5 comments about Sinking the Rising Sun: Dog Fighting & Dive Bombing in World War II: A Navy Fighter Pilot's Story.

1. A very human, humorous, and often poignant account of a young man going to war. Some may be put off by the fact that more than half the book is preparatory to actual combat in the South Pacific. If you are one of those people, I would ask you to reserve judgment as the long prelude makes this fabulous story (to paraphrase what Davis says in this memoir "we began to believe in John Paul Jones' 'we have not yet begun to fight'") all the more empathetic and gut-wrenching when the combat actually comes. Davis is the "real deal"; a Navy Cross recipient who helped sink the Japanese carrier Zuikaku (the last surviving carrier from the Pearl Harbor attack). An unforgettable memoir that I'm so pleased its author decided to share.



2. I do not recommend this book. I was in this squadron and there is so much false stories and tall tales in it that it should be classed as fiction.



3. William Davis is not only an American hero, he is one hell of a writer. His story of how he became a Hellcat fighter pilot, as well as the accounts of his combat amongst the clouds over the Pacific during World War II, is told with a combination humor, detail, and a gripping sense of sacrifice and danger that few other wartime memoirs have ever approached. Not only does "Sinking the Rising Sun" deftly capture one man's amazing account of destiny and bravery during THE war, it just so happens to be a first-rate read.



4. "Sinking the Rising Sun" is an excellent inside look at what it was like flying fighters in the Pacific during WWII. This book is a page turner, at times funny, and touching in the insights into the fears, hopes and sacrifices these men made. An easy read, the book takes you from the initial flight school experience, through to the final battle and return home. A great book!



5. Autobiographies of World War II Navy fighter pilots are pretty rare. In this 2007 volume from Zenith Press, William Davis, an F6F Hellcat pilot who served in the Pacific, offers a rare, from-the-cockpit look at carrier combat in the latter stages of the war. Fans of the Hellcat and the Pacific air war will enjoy his engaging memoir.
   
   Davis joined the Navy in early 1942. After various misadventures in Training Command, which are detailed in the book, he joined VF-19, commanded by Hugh Winters, in August 1943. In the typical hurry-up-and-wait military tradition, the eager Hellcat pilots of VF-19 weren't sent into the war zone until July 1944, embarked on USS Lexington.
   
   In the coming months VF-19 saw much hard combat, resulting in the squadron claiming 155 air kills and almost 200 ground kills. Davis' share of the action included scoring a bomb hit on the Japanese carrier Zuikaku, being shot down off Luzon and scoring a number of kills. In the book Davis claims at least seven kills but apparently only four were officially confirmed, his name not being found on any USN Aces list. Air Group 19 returned stateside in December 1944, Davis subsequently working for Bell Aircraft in the postwar period.
   
   SINKING THE RISING SUN is exciting and fun reading. Davis writes in an easy, engaging style, detailing the funny, exciting and boring events that made up the life of a Navy fighter pilot in the mid-war years. Recommended.

5 comments about Night Owl Fighter Pilot.

1. Well, one would think that the cover would have an F-4 on it with 497TFS markings on it. The tail flash should be "FP" and not "FG."
   
   Bob Hipps, Ubon Alumnus
   497TFS 1967/68
   334TFS/Wolf FAC 1972-73



2. I regret that there was no capable editor assigned to this work. I am plowing through the this book hoping that somehow it will get better, but the stilted prose really is a road block.



3. This was a fascinating book for me to read for several reasons. I was at an F4 pilot at Ubon two years after Val. Every time he described some facet of the base, I could visualize it exactly as he described it. My squadron, the World Famous, Highly Respected, 433 Tactical Fighter Squadron, was located at the opposite end of the building, so I was intimately familiar with the setting. I also knew several of the people in his book, which made it all the more interesting. In fact, some of them were my instructrors when I checked out in the F4.
   
   I too flew several night missions, so I was no stranger to those types of attacks. Like the author, I didn't see a lot of results for our night efforts and began to wonder if this night business was really worth it. Val does an excellent job of describing how this was done.
   
   If you were involved in the Vietnam War, I think you'd find this quite interesting. If you just wondered what it was like to be a fighter pilot in that conflict, I think you'd still find it fascinating. His descriptions are all very real, I assure you.



4. This book fills in valuable information on an aspect of the conflict that few historians of the VietNam war know about. It accurately points out the absurd way the missions were directed from the commander in chief on down. It was a total waste of highly trained men that LBJ & MacNamara simple ignored. Having flown 140 missions over NVA & Laos myself I concur totally with Col Johnsons assesment of the little known night owl airwar.
   
