I am not interested in either, really, but Longstreet simply does not hold up under scrutiny. And really, a cool look at the facts do not make him to be totally incompetant, but hardly what he and others claim he was. He was, really, basically mediocre, and Krick does a good job of showing why. The essay is certainly not favorable to Longstreet, but to write it off simply because of that,(and when you get down to it, there's really no other rational reason--complain all you want about smear-sources, that doesn't make it a valid complaint. Both sides here are way too polarized to really be able to say such a thing) well, it makes little sense. I guess maybe you could read it with some work polarized in the other direction. Although in reality most of them are really the poorly researched histories showing only one side. It just happens to be the other and is therefore good.
   
   Personally, I don't care about Lee's memory, because he is remember in exponentially better than he deserves, but that doesn't make Krick wrong about Longstreet.
   
   Anyway, overall the book is really quite good. And to call Krick "no historian"...just laughable!



4. This book is hardly well researched and anyone with any common sense should be able to tell .For he uses the well used ploy of ignoring what doesn't fit his rather (warped point of view) but using what dose. (Pure propaganda, in this case of the lost cause and to use one of the scribblers own words APPOLOGIST). Just one example is on page 76/77 where he wrights, Longstreet's Demeanor on July 3 affecting the major assault on that day is another subject and BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THIS ESSAY!!, Why could that be because you would be forced to write something positive about longstreet because he was clearly correct about That stupid assault on July 3. But I find it amusing that many things that happened well before and after dose have somehow have scope, an example of one is Longstreet in the wilderness in 1864 (page 80/81). Quite simply this is just a verbal assault.
   
   A second point is that whenever he includes a positive statement made by a person that was there he is instantly a Longstreet apologist. But he willing uses many GEN McLaws statements as gospel to back up his theory without any scrutiny at all; When McLaws clearly had an agenda in anything he said about longstreet.
   
   This man is no historian and you should not waste your money on it.



5. I am dumbfounded that anyone exists that believes these essays are well-researched and informative. The sources that Mr. Krick uses to found his impression of General Longstreet have been proven to be absolutely false and a premeditated smear campaign to ruin the man who was Second-in-Command of the Army of Northern Virginia and RANKED Gen. Jackson. Pure Lost Cause mythology. I can't imagine what would possess a man to slander a person he never met so badly. Very unprofessional and disrespectful to Robert E. Lee's memory too. Readers: do not waste your money on this. It is BADLY researched and unsubstanciated nonsense.

3 comments about May I Quote You, General Lee: Observations and Utterances of the South's Great Generals (May I Quote You--?,).

1. Good but this book has been done many times, just not in one volume.



2. You'll love this book. It has some of Lee's most famous quotes, as well as some obscure ones.

   Lee has many quotes of wisdom as well. This is entirely quotes, not a story.

   I bought two copies, one for me, and one for a gift.




3. If you are looking for a reference book on quotes from past leaders or if you just need inspiration from these leaders, this is the book for you. My husband is in the military and he uses examples from this book frequently, along with a lesson in history that corresponds and I also have given a copy of this book to my father-in-law. He is a civil war buff and he loved my husband's book. I highly recommend this book to historians, students and people who are just interested in the civil war and the heroes of the south.

4 comments about Mighty Stonewall (Texas a&M University Military History Series, No 9).

1. Anyone who has read any of Frank Vandiver's books can be assured that a book by Vandiver is well worth having and reading. This book is no exception. The author presents a fleshed out, human, icon of the Confederacy.



2. Vandiver captures Jaskson; warts and all. His is a comprehensive book detailing all aspects of Jackson's life. Well worth the money and read.



3. After all that has been written about Jackson, Vandiver's treatment is still the best. Highly recommended.



4. This is an essential book for anyone's personal library. Smart, concise, well-illustrated, and comprehensive it tells the story of one of early America's greatest field commanders. Never engaging the question of North versus South and the issues that sculpted the Civil War, Vandiver focuses on the man, his legend, and the simple values he built his life around.

No comments about Margaret Junkin Preston, Poet of the Confederacy: A Literary Life.

4 comments about The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel: Chief of the German High Commmand, 1938-1945.

1. Of all Hitler's generals, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel is arguably the most villified. Nicknamed "Lackeitel" (Keitel the Lackey) and "The Nodding Jack*ss", the Chief of Nazi Germany's Armed Forces High Command has been dismissed by both his contemporaries and historical critics as a servile, desk-bound, paper-pushing non-entity, professionally incompetent and morally weak, whose bumbling and sycophancy noticibly hobbled the Reich's war effort. Albert Speer described him coldly as "one who blindly and without dignity echoes his master's opinion", and Hitler himself, while admitting Keitel was "loyal as a dog", treated him very much like a dog, once mocking him for not understanding the differences between a field piece and an anti-tank gun - "And he's a general of Artillery!"
   
   A description can be accurate without telling the whole story, in his memiors, penned while he was awaiting execution at Nuremberg, Keitel - who was fully aware of how he was percieved by both "friend" and foe alike - tried very hard to tell his side of the story. For that reason alone, aside from its obvious historical value, this book is worth reading.
   
