General Books - Page 12

Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldier's Perspective

Paul Rieckhoff

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 142 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Short and Simple 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This was a great book and an easy read as it kept you engaged and intrigued. Enjoy!

Thought-Provoking and Intelligent 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

As someone who has read a large amount of literature concerning the current state of international affairs, specifically in the "War on Terror" and as a hopeful future officer in the United States Army, I found Paul Rieckhoff's account of his time as a platoon leader in Iraq to be not only well-written, but helpful and insightful. From the accounts of under-equipped Guard units, to the sometimes seemingly trivial nature of the Rules Of Engagement, the book paints a quite vivid, and scarily what I imagine to be accurate, picture of the face of America's first gander at twenty-first century warfare.
Though I found parts of the read to be erie in nature, and though the book provokes questions and doubts about our great nation's leadership and decision-makers, it in no way influenced me to give up joining the military. Rieckhoff has made it clear that the country's leadership is quite questionable, and in part of his writing acknowledges the fact that a new generation of veterans will soon be stepping into the political realm.

Chasing Ghosts deserves to be read.

Editorial Review:

As a First Lieutenant and Infantry Platoon Leader for the U.S. Army National Guard, Paul Rieckhoff was charged with leading thirty-eight men in Iraq. He spent almost a year in one of the bloodiest and most volatile areas of Baghdad. And when he finally came home, he vowed to tell Americans the harrowing truth. He does just that, uncensored and unrehearsed, "and with wit and passion" (Arianna Huffington), in Chasing Ghosts-the first criticism of the Iraq war written by a soldier who fought in it.

Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq

Kirsten Holmstedt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good, but,,, 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The author's writing just kind of bugged me, and I see I am not alone. It read like a book one would find in the young adult section of a bookstore. The stories were very good, but I felt the weak writing took away from them. It also seemed as though the author was heavily favoring Marines and making it seem as though other branches of the military are not as disciplined or effective. The book was good and had valuable stories, but it was not what I was expecting.

Editorial Review:

* Winner of the 2007 American Authors Association Golden Quill Award

* Winner of the 2007 Military Writers Society of America Founders Award

In Iraq, the front lines are everywhere . . . and everywhere in Iraq, no matter what their job descriptions say, women in the U.S. military are fighting--more than 155,000 of them. A critical and commercial success in hardcover, Band of Sisters presents a dozen groundbreaking and often heart-wrenching stories of American women in combat in Iraq, such as the U.S.s first female pilot to be shot down and survive, the militarys first black female pilot in combat, a young turret gunner defending convoys, and a nurse struggling to save lives, including her own.

The Road to Unafraid: How the Army's Top Ranger Faced Fear and Found Courage through

Jeff Struecker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Road To Unafraid 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Well written, and an eye opening account of the Somalia debaucle; an asset to Blackhawk Down and the ingedients necessay to became an Army Ranger.

One of my favorites! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

A couple years ago, I checked this book out from the library and read it for the first time. Right there, it became one of my favorite military books, alongside Entebbe (Iddo Netanyahu) and Zvi (Elwood McQuaid). Although I didn't see Blackhawk Down until just recently (and that being an edited, more family-friendly version), Cpt. Streucker describes the battle very well, not just the physical aspects, but also the more important spiritual and moral aspects, which the film failed to touch on. I highly recommend this book; it's an inspiring read that will strengthen your faith.

Editorial Review:

Jeff Struecker, a "Black Hawk Down" hero, the Army's Top Ranger, now an Army Chaplain, relates his own tales from the frontlines of every U.S. initiative since Panama, and tells how God taught him faith from the front in fear-soaked times. As readers go on-mission with Struecker through his harrowing tales, they will learn how to face their own fears with faith in a mighty God. Just as he told one of his charges in Mogadishu: "The difference between being a coward and a hero is not whether you're scared, it's what you do while you're scared."

Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front

Gunther K Koschorrek

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Blood Red Snow 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

"Blood Red Snow" is another excellent book written about the German version of War in the East, through yet another direct participant in that war (this book is "one more" excellent - German perspective from the many great books on WWII, within the Amazon publishings).
It's important to know one basic element about WWII before diving into these many WWII readings. That is; 7 out of 10 Germans killed in combat in WWII were killed on the Russian Front, not fighting American, British, or the Western Allies.
Regardless of how it is discussed in public today regarding the German Army in WWII, these books (there are many good ones on Amazon), help to offer the genuine insight to what these men and the various nations at war, went through during the amazing battles in the East. Many millions of dead "On both sides" were consumed in this cauldron of fire in the East. That alone is something that is hard to balance and comprehend, in your mind.
I have purchased books from Amazondotcom - on the Soviet perspective too. Another amazing learning, when you realize the many Soviet languages within the USSR, that had to be overcome, just to fight one battle. Simply moving the many Soviet armies forward as they pushed to take back their lands, in some sort of organized fashion,.... through the language challenge, was a struggle beyond words. The Soviets really did not fully get their arms around their language challenge, until the war was almost over (1944). Then to understand, how the soviets had to devise ways to speak with each other, to fight in concert with those language barrier orders of battle, through the beginning of the war to the end, is an eye opener. You will soon have a new respect for what the Soviet Army had to do, to win their war in the East. No small effort, in and of itself. The one Soviet word,.... or better stated, "their battle cry" HORAHhhhhhhhhhh !!.... Was not only a way for the Soviets to gather courage to attack, it was a way to find their mixed language troops and people, in the fog of battle. Once found, they then had to try and continue communicating as best they could, in one generic fashion, during the heat and confusion of battle. Setting aside for now, how we are taught to think about the USSR, when you consider how they struggled with the hundreds of languages and dialects the many nations that made-up the USSR had,..... you soon realize the scope of that challenge. It is wise to consider the battle cry - HORAHhhhhhhhh as being "the one phrase" they all could understand, and the one excellent way they had to communicate with each other, for many reasons, in WWII. When you understand that the soviet soldiers were forced to attack or be shot, this becomes an understanding about the basic soviet soldier, that requires you to know more about their day-to-day thinking and perspective on war. To take the time to understand these soviet conscripts, is to gain the vast knowledge about "the heart" of the war in the East. Again,.....Reading is learning.
These newly published or republished books on the German Army shows, that everything that has been written in the past about their discipline, training, and camaraderie are under-stated. Did you know that the German Army boot camp before WWII and leading up to it, could be more than 5 months long (depending on what branch they would serve in, during combat)? They were among the best-of-the-best Armys of the world, at that time, and up to that time in history.
It's amazing to note that these two armies (German/Soviet) fought in such harsh conditions,... for so long. Just to understand the weather conditions during battles (blizzards, mud, rain), is to understand one small element of their war. A night in the dark and vast Soviet lands, under 40 or 60 degrees below freezing temperatures and winds, is a sobering wake-up call, in iteslf. Then to imagine that they did this day-after-day, and night-after-night through the better part of four winters, is almost an anticlimatic thought. That to me, is personally - unimaginable. For many troops on both sides, they "were" in this struggle for 4 years, or until they were killed. Try to visualize sleeping outside in these extreme temperatures, for months,... without end. Even now, i want to think they (German and USSR troops) were housed in some warm cozy place at night, and only fought during the day, and always had enough to eat and drink. In reality, that thought would be far from the truth. When you consider the murderous land they fought on in the East, the failing food and ammunition supply lines that became thinner as the war went against the Germans,........ it soon becomes clear how the massive armies of Napoleon were erased in one campaign.
I suggest that it is not too late, or too soon, to buy books like these.
It is much better to KNOW history, than to have NO history.

Editorial Review:

For the German soldier fighting under Hitler, keeping a diary was strictly forbidden. So Gunther Koschorrek, a fresh young recruit, wrote his notes on whatever scraps of paper he could find and sewed the pages into the lining of his winter coat. Left with his mother on his rare trips home, this illicit diary eventually was lost—and did not come to light until some 40 years later when Koschorrek was reunited with his daughter in America. It is this remarkable document, a unique day-to-day account of the common German soldier’s experience, that makes up the memoir that is Blood Red Snow.

César (Spanish Text)

Colleen McCullough

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 115 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Honor or Peace that is the Question. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Ms McCullough has done a deep historical research in order to write her "Roman Saga" started with "The First Man in Rome" (1990), continued with "The Grass Crown" (1991), "Fortune's Favorites" (1993), "Caesar's Women" (1995) and "Caesar" (1999).