   Bob Frasier
   United Airlines retired



5. An accurate portrayal of what it feels like to be a fighter pilot. Col Johnson describes how it feels to walk out to the airplane, escape death, and the emotional relief of each mission accomplished.
   
   He figured out before MacNamara that this fiasco was not in America's best interest.
   
   R L Penn
   VietNam Vet

4 comments about The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring.

1. Kesselring's description of his life, specially the military aspects, give the impression of a man that deserves the nickname of "smiling Albert", as he always seems to see the good side of even a person perceived by others to be evil.
   The book brings brilliance and experience of an officer to life who can deal with incredibly difficult situations in battles of military strategy and political entrapment.
   The subject may be dry, but the narrative is very engaging.



2. Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring was one of Germany's top military strategists who commanded air fleets during the invasion of France and Battle of Britain. This edition of his memoirs blends in introductions from James Holland and Kenneth Macksey which surveys Kesselring's background and effects, providing a fine survey to the focus of Kesselring, who details both military background and his involvement in World War II - including the war's end and his subsequent trial. Any collection seeking source material and definitive first-person exposes will want this.



3. His troops called him "Smiling Albert", but his enemies considered him something between a strategic mastermind and a bloodthirsty war criminal. Hitler considered him too honest for his own good, and everybody knew he was tough. In 1944, when his staff car collided with the business end of a howitzer, a joke circulated among his armies during his convalescence: "The Field Marshal was only slightly injured, but the gun had to be retired." Such was Albert Kesselring, General Field Marshal of the Luftwaffe and one of the few of that rank to leave his memiors behind.
   
   Kesselring had one of those military careers that is actually several careers in one -- army officer, air force general, theater commander. Considering his many achievements, he should probably be more famous, but it was his fate to be the "other field marshal" in the Southern Theater - the principle one being, of course, Rommel, with whom Kesselring often bitterly quarreled. Indeed, it was Kesselring's relations with men like Hitler, Goering, and Rommel that I was arguably looking most forward to reading about - among other things. And therin lies the problem. It turned out there were too many "other things" in MEMIORS. Kesselring was attempting too much. His life story is simply too damned big to cram into a single volume. Considering the vital importance he played in the development of the Luftwaffe, the French campaign, the Battle of Britain, the invasion of Russia, the war in North Africa and the defense of Sicily and Italy, it would have been better to split this into a two or even a three-volume series.
   
   The problem of biting off more of his life than he could chew was exacerbated by the fact that he wrote these pages wholly or partially while imprisoned for war crimes, and thus had very limited access to research materials - he seems to be operating from memory, and from postwar literature produced by his ex-enemies. Finally, Kesselring's writing style, while not precisely bad and showing flashes of talent here and there, isn't what you would call aesthetically pleasing. Having read a lot of German military literature to use as comparison, I would rate him in the bottom half of the ex-generals: he often generalizes when he should speak specifically, and sometimes bogs down in details when he should have spoken broadly.
   
   I also have some issues with the book itself. The pictures are low quality -, grainy, dot-matrix style, and the translation from German to British English leaves something to be desired. Ranks are incorrectly translated on many occasions and some of the sentences have that unweildy, unnatural quality that an overly literal translation tends to create. There are also some misspellings, and a comment or two in the forward which is/are downright nonsensical.
   
   MEMIORS are by no means all bad. Kesselring's career is breath-taking in its sheer scope, and his criticisms of Allied battle strategies, the cumbersome and inefficient leadership structure of Hitler's armed forces, and the Axis failure to seize Malta (which cost them the North African war) are all fascinating. His diplomatic criticisms of Rommel shed interesting light on the less pleasing aspects of that legendary soldier. Furthermore, in defending himself against charges of war crimes in Italy, he makes a number of valid points about the hypocrisy of the Allies, who encouraged and facilitated the brutal partisan movement knowing full well how the Germans would respond to it, and then used ex post facto laws to prosecute German leaders after the war.
   
   MEMIORS are most definitely not a smooth and easy read. In some ways they is not even as well-written as Field Marshal Keitel's death row memiors, which were cut short by his execution at Nuremberg. But they are an important contribution to war literature.