   Keitel was selected by Hitler in 1938 to head up the Oberkommado der Wehrmacht, in theory a military bureau designed to take over the functions of the Minister of War (a post Hitler abolished to increase his control over the Armed Forces) and to serve as Hitler's military staff, but in actuality a body created soley to undercut the power of the OKH, the Army High Command. As its leader, Keitel therefore found himself known as "Hitler's man" in the Army and incurred the appropriate wrath of his former comrades. Unfortunately, Keitel also bore the brunt of Hitler's animosty towards the Army, so much so that he nicknamed himself "the Fuehrer's lightning rod." His principal role throughout the war was as an executive agent of Hitler's will, administrator of a huge staff apparatus, and the duties of a personal secretary and government minister. In those tasks he performed quite well, bringing the qualities of obedience, diligence, and hard work to a table that was overflowing with work from day one. Fully cognizant that his position was merely a tool of Hitler's power aspirations, he referred to the OKW as an "abortion of an office" and made it clear that he would have been much happier somewhere else - anywhere else, but that Hitler refused to either let him resign or take any of his advice. So perhaps Keitel was not so much a lackey himself as merely occupying the job description of one.
   
   Keitel's MEMIORS are various in objective. He wanted to tell the story of the years 1938 - 1945 from his own perspective, to defend his personal reputation against criticisms which were dogging him even at Nuremburg, and he wanted to answer the moral charges leveled against him at his trial. It is in the last two capacities that the book is most interesting; Keitel has some interesting criticisms of his own to throw around, most notably of Hitler, whose autocratic-but-chaotic command style, unstable personality and lust for power made him a truly difficult man to work for; and of the Allies, whose prosecution of Keitel (as well as the other Nuremburg defendants) was tainted by a hypocrisy and self-righteousness Keitel exposes in some detail.
   
   MEMIORS is obviously not a perfect book. Keitel wrote it on death row, with the clock literally ticking in his ears, and was operating mainly from memory; furthermore, editor Walther Goerlitz (THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF) took it upon himself to edit Keitel's person reminiscences wherever he found them, something I found very annoying, as were the footnotes which argued with Keitel's assertions - footnotes are for facts; the editor's personal opinions need to be handled in a forward. This aside, I found it an entertaining and valuable read, one that provided "a view from Hitler's elbow" and gave a man who would rather have been a farmer than a soldier a chance to speak his mind before it was snuffed out by the hangman's noose.



2. Granted, Keitel was not the most gifted German Field Marshal in the German Army, yet he held his job until the very end. There are several reasons for this; the first being of course his blind obedience to Hitler. However, Keitel was not the only German officer to fall completely under Hitler spell. Secondly, whatever his faults, he was a capable administrator who managed for Hitler the vast amounts of paperwork, the OKM was bound to receive from all three branches of the military, in addition to other branches of the Third Reich.

   His was a thankless job which in the end reduced a man who had once been a respected officer in the Army to a defeated man who was left to answer for his master crimes. Keitel, in his defence makes one excellent point, he argues that if so many within the Armed Forces hated him or believed that he should be replaced, why didn't anyone force him to go? These officers did nothing, because no one else wanted his thankless job, because they all saw what it did to Keitel. At Nuremburg, Keitel was sentenced to death by hanging; a fate which Keitel knew awaited him as soon as he was informed of the trial. The fate that Keitel did not attempt suicide to escape the trial shows us that in the end, Keitel was an honorable man whose only crime was to let himself fall totally under the spell of a Hitler.

   The book itself only rates 3 stars because as someone has mentioned in a previous review, the editors of this book have taken it upon themselves to decide what to keep and what to edit out. A total lack of any photographs adds to the less than perfect rating. All in all however, this was an interesting book which allowed us a glimpse into the mind of Field Marshal Keitel.




3. I believe few people would not read this book without more or less a kind of admiration for the author for his unique strong nerve, because without strong belief and strong nerve system, knowing any moment death would be at his door, he would not have put not only his personal history but also a whole nation's history into the account in such an accurate and crystal way within such short period-only six weeks.
   The power of this extraordinary book lies in that the author as an exclusive high rank of a Field Marshal of German armed forces, the Chief of Staff to the High Command of Armed Forces, who working inside the German headquarters, who having participated all the enginering of military plans, has provided rare and valuable historical materials and revealed the truth of the inside the Third Reich, contributing to the establishing the truth of history from the other side, although they are certainly not welcome by the current official establishment account of the history. I wish people read this book with a wide open mind.

