World Books - Page 2

Guns, Germs and Steel

Jared Diamond

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1076 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

History; It's What's for Dinner 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Dr. Diamond's magnum opus for which he has won an Oscar. Or maybe it was the Pullet Surprise. Something like that.

Unrivaled, in the experience of this humble reviewer, in either clarity or insight, GGS, is one of the best books I have ever read. Diamond is a gifted writer and is able to present complex issues simply and clearly. He also presents several interesting hypotheses regarding the evolution of civilization about how the humans had uncomfortably little to do with anything. We are the products of the plants and animals we domesticated. So go read the book before I domesticate you...

Editorial Review:

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

In this groundbreaking work, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history’s broadest patterns. It is a story that spans 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a world history that really is a history of all the world’s peoples, a unified narrative of human life.

Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future

Joel C. Rosenberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 203 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With over one million novels in print, New York Times best-selling author Joel C. Rosenberg has been called "eerily prophetic" and a "modern Nostradamus" for his uncanny ability to write political thrillers that come true. In his first nonfiction book, this evangelical Christian from an Orthodox Jewish heritage takes readers on an unforgettable journey through prophecy and current events into the future of Iraq after Saddam, Russia after Communism, Israel after Arafat, and Christianity after radical Islam. You won't want to miss Joel's exclusive interviews with Israeli, Palestinian, and Russian leaders, and previously classified CIA and White House documents. Similar to the approach Joel takes in his novels, his desire is to draw readers into stories, anecdotes, and predictions in a way that builds confidence that allows Joel to share his faith in Jesus Christ and the reliability of Scripture as a guide to understanding the past and the future.

Drawing on his experience in Washington, his own exclusive interviews with world leaders, and his astute political acumen, Joel makes sense of the events surrounding the Middle East. He connects information in a way that will make you understand and really care about the world's most important events and how they impact your life--from gas prices to your bank account.

Epicenter is about:

• Change--big changes, dramatic changes, changes that will transform the world as we know it
• Answers--what the changes are underway in the world's most important countries
• Insight--readers will understand the trajectory of world events by being taken inside the governments of Iran, Iraq, Russia, China, and more
• Accessibility--aimed for a wide audience in both the general and Christian markets
• Faith--Joel shares his faith in Jesus Christ and the reliability of Scripture

Epicenter will answer questions like:

• Will Iraq go from bad to worse?
• Will Israel and her Arab neighbors find peace, or is another major Middle East war just around the corner?
• If the new, post-Soviet Russia is our friend, why is the Kremlin creating a new class of thermonuclear weapons and building an alliance with radical Islam?

The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997

Piers Brendon

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A magisterial work of narrative history, hailed in Britain as “the best one-volume account of the British Empire” and “an outstanding book” (The Times Literary Supplement).

After the American Revolution, the British Empire appeared to be doomed. But over the next 150 years it grew to become the greatest and most diverse empire the world has ever seen—ranging from Canada to Australia to China, India, and Egypt—seven times larger than the Roman Empire at its apogee. Britannia ruled the waves and a quarter of the earth.

Yet it was also a fundamentally weak empire, as Piers Brendon shows in this vivid and sweeping chronicle. Run from a tiny island base, the British Empire operated on a shoestring with the help of local elites. It enshrined a belief in freedom that would fatally undermine its authority. Spread too thin, and facing wars, economic crises, and domestic discord, the empire would vanish almost as quickly as it appeared.

Within a generation, the mighty structure collapsed, sometimes amid bloodshed. This rapid demise left unfinished business in Rhodesia, the Falklands, and Hong Kong. It left an array of dependencies and a ghost of an empire overshadowed by a rising America. Above all, it left a contested legacy: at best, a sporting spirit, a legal code, and a near-universal language; at worst, failed states and internecine strife.

Brendon tells this story with brio and brilliance; covering a vast canvas, he fills it with vivid firsthand accounts of life in the colonies and intimate portraits of the sometimes eccentric British officials who administered them. It is all here—from brief lives to telling anecdotes to comic episodes to symbolic moments. Panoramic in scope and riveting in detail, this is narrative history at its finest.

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Steve Coll

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 143 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Highly Informative, Not Well-Constructed, and Unfortunately Biased 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I recommend this book, in spite of its flaws, because it is a very useful history of CIA involvement in Afghanistan, from the end of the Carter administration until the day before the 9/11 attacks.

The book is divided into three parts, focusing on the Soviet occupation and mujahideen resistance, the Afghan Civil War, and the Taliban era, respectively. Coll commands a truly impressive list of source-interviews, and has clearly devoted considerable research time and effort. I suspect that few authors indeed could have had access to all of his information. If you can read the book through the end, it will be worth it.

But there are a few problems, which are significant:

1. The narrative tends to jump around in terms of geography and chronology. To some extent this is a necessary evil; in order to understand Afghanistan over the past three decades, one must understand Soviet/Russian, Iranian, Pakistani, Saudi and American involvement, because modern Afghanistan did not happen in a nutshell. And in order to understand those nations' involvement, one must know something of their history, and the personalities which drove decision-making. Unfortunately, Coll does not quite manage to pull everything together in a clear, readable narrative. The book can be slow-going, especially if you are new to the Middle East and Central Asia.