4. Albert Kesselring was the commander of German forces in Italy during World War 2, but his memoires cover his entire military service, from pre-WW1 through WW2. He waxes nostalgic on the friendly pre-WW1 relations between the German troops stationed near France, and the ladies across the boarder. (What would the Boarder Patrol think of it!) His discussion of the post-WW1 period focusses largely on the circumstances of his transfer from the army to the air force. An intermediate amount of coverage is given to the early WW2 period, with the latter part of the war in Italy dominating the memoires, much as it dominated his career. Hauptsturmfuhrer Otto Skorzeny (the commando leader who freed Mussolini) commented in his own memoires about his differences in methodology from those of Kesselring, and Kesselring takes this opportunity to provide his side of the matter. In addition, Kesselring discusses why he was chosen as the commander most uniquely qualified to serve as a liason with the Italians. Several sections cover the important steps he took to preserve historic art treasures in the midst of the destruction of war, and his views on the criminal nature of guerillas who disguise themselves as civilians in violation of the Geneva Convention.

5 comments about Ruff's War: A Navy Nurse on the Frontline in Iraq.

1. I am doing a senior thesis on women in wartime and was eager to read this book. However, after reading the stories of women trapped on Bataan in WWII and the nurses in Vietnam and Korea I felt that this one fell short. Not that her story isn't a good one, but it was rather trite. She seemed to complain A LOT about the sand, and while that sucks at least she was getting 2-3 nutritionally balanced meals a day whereas in WWII those nurses were starving slowly. I think her tour was too short to Really get a feel for the war, also she was just gassing them and moving on. Not actually performing the surgery. The more I read the more I felt like this was an excuse to get a novel out there. I look forward to reading the memoirs of the soldiers who are still in Iraq and have been for months and months now. Out of All the books I have read, her tour was the shortest, the least bloody, the most safe and she complained more than any of the others. I appreciate that she wants to share what Iraq was like and is proud to be a caregiver... but I didn't like this novel At All.



2. I was not impressed with this book at all. As a hospital corpsman who has served in Iraq I couldn't help but laugh at the complaints of CDR Ruff. We all endured the same situations in Iraq and unfortunately some of us had to be deployed for a lot longer then 122 days. I picked up the book excited to read about someone elses perspective on the war, I was very disappointed to read only about how miserable one person was on her very brief deployment. Iraq is what you make of it, and complaining only makes it worse. Don't get me wrong I have great respect for the patient care but thats where my apprectiation for this book ends.



3. I'm planning on entering the Navy Nurse Corps after I graduate from college. I've been searching for books about Navy nurses and found no luck, but when I found Ruff's War I was very excited. The author gets into the life of a hospital corpsman (woman in this case) and then as a Navy nurse anestic. The tours in the Middle East were the most enjoyable for me because I realize I may go to Iraq one day... but at least Ruff is honest about the life style over there. She adapted as best she could without complaining. Her bravery as a nurse goes beyond heroic and I'm glad she wrote the book. I want to do any type of nursing in the military. I believe this is a must read for any nurses who are thinking about nursing in the military or who want to know what the life is of a military nurse.



4. This is a very personal and heart-felt account of one Navy Nurse's experiences with the fast moving situations during the initial phase of the Iraq incursion. Cheryl's willingness to share her professional and personal story is a welcome addition to the history made daily by Navy Nurse Corps officers and corpsmen who go 'In Harms Way' to assist the Marines and other personnel in need of excellence in patient care.



5. I have family members who have served in IRAQ. 2 Army and 1 Marine. This book helped me to understand what they went through. It takes a lot of courage to write about an experience like this. I found myself laughing out loud at parts of the story and sobbing through other parts. Well done!

5 comments about The Good Soldier: From Austrian Social Democracy to Communist Captivity with a Soldier of Panzer-Grenadier Division "Grossdeutschland".

1. More of a lifetime biography than a war biography, which is fine . Like I say, it is worth reading, but it is not just about the war years...



2. I just finished listening to the audio version of this book. The author himself, is the narrator which in itself is powerful. He speaks in a very slow, sincere, sometimes emotionally strained voice through which you can hear his struggling memories being conveyed. He tells of happy times, of funny boyhood pranks, of his daily life, of his participation in times and events that only hindsight fully showed him the magnitude of. No this is not a book for historians looking for detailed information full of dates and strategic manuevers and military actions. This is not a book for people wanting a documentary of factual processes by which Germany very nearly took over the entire of Europe. This is a story of Alfred Novatny... written solely for his daughter and her children so they would know him, and know where they came from. It can be overwhelmingly touching. By the end of the book, you feel you know this man. My husband, who is from Germany, listened to the most of it with me and when the book was finished, he turned to me and said "I want to find this man". We had no idea how old the book was and I warned that he was likely no longer living. But we did look him up and found him. My husband talked to him on the phone for quite some time. And he is a very kind man with such a good heart. He said there is so very much more that is not in the book... that couldn't be.. because it was just too harsh. It is a very good book that "connects" a modern world with a life and time that is now long gone and dying with the generation of those who lived it. It is a precious thing for him to have given to his children... and to the rest of us.