   According to the Marshal, the invasion of Poland was to retake the territory that originally belonged to Germany; while the invation of the Soviet Union belonged to a preventive war (which has been confirmed by Soviet historians after more than forty years later). From the point of view of the Marshal, before invasion of Poland, Germany had tried hard to resolve the problem by negotiation, and they provided pretty fair offer to both Poland and France: Germany Government even publicly disavowed his interest in Alsce-Lorraine which, I believe few people know that before Louis XVI was part of Prussia. The Marshal has revealed some truth of the history which I believe have never been known to the public for some political reason. For instance, the Marshal has given justification about the famous commissar order and commando order in the east front, he pointed out that because the Soviet arbitrary refusal either to recognize the Hague Rules on Land Warfare or to consider themselves bound by the Geneva conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, and due to the illegal partisan warfare occurred in the east front which was openly encouraged by Britain and the Soviet Union, so that the war with Soviets was a war fighting for survival, and Hitler demanded that German should dispense with all their outdated and traditional ideas about chivalry and the generally accepted rules of warfare, and smash terror with counter-terror. Another fact the Marshal revealed is the chivalry act German shown in their offering Greek honorable settlement in recognition of their brave struggle and of their blamelessness for the war: Hitler ordered the release and repatriation of all their prisoners of war immediately they had been disarmed; the poor countryside was to be preserved and the country's production was not to be touched except where it might be used to aid the British. And Hitler wanted the troops' victorious entry into Athens without a special parade in order to avoid injuring Greek national pride. The Marshal has cleared the true nature of the Conference that had took place in 1937 which Allied exaggerated its importance at the Nuremberg Trail, the Marshal argued that on the contrary to what Allied asserted, there was no Otto contingency plan, no Green or Red contingencies, but only the most tenuous defense of German frontiers to the east and to the west and preparations of the evacuation of the endangered frontier area to the west of the Rhine and the east of the Oder. Based on the Marshal, unlike what the Nuremberg imposed on German, the fact was that Germany had no any plan to wage a war against the Allied when Germany invaded Poland, because Hitler was strongly confident that the Allied would not intervene the matter which was a pure German domestic affair; the Marshal pointed out that at the time when the war broke out not only German Navy was in an infancy stage compared with the British mighty Royal Navy, but also German Army and German Air Force were in a weak shape: There were only 23 army division, while opposing them were 110 British and French divisions! The Marshall revealed the true reason of why German army halted before Dunkirk : Unlike all the accounts prevails in the current history, Keitel states it was not Hitler who should be responsibility for it but the generals who did not have guts to accept responsibility for it themselves if the operation failed due to the disadvantageous terrain which was with an extensive low-lying plain, intersected by thousands of waterways and all well below sea-level where the Kleist's Tank Army standing near by.

   I should say that after reading the whole book nobody who has a slight sense of military virtue would deny that the Field-Marshal should not be regarded as war criminal but a loyal and patriot soldier for his country; that nobody who has heart would be indifferent to the dignity and noble act the Marshal shown in the Trial by fighting not for his own skin but for Germany, by shouldering the whole responsibility to shield German armed forces, would be unmoved by the touching letters the Marshal wrote to his defense counsel and the Allied Control Council for Germany to request a soldier's death, to face firing squad, instead of being hanged; that anyone who has a little knowledge of the international law, especially of one of the western world's fundamental legal doctrines: Nulla Poena Sine Lege-No punishment without a penal law in force at the time of the commission of the act, would come to the conclusion that the Field-Marshal should be acquitted and the trial for him is unjust.

   I'd like to draw readers much attention to the last chapter written by Walter Goblets who like many politicians, high rank of military personalities, diplomats all around the world bravely and sharply criticize the Nuremberg Trial as a travesty on justice based on international law, shedding new lights on history, and arousing people to deeply contemplate. On this subject, I also recommend the book Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial and the book Doenitz at Nuremberg: A Re-Appraisal.




4. Granted, Field Marshal Keitel was a rather pathetic and hollow man, but even a man such as he did not deserve to see is memoirs so badly taken care of by a bad publishing company and a clueless editor. Let's start from the beginning, my first problem is with the binding of the book : it's cheap very cheap... Next, there's not a single personal picture (I'm amazed the publisher didn't bother to print some considering how there is such a huge number of pictures of the man and of the period...). The price is also much to high if you compare it with other memoirs of the period, also the book quality and it's size doesn't justify such a high fee.

   On to the editing job it's the worst, any serious scholar or historian will tell you that the most interesting thing about memoirs is the fact that they are direct sources of information on a given period, as long as they remain integral. Sadly, the editor didn't see it that way and every time Keitel tried to talk about something other than army administration to express himself about more personal subjects it was edited out of the book! Also all the beginning of the memoirs from year 1934 to 37 were cut from this edition... It's not like the book would have been to big or anything! (It's actually rather small...) The only positive thing is the addition of some personnal letters which weren't present in the german original version.

   On to the content of the memoirs. The botched editing gives for a rather ironic result. Imagine a man like Keitel, a fair administrator a very obedient soldier but a rather weak and empty fellow whom Hitler pushed around and forbade to express any personnal feelings all is life. Now that he finally decided to speak and try to express is own feelings, thoughts and emotion on something which ultimately resulted in the death of millions, including is own at the hand of Nuremberg's hangman; it is the editor who decided to cut him off...

   In case you didn't get the point yet, stick to the german version, it's much more rewarding for any serious reader unless you're only interested in hearing Keitel ramble on an on about the different aspects of the OKW organisation and being edited out every time he goes out of line (that should be enough to put anybody to sleep...)

No comments about A Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow from its Commencement to its relief by Sir Colin Campbell.