What's new for the week of November 13 2012

I was busy last week so this contains the last two weeks of releases. As I've said before I haven't read any of these they just sound interesting.
Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb by Feroz Khan I don't think there is much in English on Pakistan's program. The fact that this is written by someone from the nation with experience makes it all the more interesting.
A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook perhaps tangential to military history I think this does have a place here. Both for what it says about NAZI ideology which after all started the war as well as the wasteful use of manpower Germany inflicted on itself.
STALIN'S FALCONS RESURGENT: Soviet Air Power and the Battle of Kursk 1943 by Mark A. O'Neill I tend to be a bit leery of books on the eastern front. There just are so many landmines to be avoided but on the other hand this is one of the few books to deal with aviation.

The utility of one star reviews

While writing up the last review I took the time to look at the other reviews I could find online. I noticed something that I have noticed other times when dealing with books that have controversial topics. Often the one star reviews are more useful to me than the five star reviews for the simple reason that if one star reviews are able to use actual facts to show their arguments are correct, that gives the book less credibility, while if the one star reviews simply involve ad hominem attacks without giving reasons then that strengthens the book. For example, many years ago I worked up a reading list on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by reading one star reviews. If the one star reviews said that the author was either an anti Semite or part of the Zionist conspiracy without providing examples of how they were wrong, it was likely that the book was much closer to the truth than the negative reviewer wished to admit. I naturally found that out with the previous book on the Tamil Tigers.

The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers by Gordon Weiss

The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers
 by Gordon Weiss

 This book describes the final days of the campaign of the Sri Lankan government to defeat the Tamil Tigers. This was highly controversial and it has, in fact, been described as the first foreign policy failing of the Obama administration. The use of heavy weapons, including artillery against civilians, as the author notes, turned what were operations against a terrorist group that the world community approved of to one that for a time, at least, made the Sri Lankan authorities isolated within the international community.

The book starts out with a history of the Tamil Tigers and their attacks against the government. This takes up the first few chapters of the book. He does bounce around inside the timeline. It is not a strictly linear telling, which can make things somewhat confusing.

The heart of the book is a description of the final assault. The author, who worked for the UN is exceedingly careful in describing the events. For instance, after describing the use of artillery against a school which killed several female students, he points out under international law how this could be a legitimate military target, then lays out the Sri Lankan government’s argument that it was.  Next using various reports to show that this was not accurate. It is much more convincing than if he had simply complained against the use of military hardware against civilians. He criticizes both sides, both the government for its heavy handed tactics as well as the Tigers for using the people as human shields.

This is not a book for someone who thinks that the government was within its rights to do anything to stop terrorists or, for that matter, that the Tamils were freedom fighters who could do anything against a corrupt government.

The book is also excellent at describing the international community’s reaction, first, after 9/11 becoming serious about the Tigers as a terrorist group, doing what they could to disrupt the highly sophisticated fund raising operations in the western democracies—Canada, Australia and the US—and how this gave the Sri Lankan government carte blanche in the beginning to step up operations against them. While the operations were taking place, the politics of the ualigned countries and third world came into play when the western nations wanted investigations against the Sri Lankan government’s actions. Countries such as India and China viewing these as a violation of sovereignty did what they could to block them, which is something that, of course, is going on today in Syria.

The book concludes on a rather depressing note discussing that these sorts of conflicts is something that will be needed to be confronted in the 21st century.

I would recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in the conflict and who doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. 

This book was provided by the publisher for review.

What's new for the week of October 30 2012?

As mentioned earlier, one of the reasons for starting this blog was to keep a handle on interesting new military history releases.  So I have looked at the last week or so of Amazon books and will here list those that I find interesting.  Just to be clear, I haven’t read any of these books.  So I have no idea whether or not they are any good. Given an infinite amount of time and resources these would be the books that I would be reading.