3. This book is an outstanding recollection of an Austrian soldier's experiences as a member of the German Army's renowned Grossdeutschland division in World War II. It is a rewrite of this soldier's originally privately published memoirs and is replete with interesting vignettes on the author's life, from his growing up in a family of Social Democrats in pre-war Austria, to his induction into the elite Grossdeutchland division, to his many and varied battlefield experiences, to his life as a post-war prisoner of the Soviets, to his coming to America.
   
   The combat experiences he describes are mischeviously short (as is the book itself). Unfortunately, this sometimes leaves the impression that the author is holding back information, i.e., information that would not make him look good. Nonetheless, it contains many fascinating anecdotes about life under German control and in the German army during this period. For example, while undergoing his mandatory labor service ("Reichsarbeitsdienst") in late 1941 he is shipped with his unit to build runways near some German U-boat pens on the North Atlantic coast. They are all awakened one morning, provided steel helmets, given rifles and hand grenades with five minutes of instruction on their use, and sent out to fight some British commandos who were attacking the facility because they knew the regular military garrison was 25 miles away on manuevers. Somehow, these teenage conscripts held off the commandos, who were taken by surprise, believing that the facility would be undefended.
   
   Especially interesting are the author's several near experiences with death, including, a bullet going through one side of his helmet but then traveling around the rim, leaving him without a scratch; a comrade entering the author's foxhole and moments later being blown up by an artillery shell, again leaving the author without a scratch; and hitting a heavy Stalin tank at close range with a "Panzerfaust" at the same time it fired its main gun at him, knocking the author unconscious, as the round hit a wall right above him, but otherwise laving him unharmed.
   
   The entire book is strengthened by excellent introductory and transitional comments by Marc Rikmenspoel. Also making the book a very worthwhile purchase are the inclusion of a dozen or so wartime photographs of the author (some posed, some more candid in the field) as well as pictures of his two wound tags and the certificate awarding him the Iron Cross.
   
   Beware, however, that there are grammatical and typographical errors on about every other page of the book. (Only in the parts written by Mr. Novotny and not, however, by Mr. Rikmenspoel.) These mistakes disrupt the flow and makes one wonder if there really was any editing done at all from the original edition. This otherwise superb book gets 4 stars instead of 5 due to this easily remedied flaw.



4. 5 Stars
   
   First, this book is published by Aberjona Press. I will be totally honest with you. I've never read a bad WWII book published by this business. I highly encourage amazon.com readers to read other books published by this firm. WWII is their bread and butter in the publishing business. So, I had high hopes for this book and it delivers.
   
   The Good Soldier" is about memoirs of Germany Army WWII soldier Fred Novotny. The book's introduction starts off with the proverbial Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times!" (this reviewer hopes this does not happen to himself) Novotny certainly had his share of "interesting times". This is a story of overcoming great adversary with a happy ending.
   
   Unlike most WWII stories, which begin in 1939 and end in 1945, "The Good Soldier" is across Novotny's entire lifetime. It begins with his childhood in Vienna, and continues without respite through the Anschluss, his service in the German Labor Service (RAD) and as a machine gunner with the elite "GrossDeutschland" armored infantry division, his postwar years in a Soviet prison camp, his return to freedom and eventual emigration to the USA, where he finds peace and success.
   
   The book isn't full of "combat stories" but there are enough anecdotes to get a good sense of what life in the Third Reich was like and how terrible war and the postwar peace could be. The RAD experiences in particular are very interesting, since there is little information published in English about this German paramilitary organization.
   
   Novotny's descriptions of life as a "GrossDeutschland" soldier and the Soviet penal system are fascinating as well. The reader will doubtless be amazed at Novotny's good fortune through some pretty grim situations - as he was himself!
   
   When you read about any German soldier who survived the war they all credited their military training but cursed it a the same time. The German military training made their average soldier equal to US Marines or Army Rangers.
   
