Book Review Micro Book Reviews

Discussion in 'Books, Films, TV, Radio' started by von Poop, Feb 24, 2019.

  1. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Title: Rock in a Hard Place: The Browning Automatic Rifle
    Author: James L. Ballou
    P/Y/I: Collector Grade Publications, 2000, 0-88935-263-1

    This, of course, is the essential historical and reference work for the B.A.R., one of the most important small arms of WWII and one which in my view at least seldom gets its due. It's put out by Collector Grade Publications, well known for encyclopedic works on the Vickers, the Maxim, the Bren, Lewis, Chauchat, etc. It's a typically massive CGP hardcover production, well laid out and richly illustrated with a useful index. Ballou certainly knows his stuff and the book is particularly strong on BAR parts--if you want to know not only how to strip the thing but to repair it as an armorer would then this will tell you how. It also goes into detail on how the BAR came very close to being adopted by both France and Britain. Unusually for these kinds of books, it's also honest about the BAR's limitations (it wasn't an LMG) and its weaknesses (tendency for the gas system to carbon up rapidly). With all this excellent stuff, I can't quite put it at the tiptop. I would have liked some color photos and there aren't any, but that's a minor thing. The book is terribly expensive and I had to get a look at one through the library, but that's probably the nature of the beast with these reference works. More seriously, Rock in a Hard Place does not tell me nearly as much as I hoped about certain subjects I am researching. It has relatively little to say about the fascinating Colt R75A version, which was close to a true LMG but was never made in great quantity. It goes into some detail about the use of the BAR by American bank robbers in the 1930s and also covers the Colt Monitor used by the FBI at some length, but it does not really cover the long-lasting use of the BAR by American law enforcement (BARs were still in US police arsenals as late as the 1980s). Finally, Ballou does cover the M1918 in the Home Guard but he does not say anything about other BARs used by other British CW forces, such as the 1st SSF in WWII and Canadians and Commandos in Korea. Still, this remains a valuable addition to any small arms library.

    Rating: 4 out of 5
     
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  2. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Title: British Artillery Weapons and Ammunition, 1914-1918
    Authors: I.V. Hogg and L.F. Thurston
    P/Y/I:Ian Allan, 1972, 7110 0831 5

    This is a well known pioneering reference work on British artillery of the Great War. One of the authors is Ian Hogg, whom we all know. Hogg was a Master Gunner RA, so I tend to take him especially seriously when he writes about artillery. This is a WWI book, of course, but so much ordnance of that era was still in service in the second war that this book is very helpful for study of the 1939-45 RA. This book has many strengths. There are a lot of illustrations, both photos and line drawings, though I could have done with still more. The coverage of ammunition is extensive, right down to the dozens of different fuses used. You get info not only on the shells but also on the various charges as well. Gun information includes such seldom-seen data as rifling, recoil length, degrees of traverse, etc. There is plenty on all the usual suspects (18-pdr, 60-pdr, 6, 8, and 9.2 hows, etc) and more obscure weapons such as the 5.4-inch howitzer, the Skoda 9.45-inch how, and the 75mm French AA autocannon are also covered. I would really like to give this 5 of 5, but I can't quite. Hogg and Thurston don't have as much on subjects I am working on as I would like. There is nothing on captured ordnance in British service during WWI, and the treatment of the post-1918 careers of the guns is cursory. I feel like a heretic in saying what follows, but it needs to be said. Hogg sometimes got things wrong in his small arms books, and I caught some goofs here too. He says, for example, that the 7.5-inch coastal gun was gone from service by 1925; in fact, some remained in fortifications in India during WWII and I think at least one is still there in Bombay. He also says that the 2.75-inch mountain gun was gone from service "shortly after the war." That's not right either; it may have been gone from British Army service, but it remained in front line service in India right up to 1939. In sum, this book remains very useful, especially for ammunition, but it was published in 1972 and I'd like to see someone do a similar volume which would make use of more recent research.