The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today by Thomas E. Ricks I've been looking forward to this since I heard it was in the pipeline. I greatly enjoyed his Fiasco on Iraq from 03 through 05. For some reason I never did pick up the sequel.
We Got Him!: A Memoir of the Hunt and Capture of Saddam Hussein by Steve Russell a new paperback written by the CO of the unit that captured Hussein. I'm usually not big on first person accounts like this but for this I'd make an exception.
Border Crossings: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance by Charles Novacek OK an other memoir but all I know about the Czech resistance is the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.
The Army Isn't All Work: Physical Culture and the Evolution of the British Army, 1860-1920 by James D. Campbell ouch well I did say infinite money. I find studies like this that go off the beaten path to be fascinating. Physical training being at the core of good soldiering I'm surprised it's not discussed more.
Yamashita's Ghost: War Crimes, MacArthur's Justice, and Command Accountability by Allan A. Ryan I've read quite a bit on the Nuremberg trials but not much on the ones carried out in Japan.
The Persian Invasions of Greece by Arthur Keaveney I've read a lot of ancient history in my time so it has to jump out at me for me to consider it. This book does mainly because it claims to have some material from the Persian side.

Fun with captchas

I've been adding the blog to some directories.  New rule is after two attempts I can't read your captcha I don't care how wonderful it is I'm hitting the back button.  Well it didn't take me long to start complaining did it?

Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain, and Two World Wars by Jonathan F. Vance

Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain, and Two World Wars
by Jonathan F. Vance

For the first review here on the new site perhaps something a bit out of the ordinary where military history is concerned. This book attempts to look at the influence that the military has had on the relationship between Canada and Great Britain. It is done primarily by looking at the views of participants on both sides as portrayed in newspaper editorials, letters, diaries, et cetera. The book opens with New France being conquered by the British. Canada in the 19th century is shown to be influenced by the British regulars stationed there. I will have to admit I found this section not as convincing as the later ones, for the simple reason that when saying, for instance, that the soldiers were the first to play certain sports in Canada he doesn't seem to take into account that there were large groups of British settlers in the country who some even to this day do their best to hold on to their Britishness.

 That aside, the heart of this book is a discussion of the two world wars. There are plenty of anecdotes about the Canadians from the British perspective and the Canadians talking about the British. For the most part the British seem to be dismissive of the Canadians in the beginning until they learn how well they fight.  Then they are supportive.  While the Canadians are much more guarded in their views of the British, often considering them to be stiff necked and inflexible.

 If you have read a lot of Canadian  military history there isn't necessarily anything shocking here, but it is nice to have it all in one place and he has found sources that aren’t usually used. Clearly he spent a lot of time in the archives.  Unfortunately there are times when the background narratives of the military campaigns do overwhelm the text, specifically in the latter part of the section on World War II. The book concludes by pointing out that even though Canada is a multi cultural society today we still often look to the British for instance the royals and British media. 

I would recommend this book for someone who is interested in the relationship between the two nations. This does make me curious about the relationship between Australia and the UK which I understand has been much more rocky. If anyone can suggest a good book on that, please do so in the comments.

Welcome

Welcome to the new blog. First, an explanation about the name. When I moved into the new house just over a year ago one of the features I was most excited about was the 800 linear feet of bookshelves contained in bookcases. My collection of books, around 2500 titles, fills about a third of it. I am sure at some point there will be pictures, but that gives you some idea. 

So why this blog? Well, if there is one thing from reading blogs for the last dozen years or so has taught me, ideas in the beginning rarely work out long term. But here is my idea at the moment.  I mostly read military history, but, unfortunately, the places where I get information on new titles have become dormant lately, so I figured I should start digging through the list of newly released books from the major book sellers. Well, if I am going to do that, I might as well share the information with other people. I'll post book reviews which is something I have done on a previous blog which begs the question why not just continue on the existing blog. Simple enough.  I tended to have large gaps in my posting which, after a while, means that the search engines will stop sending traffic your way, logically enough.  Instead of trying to rebuild that one, I figured it was time to start afresh, although I probably will still post to the other blog at times. 

Another reason was that my reviews on the other blog tended to be short, pithy and more rants than anything else.  I am hoping with this one to be more analytical, although, if the book Men Against Fire is in the news, I may forget myself.

Well, anyway, I think that is about it for now.  Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. My address is over in the sidebar.