   After the war Novoty's sent to work in a Soviet mine. He meets a woman and they have a brief encounter. The conditions in the mine are just as terrible as an prison. Novoty is released because the Soviets are trying to influence Austria political elections in the early cold war period.
   
   The book is about 150-odd pages but is full of photos, drawings and notes that help the reader get a sense of the writer's experiences in the general sweep of WWII history.
   
   I really enjoyed "The Good Soldier" and would recommend it to anyone interested in personal accounts of German soldiers in the Second World War. Indeed, I shall be re-reading it this week.
   
   Enjoy.



5. Alfred Novotny is a former German solider from WWII who decided to write down some of his experiences from before, during, and after WWII. Like Guy Sajer, Alfred served in Gross Deutschland. Also like Guy, he served as a grenadier on a machine gun team.
   
   Alfred starts his story by telling us about pre-war Austria, the environment, and the events leading up to Germanys taking over of Austria. This was interesting because I didn't know that much about Austria between the wars. The political environment was interesting to say the least.
   
   During the early part of WWII, Alfred was a member of the RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst). Interestingly, he was working around St. Nazaire when the commando raid happened (yes, he did gain some combat experience there). Upon completing his duty in the RAD, Alfred was brought into the German army, rather unusually for an Austrian, into Gross Deutschland (Alfred states that most Austrians were brought into the Mountain Infantry Regiments, the 44th ID, the 2nd PzD, or the 9th PzD).
   
   Alfred gives a basic description of his time serving in Gross Deutschland. Throughout his chapters, Alfred has a little lead in paragraph that describes the situation he's going to describe in the following paragraphs. In his military service part, Alfred describes his training, his time on the front, Gross Deutschland, and the end of the war.
   
   Like most German veterans who served on the eastern front, Alfred has section on the being a Russian prisoner of war. There's some interesting things, however, most of it has been covered by other Germans as well or better.
   
   Alfred closes the book out with his post war activities. This includes his coming to America.
   
   The Good Soldier is a good basic book. Not nearly as strong as most other personal histories. For this reason, I can only give it 3 stars. There are some very good pieces in here, but unfortnetly, Alfred doesn't deliver the goods nearly as well as Guy Sager, Hans von Luck, and others. Read it, but remember, this was written so his family would know wat he did and why.

4 comments about The Life of Francis Marion.

1. Sean Busick has done us all a wonderful service by bringing back to print William Gilmore Simms's Life of Marion. It's a classic work of historical narrative suitable for most readers. Not only does Simms provide a interesting account of the life of one of early America's most courageous figures, he captures the complicated and often turbulent world of Revolutionary South Carolina.



2. Few "giants" of the American Revolution have deserved more attention and praise than Francis Marion. Unfortunately, Marion, the brilliant general and statesman, has not received the attention he rightfully deserves. Simms classic biography is a remedy to this predicament, and Dr. Busick's erudite introduction to this new edition allows for an even fuller understanding of a true American hero and his contribution to American social and political life. Reading Simms on Marion, guided by Busick's careful and terse introduction, we can recover the military genius and personal affability of the man Tarleton called the "old fox."
   
   H. Lee Cheek, Jr., Ph.D.
   Chair, Social Sciences; and Professor of Political Science, Brewton-Parker College, Mt. Vernon, Georgia
   www.drleecheek.com
   Author of _Calhoun and Popular Rule_ (University of Missouri Press, 2001 and 2004).



3. I wanted to read a contemporary book about General Marion. This is an interesting book but was written in 1844. It is undoubtedly accurate but I found it difficult to read for a nonhistorian.



4. This is well written Narrative of the life of a real hero and his participation in the revolutionary war

5 comments about My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope.

1. Hey L. Paul, you cost your country like 2 trillion dollars and a loasd of blood, can we have our Freedom Medal back?



2. Bremer's year in Iraq was the turning point in the Iraq war...a war that was not considered in is consequences by Bush or his cronyies, bomb first, think later if at all! It was a year when both security and economic issues were in desperate need of the best minds possible...instead we got Bremer. It is not that the endless problems that came up were entirely Bremer's fault, except in part..the war architects had not even minimally anticipated what would happen, thus they destroyed central leadership [....], then through bombing destroy resource basis, then through disbanding security forces (Bremer) unleashed competitive violence and underlyng ethnic conflict.amazing thatthey did not see it coming...incompetent and America and the Iraqis pay and pay and pay.........



