Content tagged with "military"
About 50 pages into this, I was bored, and it seemed very similar to another book I had read. Sure enough, turns out Annie Jacobson wrote pentagons-brain. I’m just not a fan of her writing, I guess. The truth is this: Area 51 is pretty boring. It’s basically two things: spy planes, and nuclear bomb…
Fantastic, detailed history of the Cold War. covers all the bases, from World War I on, including quite a bit of coverage of India and Africa, outside of the big players – the U.S., Soviet Union, and China. Really, well done. 800 pages, but never got bogged down in it.
A book about applying military principles to business. It’s not a bad book, but the hook is clearly the Navy SEAL angle. Every chapter starts with a novel-esque recounting of some warfare scenario in Ramadi, Iraq, then segues into how that applies to business. It’s all very gung ho and ‘MURICA! But,…
I read this book because I loved Red Storm Rising when I was in high school, and was looking for a way to recapture that. The result was mixed. This book was less “nation states at war” and more “special forces beats the terrorists.” The plot was very human-oriented, which wasn’t quite what I was…
A fairly nondescript techno-thriller about World War 3. In my attempt to replicate my love of Red Storm Rising, I took a chance on it. It was okay. The plot centers around the Zumwalt, one of a series of new stealth destroyers , and its massive railgun . The Chinese invade Hawaii, and all hell…
This was a wildly entertaining book, because of both the subject matter and the writing style of the author. The book is about military science, but not weapons. It’s about a bunch of the other, decidedly unglamorous things we do to enable humans to fight wars, and how science is trying to make…
The author claims that we’ve steadily expanded the idea of “war” so that we’re technically always at war, and the military is being asked to do so many things, many of which have nothing to do with actually fighting a war. She writes well, but the book got long, and the point got really abstract…
The astonishing story of one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. Absolutely harrowing writing, and good background on the Vietnam War itself – how and why we got to where we were.
Strange little book. I wanted to read some Michener without commitment, and this is the shortest Michener book. It’s a family history, told in flashback by a modern-day solider preparing to testify in front of Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal of the 80s. The main character comes from a long…
I struggled with this book. The author admits that it’s about almost everything except a direct comparison of the legion and the phalanx. After a short introduction to ancient military tactics, it pretty quickly launches into a long history of ancient warfare and battles. About halfway through this,…
Certainly a thrilling book and an amazing story. Not particularly well-written, and full of lots of ‘MURICA!, “screw the liberals,” and George Bush worship. The author is an unapologetic solider from Texas, so none of that should be a surprise. Incredible what the guy went through. I admit to get a…
One of the best novels I’ve ever read. Incredibly suspenseful with a fantastic payoff in the end. There’s a sentence 84% of the way through that had me literally slack-jawed for about 60 seconds as my mind reeled with the implications.
This book belongs to a collection I am tracking: Easton Press: The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written
I loved the idea of this book, but the reality was a mess. The problem with documenting the Christmas Truce is that it’s told largely in legend. It was impromptu and distributed – it happened with no advance notice, and it happened all up and down the Ypres front. As a result, recollections of it…
This is a recounting of the First Barbary War. That event is important because it was the first overseas conflict the young United States ever fought in. The Barbary Coast is the Northern coast of Africa, against the Mediterranean. In the late 1700s, this area was teeming with pirates who would rob…
Bellingcat is a “open source intelligence” cooperative. It’s a group of people who surf the internet to find evidence of crimes. They made their name during the Syrian conflict. They would scour uploaded videos and compare them to Google Maps to find where they were taken. In doing so, they were…