She delivers an accurate picture of the late Roman Republic, bringing to life historically characters with amazing detail.
The author follows and reveals step by step all the intricacies of that rich and complex era.
Does this mean that the book is boring? By no means, Ms McCullough is able to show daily life, dressing, feeding, religious rituals, political and social structures in a magnificent fresco and at the same time construct an engaging story that will trap the reader for hours.

The present volume starts in the year 54 BC when Caesar is in Britain and receives notice of the death of his daughter Julia. Immediately his friendship with Pompeius Magnus starts to deteriorate. The Boni jump to the golden opportunity of enrolling Pompeius and turn him against Julius Caesar.
The author follows the great Gaul Revolt and the Civil War that erupted against Caesar's will.

There are also vivid descriptions of Clodius murder, Curio's allegiance to Caesar, Octavius drawing Caesar's attention and the start of Marc Anthony's ascent.

Last but not least the author has drawn beautiful busts of the main characters; detailed maps of different ancient scenarios where action takes place and very complete glossary.

I advise reading the first volumes of the series, but even if you don't do it, you may start here and consider it as a standalone volume.
I strongly recommend this book to any serious history aficionado!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Editorial Review:

In the long, fabled history of Rome, never was there one more adored -- yet more feared -- than Gaius Julius Caesar. Invincible on the field of battle, he commands the love and loyalty of those who fight at his side and would gladly give their lives for his glory. Yet in Rome there are enemies everywhere orchestrating his downfall and disgrace. Fanatical rivals like Cato and Bibulus would tear Rome asunder just to destroy her greatest champion -- using their wiles, position, and false promises to seduce others into the fold: vacillating Cicero, the spineless Brutus ... even Pompey the Great, Caesar's former ally. But only ill fortune can come to the "Good Men" who underestimate Caesar. For Rome is his glorious destiny -- one that will impel him reluctantly to the banks of the Rubicon ... and beyond, into triumphant legend.

Julius Caesar

Philip Freeman

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

More than two thousand years after his death, Julius Caesar remains one of the great figures of history. He shaped Rome for generations, and his name became a synonym for "emperor" -- not only in Rome but as far away as Germany and Russia. He is best known as the general who defeated the Gauls and doubled the size of Rome's territories. But, as Philip Freeman describes in this fascinating new biography, Caesar was also a brilliant orator, an accomplished writer, a skilled politician, and much more.

Julius Caesar was a complex man, both hero and villain. He possessed great courage, ambition, honor, and vanity. Born into a noble family that had long been in decline, he advanced his career cunningly, beginning as a priest and eventually becoming Rome's leading general. He made alliances with his rivals and then discarded them when it suited him. He was a spokesman for the ordinary people of Rome, who rallied around him time and again, but he profited enormously from his conquests and lived opulently. Eventually he was murdered in one of the most famous assassinations in history.

Caesar's contemporaries included some of Rome's most famous figures, from the generals Marius, Sulla, and Pompey to the orator and legislator Cicero as well as the young politicians Mark Antony and Octavius (later Caesar Augustus). Caesar's legendary romance with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra still fascinates us today.

In this splendid biography, Freeman presents Caesar in all his dimensions and contradictions. With remarkable clarity and brevity, Freeman shows how Caesar dominated a newly powerful Rome and shaped its destiny. This book will captivate readers discovering Caesar and ancient Rome for the first time as well as those who have a deep interest in the classical world.

Good Old Days

Klee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Yes, evil IS banal. 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

To truly appreciate how ordinary people could commit such evil acts as were committed in the Holoucast, we would do well to remember that none of those who tortured and murdered in the concentration camps were any different than you or I.
They had families. They managed to reduce the importance of their victims as human beings.
There is a parallel between what happened in Nazi concentration camps and what is happening now to innocent people incarcerated and dehumanized in Iraq and elsewhere.
As someone once said, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

Good Times, Bad Times: The Universality of Evil 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book provides a wealth of important, firsthand information on the Holocaust by those who were actually involved or viewed the involvement of others. I do not mean to quibble or lessen the impact of the horror that was done but the book does contain several flaws.