3. I took great care to read this book slowly. See my list on Iraq Evaluations.
   
   Bremer is clearly a decent man, hard-working, totally clueless about Middle Eastern and military affairs, and put in a no-win situation by George Bush and Dick Cheney. Bremer bugged out after a year, and now, two years later, the Administration we have a quagmire and a possible attack on Iran building up.
   
   Quite incredulously, for me at least, Bremer actually sees Iraq as the crux of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and yet is totally oblivious to the fact that we created this battlefield opportunity for Iran and Al-Qaeda. See At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA
   
   Early on the book makes it clear that Iraqis were delighted to be liberated, dismayed at the occupation, and completely unable to agree among themselves about how to achieve a legitimate government capable of stabilizing and reconstructing the country.
   
   This is a very self-serving book, extraordinarily selective in its recollections. A few things that really struck me:
   
   1) This book starts without reference to the path to war paved by lies from the Vice President and other members of the Bush "team." It begins by saying that it was "widely accepted" that Weapons of Mass Destruction were the proper cause of the invasion. BALONEY. See instead Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq and Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
   
   2) There is ZERO discussion in this book of the massive role played by Halliburton, Bechtel, and others. There is ZERO discussion of the 18 billion dollars he had to work with and managed to lose, completely apart from the contracting. There is ample discussion about the pretense of progress, but ZERO discussion about the thousands of contracting failures, the abysmal failure of the entire reconstruction effort. See Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation And the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq and a host of other books on our failures there, such as Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
   
   3) There is a lot of blame to direct elsewhere, clearly justified but not at all making up for the fact that Bush-Cheney lied to America and the world and created this mess:
   
   a) Chalabi was a constant irritant, obstruction, and general twit. This is the man who was fired by CIA for being a thief and a liar, convicted in Jordan of bank fraud, and still allowed by the US to be very active in Iraq.
   
   b) Wolfowitz's rosy predictions are labeled as "fantasy," and the author on more than one occasion talks about Doug Feith in a manner that is the diplomatic equivalent of General Frank's blunt statement in his own book: "the dumbest bastard on the planet." See Tommy Franks "American Soldier."
   
   c) The Governing Council created early on was lazy, working quarter days four days a week. They simply did not compute the demand for hard serious work.
   
   d) He takes General Jay Garner to task for allowing looting (ultimately 17 of 20 Ministry headquarters buildings were completely looted, as well as electrical and water plants and petroleum pumping stations), and also calls General Garner's 15 May turn-over plan a reckless fantasy. I posit instead that the neo-cons were sucked in by Iranian agent Chalabi and never realized how deep they were into fantasy land. I think Garner was close to getting it right early on.
   
   e) He very properly points out that he inherited a deep structural crisis, a country coming off fifty years of neglected infrastructure, with virtually every sector of society dysfunctional. For context see The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
   
   f) The CIA and the Marines shut down his attempt to arrest Muqtada Al-Sadt, the Shi'ite cleric that has since then completely disrupted the country.
   
   g) On more than one occasion the Spanish Army elements refused to fight and refused to follow direction. The Ukrainians also come in for direct criticism from Bremer.
   
   There are a number of absolutely fascinating tid-bits, a few of which are listed here:
   
   1) The Iraqi military had 16,000 generals while the US military (all of it, worldwide) has only 300.
   
   2) The military consisted largely of Sunni officers who abused enlisted Shi'ite soldiers.
   
   3) Saddam Hussein had implemented virtual starvation genocide against the Shi'ites, with severe malnutrition being the norm within that majority.
   
   4) Because of the complete breakdown of all sanitation measures, he estimates that 500,000 tons of human waste each day were dumped into the two rivers.
   
   5) Hussein printed money with inflation up to 100,000 per year--at the same time, 50% of all Iraqis said by the author to be unemployed when he arrived. [On this later point, he does not address the fact that the contractors received billions and instead of employing Iraqis, imported many other nationalities as slave wages.]
   
   6) In his view, there were three sources of instability: looters, die-hard Bathists, and the Mukhabarat paramilitary.
   
   7) Saudi Arabia was known to be egging the Sunnis on and in my view; this makes the Iranian interest in Shi'ite self-preservation completely appropriate. The author also notes that Syria and Lebanon were training and sending in foreign fighters (in the low thousands). Saudi Arabian royalty is EVIL. See See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism and also Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
   
   8) The author blames the French (and to a lesser degree the Russians) for keeping Saddam Hussein in power, while making no mention at all of the strong support provided by the USA to Saddam Hussein in his genocide against the Kurds and his genocidal chemical war with Iran.
   