2. Coll very obviously doesn't care much for Republicans, and goes to some lengths to defend Democrats (without completely absolving them of responsibility). This is odd, given that the vast majority of the post-Soviet/pre-9/11 era happened under Democrat watch. Perhaps this is due in part to Coll's access to sources: it appears from his endnotes that he relies heavily on Clinton's administration for information, which is precisely the group with the greatest incentive to white-wash their actions. If most of the people you talk to are liberals, you will end up with a liberal version of history -- it's understandable, but regrettable.

3. The book has extremely little focus on Iran, and few details on the 9/11 hijackings. If you are interested in information on these aspects of Afghanistan, look elsewhere.

Again, I do recommend the book, which is valuable for its strengths in spite of its weaknesses. But the reader is advised caution, and might do well to start with a general history of Afghanistan or the Middle East before picking up Coll's book.

Editorial Review:

To what extent did America’s best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Based on scrupulous research and firsthand accounts by key government, intelligence, and military personnel both foreign and American, Coll details the secret history of the CIA’s role in Afghanistan, the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of bin Laden, and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.

1776

David McCullough

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 656 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Struggle of an Infant Nation 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

David McCullough takes the reader back to the very first year of our Republic in 1776 which indeed is the seminal year of the existence of the United States.
Not only did America sever its relations with England, it went to war with that Nation. In essence this is a story of George Washington's struggles and it tells of the making of his leadership skills. It also tells of a man who learns from both his mistakes and the mistakes of mostly omission of the enemy.
McCullough's prose takes us from the early siege in Boston unto the battles in Brooklyn and New York City. The battles in New York were victories for the British. It is true that Washington lost in these battles, but in the long run he learned much of the enemy and their tendencies. It is true that England was the dominant military force in the World at this time. In reflection this meant little to Washington. Although the Continental Army was no more than a rag tag collection of volunteers who were poorly equipped and clothed to fight a sustained battle with a professional Army, they did indeed make life for the British elite a living nightmare.
The efforts of George Washington were indeed stuff made of legend and the stories of these epic struggles have been handed down in American lore. His surprise attack on Trenton on Christmas Day gave hope to a beleaguered Army. Washington's struggles show the character of a man who learned from the experience of his mistakes. Washington as outlined by McCullough was not a brilliant strategist nor was he an intellectual giant but he did possess common sense and the gift of timing to do the right thing at the right time.
As stated by my old friend at the New York Times Book Review, Michiko Kakutani, "A Nation is born, and You Are There".

Editorial Review:

America's most acclaimed historian presents the intricate story of the year of the birth of the United States of America. 1776 tells two gripping stories: how a group of squabbling, disparate colonies became the United States, and how the British Empire tried to stop them. This book destroys many popular myths about the wars of independence and reveals in fact how many Americans wished to remain British, and how many British had profound doubts about a military solution to the revolt. It shows that many of those fighting knew those on the other side well, and as the great decisions and battles of 1776 unfolded and attitudes hardened, the truly fratricidal nature of the conflict became clear. A must read. This exhilarating book is one of the great pieces of historical narrative.

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy)

Rick Atkinson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 91 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy In An Army at Dawn—winner of the Pulitzer Prize—Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome.
The Italian campaign’s outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. Led by Lieutenant General Mark Clark, one of the war’s most complex and controversial commanders, American officers and soldiers became increasingly determined and proficient. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.
Drawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, this is narrative history of the first rank. With The Day of Battle, Atkinson has once again given us the definitive account of one of history’s most compelling military campaigns.

The Conscience of a Liberal

Paul Krugman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Gretchenfrage: distribution equality 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 14 people found this review helpful.

From the latest Nobel winner for economics a political statement and a historical overview of American politics since the early 20th century. Key themes of the story are the impact of race and racism on election results; the development of the 'compression', ie a more equal distribution of income from the New Deal to the 80s, and the more unequal trend since then; the take over of the Republican party by fundamentalist conservatives; the need for a radical health care reform.
This has been summarized by other reviewers. For me as an outsider looking in, it is always fascinating how terms have different meaning in America.
Consider this quote: "Even liberal economists have a healthy respect for the effectiveness of markets as a way of organizing economic activity."
This shows mainly how far the US has moved away from European languages. As a matter of fact, liberal economists are the ones who argue for the market in first place. What you call 'liberal' should be called different names. Maybe 'progressive'; Krugman discusses this term in the book.
Your conservatives would be 'neo-liberals' in Europe, and they are actually the real radicals in the game. Milton Friedman was as radical as Marx, and like Marx, he was a dangerous man with brillant insights (Krugman admits that Friedman deserved his Nobel regardless of political implications). There is nothing more dangerous than the belief in (any)absolute truth!
Since the book is essentially a political pamphlet, Krugman does not go very deep in most of his statements. I would wish for a more thorough analysis of the following:
"Middle class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be created through political action."
That would be a starting hypothesis for a different book, that I would like to read from Krugman. Is the middle class society a means to an end? Is it a value in itself? What is the relation between sustainable growth and distribution structures? How do the 'values' of the opposing political camps relate to the implications of this question?