For example, the book does not put to rest the purported myth that people were not punished if they did not willingly participate in the killings. The testimony of a select dozen or so men (some of whose testimony was not obtained in the most enlightened of circumstances, i.e., after beatings, torture, and the threat of death) can hardly be considered representative of the experiences of the several hundred thousand who were involved, many of whom testified, even after being beaten to say otherwise, that there were severe punishments, including death, if they did not participate. Also, later on in the book the testimonies of other participants contradicts the testimonies of those who said they were not punished by stating that people were indeed punished if they did not participate in these, often gruesome, actions. Moreover, the statements of many of those who said there was no punishment when they did not participate is not wholly correct. Many of these people, after refusing to participate, were screamed at by their superior officer and called a coward in front of their fellow soldiers. Among the most humiliating things you can call a soldier, especially by a superior and in front of his comrades, is that he is being a coward in the line of duty. This, in itself, is a form of punishment that would likely haunt and affect these men as long as they remained with those who saw and heard what happened, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

For another thing, the testimony of Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, is invaluable for many reasons, including, that the reason all the dead bodies cannot, and never will be, found is that the Nazis went about digging up mass graves, pulverizing the remains, and scattering them to the four winds (or in the case of some Auschwitz victims, dumping the ashes into the Vistula River) to hide the evidence of their acts. But Hoess' testimony that there were 3 million victims at Auschwitz is suspect and most historians now reduce this amount by at least a third and some by almost two-thirds. In this regard, Hoess' testimony (which it is pretty much admitted now was obtained after torture) that up to 10,000 people a day were killed in Auschwitz makes no sense. He writes that 2,000 people were gassed at a time and would then be taken up to the crematorium where it would take 12 hours to finish burning them. This seems to put a limit of 4,000 people a day who could be killed and disposed of even if the crematoriums were running 24 hours a day. (Admittedly, there may have been Leichenkeller (cellars for the dead, or corpse cellars) at the camp, but still it seems to make no sense to stack up to 6,000 dead bodies a day and the Nazis would have rapidly run out of room, e.g., in just a week there would be a surplus of 42,000 dead bodies.) [I welcome any information from anyone on clarifying this.]

In addition, the book does not demonstrate the efficiency of the Nazis. On the contrary, it discloses the inefficiency and chaos that often accompanied these slaughters, including people having to be shot repeatedly and others surviving being shot and buried.

One of the most interesting, and revealing, parts of the book was a 12-page official letter of complaint by an SS lieutenant-colonel to the SS and police general in charge of anti-partisan activities in the Eastern occupied territories, von dem Bach (who, in return for his testimony against other Nazis, escaped execution for war crimes after the war), that the Nazi party district leader for White Russia (gauleiter Kube) was too soft on the Jews. This letter is must reading for anyone who wants to know what the mindset was of certain hardcore Nazis and SS members vis a vis the Jewish people.

Despite its flaws (including the book's title, which is a mistranslation, and the book's cover photo, which was taken at an unknown location of people who have never been identified), all in all the book is still a valuable addition to the history of World War II and an understanding of the Holocaust.

Editorial Review:

The title "The Good Old Days" comes from a private photo album kept by a concentration camp commandant. This macabre title introduces an equally disturbing collection of diaries, letters home, and confidential reports written by the executioners and sympathetic observers of the Holocaust, and illustrated with numerous photographs they took as "souvenirs" of their work.

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

Mike Mullane

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 73 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1978, the first group of space shuttle astronauts was introduced to the world -- twenty-nine men and six women who would carry NASA through the most tumultuous years of the space shuttle program. Among them was USAF Colonel Mike Mullane, who, in his memoir Riding Rockets, strips the heroic veneer from the astronaut corps and paints them as they are -- human.

Mullane's tales of arrested development among military flyboys working with feminist pioneers and post-doc scientists are sometimes bawdy, often comical, and always entertaining. He vividly portrays every aspect of the astronaut experience, from telling a female technician which urine-collection condom size is a fit to hearing "Taps" played over a friend's grave. He is also brutally honest in his criticism of a NASA leadership whose bungling would precipitate the Challenger disaster -- killing four members of his group. A hilarious, heartfelt story of life in all its fateful uncertainty, Riding Rockets will resonate long after the call of "Wheel stop."

Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz

Lucette Matalon Lagnado, Sheila Cohn Dekel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Testament to suvivors of horror 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This harrowing book traces both the life of 'the angel of death', the psycopathic monster, Dr Josef Mengele, and his victims who survived.
Mengele carried out a range of horrific experiments on a range of people, mainly twins. particularly Jewish and Gipsey children, and various others.
As Mengele's life is described, so is the life of the survivors, the horrors that they experienced at Auschwitz and how they lived in the decades afterwards.
"Most of the twins began their descent into Auschwitz by witnessing their entire families being led away from them to be killed. In their special barracks, located just yards away from the crematoriums, they observed the Nazis' extermination of Jews at close range. Twins as young as five and six years of age endured torture, daily blood tests and starvation diets, as well as facing exposure to epidemics of cholera, tuberculosis and other deadly diseases that were rampant because of unsanitary conditions. Worst of all, of course, were the Mengele's barbaric pseudoscientific experiments. But as horrific as their lives were the twins enjoyed a special privileged status, for they were regarded as "Mengele's children". And as such they were spared the random selections and march to the gas chambers that threatened every other Auschwitz inmate'.

The testimony of a handful of survivors illustrates the horror of Mengele and Auschwitz, and the scars of the experiences suffered by his victims, and how they experienced them through their lives.
In the testimony of Moshe Offer, who was twelve years old at the time: 'When they opened the doors to our cattle cars, there were lots of dead children. During the trip, some mothers couldn't bare to hear the sound of their hungry babies-and so they killed them. I remember two blond, very beautiful children in my car, whose mother had choked them to death because she could not stand to watch them suffer'.

Eva Mozes, who was nine years old at the time, recounts how, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she and her twin sister were packed into filthy, rat infested barracks, together with hundreds of other little girls.
She remembers seeing three dead children on the ground. Later they would always be finding dead children on the floor of the latrines.
From their barracks they could see huge, smoking chimneys rising high above the camp. There were glowing flames rising above them. ' " Why are they burning so late in the evening?" I asked the other children. "The Germans are burning people they answered".
Twins Hedvah and Leah Stern. who were thirteen years old at the time, recount how Mengele tried to change the colour of their eyes:' One day we were given eye drops. Afterwards, we could not see for several days. We though the Nazis had made us blind.
We were very frightened of the experiments. They took a lot of blood from us. We fainted several times, and the SS guards were very amused.
We were not very developed. The Nazis made us remove our clothes and they took photographs of us.
The SS guards would point to us and laugh. We stood naked in front of these young Nazi thugs, shaking from cold and fear, and they laughed."
The first few chapters of the book deal with Mengele's role in Auschwitz itself, and the rest of the book relates Eichmann's experience in hiding in South America, and the way the surviving twins built up lives and families for themselves, most of them in Israel, while the nightmare of Auschwitz would scar and effect them forever.Most of the twins longed to emigrate to the Land of Israel, then the British Colony of Palestine.
They soon found that the Communist rulers of their former homes in lands like Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, were hostile to the Jewish people too, and pesecuted those who wanted to go to Israel and those who wanted to hold onto their Jewish faith, as 'Zionists'. Thus developed that form of Leftist anti-Semitism known as anti-Zionism, which was incubated by the Soviet Union, and is endemic among the international left today.
The rest of the book deals with how Mengele dwindled in exile into a neurotic and bitter non-being. The surivors describe their lives in Israel and elsewhere, after the war, their often fearful behaviour, their nightmares and their treatment, and also how they built up new lives and families, which live on in the Jewish homeland.
Mengele died after suffering a stroke and drowning in 1979, in Brazil.

Editorial Review:

During World War II, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele subjected some 3,000 twins to medical experiments of unspeakable horror; only 160 survived. In this remarkable narrative, the life of Auschwitz's Angel of Death is told in counterpoint to the lives of the survivors, who until now have kept silent about their heinous death-camp ordeals. 8 pages of photographs.

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram

Dang Thuy Tram

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

At the age of twenty-four, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and of her challenges in the face of the war’s ceaseless fury.

The American officer who discovered the diary soon after Dr. Tram’s death was under standing orders to destroy all documents without military value. As he was about to toss it into the flames, his Vietnamese translator said to him, “Don’t burn this one. . . . It has fire in it already.” Against regulations, the officer preserved the diary and kept it for thirty-five years. In the spring of 2005, a copy made its way to Dr. Tram’s elderly mother in Hanoi. The diary was soon published in Vietnam, causing a national sensation. Never before had there been such a vivid and personal account of the long ordeal that had consumed the nation’s previous generations.

Translated by Andrew X. Pham and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Frances FitzGerald, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is an extraordinary document that narrates one woman’s personal and political struggles. Above all, it is a story of hope in the most dire of circumstances—told from the perspective of our historic enemy but universal in its power to celebrate and mourn the fragility of human life.