   9) On an extremely important point, I found it beyond belief that the author, the "Viceroy" was put into Baghdad without a command & control communications and computing set of vans, tents, generators, and so on. The military incapacitated him with quiet scorn.
   
   The author claims in this book that the insurgency was "largely unpredicted" (page 223) and this is of course not true. However, I do believe him when he says he tried over and over again to get Washington and the military to take the insurgency seriously. His problems with Washington are very similar to those described by General Wesley Clark in Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat
   
   The author has 164 references to Bush and only 26 to Cheney. He really did deal with the President on many matters after the fact, but I credit Dick Cheney will totally trashing our entire global program. See Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
   
   The author has good things to say about the World Bank (this is prior to Wolfowitz taking it over). They completed 15 assessments in six weeks instead of six months, and were very helpful.
   
   There are only 12 mentions of Iran in this book. That is the epitaph for our failed invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iran wins, we lose.



4. I think that this is one of the important books of the Iraq war. Bremer is perhaps the most important figure of the most important part of it, namely, the attempted reconstruction of the country. This book describes his efforts toward that end, and attempts to justify his decisions.
   
   Unfortunately, the effort is a disaster. Bremer really didn't have much experience with this kind of work, and it appears clear from the beginning that right-wing ideology was the driving factor in his decision making -- and most of these decisions suffered for that. For instance, Bremer refused to re-open the state-run businesses, because he thought the private sector should run all business -- this immediately threw tens of thousands of people out of work. Similarly, the draconian de-Baathification forced almost all qualified managers from their jobs. Bremer also, and I think unforgivably, doesn't spend any time comparing this attempted rebuilding to the very successful post WW II efforts. In particular, the de-Baathification seems to have been based on the de-Nazification in Germany, without really looking too closely at what might be different between Iraq and Germany.
   
   Still, it's an interesting book, and a point of view that should be a part of any study of the war. The book could well have been 10 times as long, and it would be interesting to see what parts were edited out. I share others recommendations of "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" as a great companion book.



5. This is a very comprehensive account of Paul Bremer's time in Iraq, and for almost the first time gives a real insight into the political in fighting both in Iraq and in Washington as the US attempts to bring democracy to this nation. He has been unfairly treated in other books on Iraq and this tends to set the record straight. I very good read for those who are seriously interested in the Iraq situation.

5 comments about Death in the Jungle.

1. The author is a brave soldier. Enlisting in the SEALS is the bottom of his courage. His engagement in the ambushes, the numerous missions of harassment, against the VCs are impressive. The man has a very acute sense of humour and likes sharing his wisdom about the sense of the war.
   
   Brave soldiers, heroes, nice men ; a good book on the Vietnam war even though I preferred "Sog: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam" or "Good to Go: The Life and Times of a Decorated Member of the U.S. Navy's Elite Seal Team Two" by Harry Constance.



2. Deep in the jungle and behind enemy lines. You hear something in the water. What do you do? This is the setting for the book Death in the jungle by Gary R smith and Alan Maki.
   
   
   In this story Gary serves 5 tours in the Vietnam War. He tells about his missions and the pros and cons of being a Navy Seal. My favorite mission he told was when his team and he are on a 24 hour river ambush at night. They hear something floating down the river. Seeing only the outline of the object they open fire on what they thought was the enemy. After blowing away half of their rounds they realized it was just a log.
   
   
   The theme of this book is war is not always a good thing. People die and sometimes nothing is accomplished. This was a great book to read. It was full of details and action packed missions. I had a hard time putting it down. I would recommend strongly that you read this book.



3. Book arrived within a few days and was in the condition that it was described or better, very happy with there service.



4. This is an excellent account of a mans tour of Vietnam. Its worth every penny!



5. I have read just about every Navy Seal book out there and this one is by far the best one. The way the teams can turn it on and off like a light switch from cold calculated killers and then back to normal is unbeleivable...

5 comments about The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945.

1. This book is an incredible story of survival. I have seen the movie also. I would recommend both!



2. One of those amazing stories that makes you realize just how much the human spirit can take, and still survive. And just how inhumane we humans can be towards each other. Once you start reading, you won't be able to put this down.



3. Szpilman reveals the tragedy of Jewish life in Warsaw under the German occupation from 1939-1946. Szpilman's autobiographical work was first published in postwar Poland in 1946 but then quickly removed from circulation by Polish authorities. An accomplished pianist before the war, Szpilman played for Polish Radio during the siege of Warsaw and later within the Jewish ghetto to provide food for his parents and siblings. With the systematic liquidation of Jewish life in Warsaw and separation from his family, Szpilman's life took a series of surprising twists. As the reader views life in the ghetto through the eyes of a survivor, his escape from the ghetto before the Jewish up-rising and his ultimate survival consistently depended upon a timely combination of luck and sympathetic acquaintances B including a German army officer.
   
