war - Book Reviews

Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution

"Valiant Ambition" shows how dicey the revolution was and how frequently both the British and American sides screwed things up. Philbrick guides us through Revolutionary War debacles and Arnold's steps towards treason.

5-stars

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“Goddamn airplane is made out of balonium.” Fighter pilot John Boyd had an extremely low tolerance for bullshit. In a remarkable three decade career of military service, Boyd exhibited near-mythical talent, range, and insight. As a tragic genius, he has few parallels in American history. He began as an unbeatable

5-stars

The Lords of Discipline

Conroy gifts us with a nearly perfect novel, equally fluent in the literary classics and in the viciousness of boys and men.

4-stars

The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia

A revisionist history of Sino-US relations that traces how a concerted Chinese PR campaign duped American policymakers for generations and cost US taxpayers 3x more than the Manhattan Project.

2-stars

The Warrior Ethos

In "The Warrior Ethos," Pressfield plucks a few gems from a variety of ancient sources but adds little new. The book seems to be the result of calculated marketing acumen - "How can I recycle ancient wisdom to create a tiny book that will sell well with

5-stars

Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime

In preparation for my "Year of Crime" reading theme for next year, I've been looking for some books on true crimes. I saw an ad for "Ranger Games" in The Atlantic and picked it up on a whim. Ben Blum immediately swept me up into his

3-stars

The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin

The New York Times' Moscow Bureau Chief gives us an interesting but incomplete look at Putin's acquisition and maintenance of power. In fairness, any biography of Putin is going to be far from complete - he lives an intensely stage-managed life and much of his life is shrouded in privacy

memoir

Legionnaire: Five Years in the French Foreign Legion

Merde! The French Foreign Legion is tough. I had seen a passing reference to the Legion in another book - something along the lines of "a legionnaire will drop dead before he stops marching." These guys were supposed to be the hardest of the hard-core. There doesn't seem

5-stars

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

"Empire of Cotton" changed how I thought about global economic history. Beckert views the changing relationships between state, industry, capital, and labor through the lens of the cotton industry and its role in sparking the Industrial Revolution and creating our modern, globalized world. The first surprise in this

fiction

Hadji Murad

"Hadji Murád" is Tolstoy's haunting novel about a Chechen warrior caught between the occupying Russian imperial forces and his hostile Chechen compatriots. Although it is remarkably short - just over 100 pages - Tolstoy manages to paint a picture of astonishing power and detail. The cast of characters

review

Dictator

Dictator is a restrained yet vivid dramatization of the events and personalities of the Roman Civil War. Harris clearly spent years researching his characters and the book is full of small observations that transform the marble busts of Roman statesmen into living, striving, and conniving human beings. This book gives

4-stars

After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam

"After the Prophet" links the personalities and events of the early days of Islam to the recent history of the Muslim world. Hazleton deftly spins a narrative that transported me back to in time to the Arabian peninsula in the 600's and introduced me to the main cast

history

Anabasis: The Persian Expedition

Beautifully written, the "Anabasis of Xenophon" is one of the truly great accomplishments of world literature and serves as a model for much of what comes after. Xenophon himself was a total badass - a soldier/mercenary, general, philosopher, and historian. Historically, he pretty much picks up where

4-stars

Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa

To figure out how the world works, you've got to "follow the money," and the gold and diamonds of South Africa have certainly generated more than their fair share of cash - especially for Cecil Rhodes's De Beers diamond company.

history

The Cold War: A New History

Gaddis does it again. "The Cold War: A New History" is an eminently readable account of the Cold War that places it in a larger historical, ideological, and strategic context. If you're alive today, you should probably read this book so that you can understand where we're coming

history

Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy

Hale's "Lords of the Sea" is a non-stop adventure into maritime classical Greece. Hale has a gift for bringing the historical figures of the Athenian age to life with simple but vivid language. Hale is a wonderful storyteller and I particularly enjoyed his character sketches of the incorrigible