    Rating: 4 out of 5
     
  3. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

    Title: The Dambusters

    Author: James Holland

    Publisher/Year/ISBN (optional) : 2012

    Language: English

    Quick review: Thought I would hate but didn't.

    Rating out of 5: 5
     
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  4. SteveDee

    SteveDee Well-Known Member

    Title: Churchill (walking with destiny)

    Author: Andrew Roberts

    Publisher/Year/ISBN: Penguin/2018/978-0-241-20563-1

    Quick review:-

    Although certainly not the first book on Churchill (or by Churchill) that I have read, this book provides the most complete coverage of his life, and I really enjoyed every one of its 982 pages.

    A few points that this book highlighted for me;
    • Churchill came close to death many, many times but was a fatalist (...no point in ducking bullets)
    • the British newspapers mistakenly reported his death on more than one occasion
    • he only had a handful of political allies in 1938
    • he had a great sense of humour* even in the bad times
    • he cried a lot
    • he planned and/or thought well ahead; e.g. he considered the future of post-war Europe years before VE day, and wanted to minimise the Russian advance to safeguard democracy in several European countries
    • the Americans were naive about Russia
    • Churchill agreed to share nuclear knowledge with Roosevelt, but when Truman was made president he locked the UK out. So we had to do it on our own a few years later.

    I really don't know what the world would be like now, if Churchill had not accepted the job of PM in 1940.

    *clarification: a great sense of humour is one that closely matches your own.​

    Rating out of 5: 5
     
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  5. BFBSM

    BFBSM Very Senior Member

    Title:
    The British Army and the Theory of Armored Warfare 1918-1940

    Author:
    Robert H. Larson

    Publisher/Year/ISBN (optional) :
    Newark: University of Delaware Press (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses)/1984/ 0-87413-219-3

    Quick review:
    This book follows the general structure of most of the books I have read on the development of the armoured forces of the British Army. The basic premise, as I understand it, of the book is to argue that the reason for the slow development of a mechanized force within the British Army was due, not to the "army's conservatism or the government's short sighted policies of the inter-war years" but the held-fast theory of a battle following the doctrine that the "act of battle, in broad terms, was divided into four distinct phases, the first and last of which were highly mobile, the middle two relatively static". The Army's strategy development was around this doctrine and even more firmly in the need for a battle of attrition using infantry.

    The book is easy to read, and notes are supplied at the end of each chapter.

    I have got quite a bit out of reading it and understand a little more of the development of the mechanisation during the inter-war period.

    Rating out of 5: 4.5
     
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  6. SteveDee

    SteveDee Well-Known Member

    Title: Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

    Author: Giles Milton

    Publisher/Year/ISBN: Kindle Edition

    Quick review:-

    Why did no one warn me about this book? I expected this to be non-fiction!

    I blame myself for being a poor student at school. My teacher may have tried to warn me about books like this, while I was probably staring out of the window watching the girls play netball.

    I now realise that a "narrative history" is fiction loosely based upon history. Its full of drivel like this:-

    "His jacket was crumpled, his trousers creased: the overall impression was of someone with a complete disdain for military etiquette. His brother in law thought he looked 'more like a race-course bookie' than a soldier. Joan wasn't so sure. She took one look at his ruddy cheeks and declared that 'he could never have belonged to any other branch of the Army but the Royal Engineers'.

    I can't be bothered to finish this one, as I can't separate fact from fiction.

    ...but do bear in mind that I'm a bit of a pleb ...so you may like it.

    Rating out of 5: 1
     
  7. SteveDee

    SteveDee Well-Known Member

    Title: The Quotable Winston Churchill

    Author: ?

    Publisher/Year/ISBN: Running Press/2013/978-0-7624-4983-5

    Quick review:-

    A micro review of a mini book!

    Included within the 205 pages of this tiny book is a biography, selected speeches, and Churchill's snappy quotes on Life, War, The World, and His Contemporaries.

    I love this little book. Open a page at random and you might find a quote like this:-

    "The Almighty in His infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen."