   Included with Szpilman's memoirs are excerpts from Captain Wilm Hosenfeld's diaries and Wolf Biermann's own brief commentary. Hosenfeld's equating of National Socialism with Stalinist Communist and Biermann's emphasis on Szpilman's willingness to break with his past detracts from the overall quality of this work. Nevertheless, this work is well written and will retain the reader's attention to the end.



4. I could not put down this book, and read it in two sittings. Wladyslaw Szpilman, the famed pianist and composer, describes his harrowing account of life under Nazi terror. As a Polish Jew, Szpilman was considered by the Nazis to be entirely subhuman, and it is a miracle he survived the persistent and random acts of violence that surrounded him. He was nearly sent to a death camp along with his five family members, and somehow was pulled off the Birkenau-bound train to a grim prospect of survival. The images in this book are harrowing, such as the depiction of the shattered skulls of little girls, victims of the Nazis' "preferred" method of killing children by picking them up by their legs and swinging them into a brick wall. Imagine the horror....Szpilman's account is so matter-of-fact at times that you wonder how he survived. The fact that he did is a testament of human endurance, but also the ways of fate. There were occasions when he survived simply by the luck of the draw in a Godless universe.



5. Why do I consider a first person account detailing the horrors of the Holocaust to be uplifting? The events described by the author are harrowing and nearly unbelieveable to the degree that I was astonished that the man, in the end, survives. Perhaps that is why I am so uplifted by this story. He survived. He defied evil by daring to live. He also dared to pick up the pieces of his shattered life and continue to live. He does this without any fanfare or obvious heroism. I think that is what makes this particular telling of the Holocaust so remarkable. The author writes it in such an unremarkable fashion that it forces you to sit up and take notice. By simply stating that the caramel was his 'family's last meal together' makes you pause to reflect on such an event. Beautifully written. Highly reccommended.
   
   As a side note, Roman Polanski's adaptation of this book is truely brilliant. Adrien Brody's portrayal of Szpilman is awe inspiring and heart wrenching to watch. Both men do the book and Szpilman's memory justice.

2 comments about In Hostile Skies: An American B-24 Pilot in World War II (North Texas Military Biography and Memoir Series).

1. When you first see this book you can't help but think, 'What, another bomber pilot story.' Yes, it's another bomber pilot story. B-24's in the Eighth Air Force. In some ways it's a familiar story. But in spite of that, each story is different.
   
   About half of this book is about the eighteen months spent in training to fly the B-24. Then they went to England and began their tour. They got to England on D-Day. They basically flew in the last year of the war. This was the time of the really big raids, a thousand, fifteen hundred planes. This was also the time of the ME-262. ==He was in London on pass when the largest number of V-1s in a single day attacked. (Many, many years later I stayed in the same hotel he used, the Great NorthEastern.)
   
   He was in on Operation Cobra. He reports that his plane did not drop bombs because of an inability to positively identify the target. This was the day that the Air Force walked their bombs backwards over a road and killed a lot of Americans including Lt. General MacNair, the highest ranking American killed in Europe.
   
   Once he cut his head open on a bomb fin as they were preparing for a mission. He went to the hospital. They put a bandage on it and told him that when he got back from the mission, if he got back, they would sew it up.
   
   He participated in Operation Market Garden. This was the disaster described in the book/movie 'A Bridge Too Far.' There is an absolutely frightening picture of a B-24 nose down headed for a crash that was taken during this operation.
   
   One point that makes this book more effective is the research done by Mr. Snead. He has checked the official history of each mission that Mr. Davis flew and gives the details as to what happened.
   
   All in all, I found this to be one of those you can't put it down books. Highly recommended.



2. In Hostile Skies: An American B-24 Pilot In World War II is the military memoir of James Davis, who piloted a B-24 as part of the Eighth Air Force on almost thirty missions in the European Theater during World War II. Chapters recount the story of his service from his dreams of flying, to training, his first mission, terrible close calls, the end of the tour, and coming home after the war. A handful of black-and-white historical photographs nicely illustrate this gripping firsthand testimony, so visceral as to be the next best thing to personally experiencing the wonders of flight and the terrors of war.