Editorial Review:

America emerged from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal with strong democratic values and broadly shared prosperity. But for the past thirty years American politics has been dominated by a conservative movement determined to undermine the New Deal’s achievements.

Now, the tide may be turning–and in The Conscience of a Liberal Paul Krugman, the world’s most widely read economist and one of its most influential political commentators, charts the way to reform.

Krugman ranges over a century of history and shows that neither the American middle-class nor the baby boomers grew up in the increasingly oligarchic nation we have become over the past generation evolved naturally: both were created, to a large extent, by government policies guided by organized political movements.

The Conscience of a Liberal promises to reshape public debate about American social policy and become a touchstone work for an entire generation.

The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp through Civilization's Best Bits

Erik Sass, Steve Wiegand, Editors Of Mental Floss

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Huh... I never knew that! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

...will be your exclamation every few pages with this book. Written with the trivia buff in mind, the book doesn't go into depth on its subjects. Rather, it gives you the information that will make you a hit at any cocktail party!

Great read! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Great read! It was everything I expected and more. All junior high and high school students should read this book to get an interesting understanding of the stories behind the stories and the simple and straight forward way it presents the evolution of history.

Mental Floss History of the World 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

the editors of mental floss have put together yet another entertaining and informative book. this time the topic is world history, starting tens of thousands of years ago and running up to the present. the book is packed with tons of interesting and humorous information. if you enjoy mental floss magazine and the other books put out by them, this is a must have to add to your collection.

Editorial Review:

With mental_floss's trademark smart-aleck approach, combined with hilarious (but true) trivia, world history has never been such a joyride.

Night (Oprah's Book Club)

Elie Wiesel

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Total reviews: 631 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The banal becomes terrifying, the terrifying becomes everyday "normal" 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The beauty of this book lies in Elie Wiesel's ability to turn everything we know inside-out. He succeeds in taking something so extraordinary large as the Holocaust, and transforming it into something intimate and extremely personal through his restrained voice.

Through his eyes, in equal turns subjective and dispassionate, the banal becomes terrifying, the terrifying becomes everyday"normal". In a heartbeat, hope gives way to despair, but despair just as quickly can give way to hope. Wiesel's world inside the concentration camps is a world gone mad, that he manages to contain in a strange sanity that helps us, the reader, grasp and understand a small bit of what he and others experienced in Nazi Germany.

Best of all, Wiesel's restrained voice makes this book suitable for a mature, young adult reader. The story is terrifying, but it is not told with the intent to terrify the reader. The ultimate message of the work is one of hope, survival and humanity.

I listened to Night unabridged on audio CD, performed by Jeffery Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt succeeds in the ultimate task of a performer for a work like this - not going over the top, staying true to the author's voice, and letting the words and story speak for themselves.

Editorial Review:

A New Translation From The French By Marion Wiesel

Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author’s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man’s capacity for inhumanity to man.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

Danger's Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her

Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Finding the Enemy 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful.

Maxwell Taylor Kennedy's book about the kamikaze attack on the USS BUNKER HILL is a powerful and arresting account of World War II. Kennedy has done his homework and his research is impressive. He based this book on work in the National Archives, using after-action reports and log books, but also interviews with surviving crewmen. The problem with oral histories done many years later is that they often give the survivors a larger voice than they might otherwise deserve just because they survived. Kennedy compensates for this glitch by becoming a historian/detective. He contacted the families of many deceased members of the crew and got access to their letters and diaries. The result is an account that is informative and reads well.

Kennedy also interviewed a number of kamikaze alumni and shows--quite rightly--that none of them were crazy monsters or suicidal fanatics. He manages to give the other side, humanity and develops their point of view, something which is often lacking in English-language studies of the Pacific Theater. His argument that the ship and the kamikazes represent two different ways of war is exaggerated, and distorts more than it helps. He is, however, dead on the mark when he contends that the Japanese suicide pilots offer lessons important and relevant to the Long War/Global War on Terrorism. By comparing the accounts, records, and/or artifacts of American and Japanese participants in this kamikaze campaign, Kennedy even manages to indentify the pilot that slammed into the BUNKER HILL, Ensign Ogawa Kiyoshi. Using interviews with Ogawa's friends and family, he gives his readers a personality sketch of a reluctant kamikaze. This type of material is fresh and new, but since Kennedy must depend on others to explain Ogawa, the pilot never emerges as a fully developed personality.

The book becomes much stronger when it comes to the actual attack. Kennedy's coverage is detailed. The photographs that litter the text are one of the most striking parts of this book. Kennedy pulls no punches and includes images of dead Americans. The bodies in these illustrations are often in bad shape, which brings home the real nature of war. Drawings of the ship and its compartments in the inside of the binding/cover are an important addition.

Readers looking for a good account of the War in the Pacific will enjoy this entertaining and informative read.

Editorial Review:

Band of Brothers meets Masters of the Air in this riveting history of the deadly kamikaze attack on the USS Bunker Hill in the final days of World War II---as told by an author with a unique historical vantage point.