    Rating out of 5: 4


    quoteWinston.jpg
     
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  8. SteveDee

    SteveDee Well-Known Member

    Title: A Woman Of No Importance

    Author: Sonia Purnell

    Publisher/Year/ISBN: Virago/2019/Kindling

    Quick review:-

    Virginia Hall was one of the most amazing people of the 20th century.

    The fact that she was an American woman with a wooden leg made her exploits all the more amazing. She also had to overcome the problem of often being surrounded by weak, feeble men that didn't provide the level of commitment necessary for her difficult task as a secret agent.

    To further compound her problems, it was also assumed by her male superior officers that she was 'just a woman' and therefore could not be awarded the authority necessary to take decisions, train recruits and keep her male colleagues under control.

    Despite these issues, she worked for both the British SOE and the American OSS supplying London with intelligence reports and sabotaging the Nazi war machine during their occupation of France during the 2nd World War.

    Even when she worked for the CIA in the 1950s & 60s, she still suffered discrimination by the largely male dominated secret service organisation.

    I learnt a lot about the French Resistance and the different warring factions (...although I thought I knew it all from watching 36 episodes of 'Allo 'Allo). And I'd never heard of the dreadful Milice Française before reading this book.

    Highly recommended.

    Rating out of 5: 5
     
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  9. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

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  10. Charley Fortnum

    Charley Fortnum Dreaming of Red Eagles

    Has anybody here read Andrew Roberts' Masters & Commanders?

    It's a four-subject account of how Churchill, Roosevelt, Alanbrooke & Marshall 'won the war'.

    I've had my eye on it since it was published, but I'm not greatly interested in another walk through the various allied conferences--it's going to have to offer a bit more.

    Does it?
     
  11. hucks216

    hucks216 Member

    I read it a few years back and the political side of things in general isn't of great interest to me, not as much as the military side anyway, but I found it an interesting read.
     
  12. Charley Fortnum

    Charley Fortnum Dreaming of Red Eagles

    Hmm, will look for a cheap copy.
     
  13. SteveDee

    SteveDee Well-Known Member

    Last edited: Sep 27, 2019
  14. Charley Fortnum

    Charley Fortnum Dreaming of Red Eagles

  15. 2 Black Bands

    2 Black Bands Active Member

    Road of Bones - The Epic Siege of Kohima (Fergal Keane)

    Let's start by saying that this was my introduction to Kohima - I knew NOTHING about it beforehand. My interests are helmets and tanks - niether of which were the reason for buying this book - I wanted a "Kohima crash course"....and got one! I found it to provide a great introduction to what has been judged "Britains greatest battle" from what is often called the forgotten war...Japanese, Brits, Indians, Z Force and headhunting tribesmen. This is a highly informative book on the events surrounding the battle with snippets from interviews undertaken with soldiers from both (were there only 2?) sides. The descriptions of the combat and the hideousness of it all are well written and it flows well. 'not sure if this counts as a review but this is one of the best "Battle books" I've read for a while
     
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  16. brucenew

    brucenew Junior Member

    How did you get to 2.5? I'd give it zero. It's all speculation and arrogance.
     
  17. brucenew

    brucenew Junior Member

    Book reviewed: The Battle of the Peaks and Longstop Hill: Tunisia, April-May 1943

    Book author: Ian Mitchell

    Format: Hardbound

    Pages: 368

    Publisher: Helion & Company

    ISBN: 9781911628934

    5 stars

    This book is remarkable for talking Tunisia, doing its homework, and the high standards of production – not typical of most publishers of history: 15 colour maps of the battles, 8 colour photographs of the battlefields taken by the author, and 18 black & white photographs (wartime and author’s own), on high quality paper.

    The scope of these illustrations serves the scope of this chronology, from the first battle of Longstop in December 1942. Inferior histories will tell you that the battle occurred on 22nd April, but Mitchell reveals the “Battle of the Peaks” from 6th April. These peaks were needed just to approach Longstop. The battles went on almost every day through 23rd April. Two battalions of Churchills and two brigades of infantry were fully engaged in these battles.

    This book’s scope is wide and deep, so I would be giving away too much if I told you more about these battles. You won’t regret letting Mitchell tell you in full.
     
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  18. Title: D-Day Beach Force - The men who turned chaos into order

    Author: Joseph and David Rogers

    Publisher/Year/ISBN (optional) : Spellmount/The History Press ISBN 978 0 7524 6330

    Quick review: the enticing secondary title should be reversed and applied to the authors. This book has no structure and is just a random succession of incomplete lists, poorly presented tables, irrelevant digressions and photographs, useless diagrams and uncalled for opinions. One of the worst books I've ever read!

    Rating out of 5: 1/5
    1 point rather than 0 because I did not see any major historical error
     
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  19. Waddell

    Waddell Well-Known Member

    Ten Journey's to Cameron's Farm.JPG

    Title:
    Ten Journey’s to Cameron’s Farm.

    Author: Cameron Hazlehurst

    Publisher: ANU Press 2013

    Quick Review: Sometimes it’s good to move outside your comfort zone. This book is on a reading list I have to research a local RAAF man whose involvement is covered within the book, otherwise it probably would not have been the type of I book I would read. I am glad I read it though as it is a very thoroughly researched book of a pivotal moment in Australia’s WW2 history.

    The book is concerned with the air crash that occurred in Canberra on the morning of 13th August 1940. On that morning one of the RAAF’s new Lockheed Hudson aircraft carrying ten people including three cabinet ministers, Chief of the General Staff (General Sir C.B.B White), two assistants and four RAAF crew crashed killing all aboard. The plane had left Melbourne that morning and crashed whilst attempting to land at 10.15am. RAAF senior officers were at the site by 2.30pm.

    There were a whole lot of events happening within the RAAF before this particular plane crashed such as a series of fatal crashes, problems with the handling of the new Hudson aircraft at low speeds, questions about the quality of training of the new pilots flying these aircraft and questions about the pilot involved. Understandably the RAAF were keen to keep the investigation process in-house and shortly after a Court of Inquiry was held, led by a judge who was directed by two RAAF assessors who were his eyes and ears on technical matters and able to direct him as such. You can see the conflict of interest here. During the inquiry no representatives from civil aviation or Lockheed were approached.

    The author apparently spent thirty years researching the subject and it shows. If I had a criticism of the book it would be that the author is a little overbearing and repetitive at times- I found myself reading through it and saying to myself I am aware of that connection or conflict of interest. Thirty years of research may do that to you though.

    Interesting and free to read online-

    Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

    Rating out of 5: 4.5

    Scott
     
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  20. SteveDee

    SteveDee Well-Known Member

    Title: The Volunteer

    Author: Jack Fairweather

    ISBN: ISBN 978-0-75354-516-4

    Quick review:-

    This is the story of Witold Pilecki who entered Auschwitz to find out what was going on inside, and to create a resistance movement. This was not his idea, and was a kind of punishment for arguing with a superior. However, it was ultimately his choice to go through with the assignment.

    The majority of this book covers Witold's time in Auschwitz, but you also get a good feel for this family man, and his life is followed right through to his execution. The information that he gathered was not acted upon or even believed in the early years of the German occupation of Poland. So it could be argued that there was no point to his long years of suffering, and his early death.

    Although very well written, this is a grim book, which is to be expected given the subject matter. It reveals suffering inflicted not just by a minority of invaders on the local Polish population, but also Germans on Germans, Poles on Poles, and even Jews on other Jews.

    I'm afraid to say that we are just animals, and there is no point in claiming that we are anything else. We can demonstrate both empathy and cruelty in a 'magnified' way, not generally seen in the rest of the animal kingdom.

    Although '5 star' I can't recommend this book to everyone. It has to be a personal choice. I was moved by this book, but I can imagine some could be traumatised by the accounts of senseless brutality and pointless torture inflicted by those with power over others.

    Rating out of 5: 5
     
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