All of the discussion about war and weapons are a poor tangent and a boring
922820
The references to Aikido training and that perspective are frequent and central to the book. All of the discussion about war and weapons are a poor tangent and a boring commentary
2253610
As a non-American, I am keen to understand America's obsession with guns. That's why I bought this book whose cover caught my eye.

I did learn a few things, but was disappointed that such a recent book didn't venture far into the 20th century, let alone this one. The author's area of expertise was plainly the Winchester family although she does frequently comment on the affairs of competing manufacturers. I got a sense of this before I bought the book, so have only myself to blame.

Like other reviewers here, I didn't see the point of tales of Sarah Winchester, her baby and the spirit world. Far from providing additional interest, these sections went off topic and made an already disappointing book more tedious.

I was also bothered that there was no in depth account of the congressional and moral dilemma that guns generated. These were mentioned only in passing. I am left with an unresolved sense that either there really was very little political objection and debate, or that the author didn't take the time to research this important aspect more fully. Neither of these possibilities sits well with me, especially as she grew up in a family that owned guns.

If you are looking for an answer to why the USA today is addicted to guns, this book is well-researched but only gets you halfway there. I commend the author for leaving her own emotions at the door, but this makes the read academic and somewhat dull. I congratulate her on contributing to a better understanding of the origins of the current state of affairs, and offer my condolences at the passing of her brother.
748804
I am no religious person by any stretch of the word.  I picked up this book expecting some sort of intelligent exploration about religions and their effect on humanity throughout the ages.

What I got instead was the addled ramblings of someone who likes to hear himself talk.  Paragraphs that span two pages?  The writing was neither eloquent nor enlightening.  At times, it was filled with a tangible under current of hate.  Hitchens would have done much better to leave his personal feelings out of this and just debate the facts and inconsistencies his research found in today's organized religions.

Everyone is well aware of the crimes against humanity in the name of religion.  Everyone is well aware of the sexual abuse catholic priests visit upon their alter boys.  Everyone is well aware of the role the crusades played in history.  Thanks for the review.  There is so little that is new here, that even his opinions on the subject seemed rehashed.

I gave it two stars only in that there were a few good points drawn.  There were so few, however, that I just couldn't justify any more than that.  I get it, Mr. Hitchens.  You hate Mel Gibson.  You believe Ghandi was an opportunist, you think Dalai Lama is a hypocrite, and Mother Theresa was a hack.
4531465
Richard Cohen attempted a major feat with this book and I believe that it was not up to the mark in all respects because of the breadth of subjects covered. An analogy would be writing a history of driving and having readers interested in one aspect complain that their pet subject was not covered enough. I fear that I am one of those readers. I bought the book with an interest in the combat use and development of the sword. While Cohen does write about that, it seemed that several thousands of years of western history were brushed over in a chapter with little coverage of the development and use of the sword. I also felt that he brushed over too quickly the early theorists and authors of sword fighting. The combat aspects werealso confined to mainly Western military history, while Napoleon must have seen something in the Mameluke sword as I believe that he carried one on many of his campaigns after Egypt.

I did enjoy the chapter on the making of swords with its background on Toledo and Solingen. It was interesting to hear about the fate of these sword making centres and the impact that gunpowder had on them. In Solingen's case in Germany it was obviously on the losing side in the First World War and only salvaged by the Nazi desire for ceremonial daggers before another more fatal demise of its swordsmithing under the occupation of Germany by the allies after the Second World War. He has probably not won any favours from the tourist councils of either region for destroying the image that some sword fans may have of these once famous centres of sword making.

In my view, Mr Cohen spends most of the book dealing with duels and individual fencing. For a book on such a broad subject it would have been a key question of balance on what to cover and what not to. In the interest of full disclosure I admit that I did not finish the book, as I was not really interested in the technicalities of duels nor in sport fencing, although I did read most of it. I personally would have found it interesting to see how the swords of different cultures fared when they met on the battlefield. I have read some stories of British officers foregoing firearms in India during battles to test their sword arms against native exponents.

The author does have a good writing style and the book was easy to read. While I am no expert like the others who have criticised the author for historical inaccuracies I thought that I had come across a few. I did not take much note of them, as Richard Cohen was travelling down a long path and he could be forgiven for missing the occasional minor fact.

If you are looking for a book that does focus on duelling and fencing then this is the book for you. If you are interested in the combat use of swords, especially in a non-western setting then this book will not satisfy you. I agree with the reviewer who said that there was not much from a non-western setting; samurais were essentially dealt with in a single chapter. Again, when contemplating purchasing this book think about a history of driving, it could not cover everything in depth and Richard Cohen's book is the same. I have given it three stars, mainly because I felt that it focused too heavily on duelling and fencing at the expense of combat and non-western swords. That may speak more about me than the book and I would add that I was torn between three and four stars.
92142
I am a Marine Reservist, this book was a disappointment and a boring read. Buzz complains about his one weekend a month duties he signed up for. Half the book he is talking about how great he is, the other he is looking for a pity party. Buzz goes on about suffering from PST when he wasn't even at war for three months and didn't begin to experience the difficulties of combat. If you sign up for the Marine Corps Reserve you should expect to eventually be involved in some type of conflict and not just get some (very little) money for school. The biggest part of being a Marine is sucking it up for pride and country. This book is a pessimistic perspective of service.
2791431
I have never served in the military. But my father did, and I have many friends who have served. So I have tremendous respect for (most) veterans, including the author, Chris Kennedy. But, please, Chris work on your dialogue. Attend a few writers workshops and learn how to write believable dialogue.

This is the main failing of this otherwise interesting read. People speak like they're reading from a textbook or a really bad movie script.

Example: A college student says, "With all the multi-story buildings in the area, I can't believe people would intentionally try to parachute onto campus." Would a college kid actually use the words "multi-story" and "intentionally"? No. A real human being would say, "With all these tall buildings, nobody would ever skydive here on purpose."

A U.S. Senator barks, "That's preposterous! That's preposterous, I say." Who ever says "preposterous"? The book is set in 2018, not 1918.

And then there are the identical twins who are Army Rangers. For some reason, they speak in stereotypical surfer lingo, adding "dude" or "like" to literally every sentence. I grew up in L.A. and knew plenty of surfers. No one EVER spoke like that.

If the characters didn't speak like robots, this would probably be a four-star book. The plot is clever, although I really doubt an invading force would really be able to take over military bases and piers while hardly firing a shot. I like to think that in our post-9/11 world, military security is a little tighter than portrayed in the book. But maybe not.
1987858
Really disappointing coverage of an interesting and strategically significant part of the war.  Very anecdotal approach, any discussion of military operations above the most tactical level is superficial and poorly handled.
1256827
The author takes what could be an interesting tale and makes it monotonous.  The dialog is amateurish at best.  He also repeats, ad nauseam, the same political narrative about the failures of the U.S. and state governments to address the immigration and terrorist problems present today.  The thing is, I agree with his sentiments, but don't have to hear the same message over and over and over to understand and appreciate the plight the country is facing.  If he had spent more time developing his characters and less time having them muse about government failures, the book would have had more appeal.
624133
I read most all of the reviews (unfortunately after the fact) posted of this book and have to agree with all of the "One Star" reviews.  Yeide seems to have a proverbial ax to grind against Patton as constantly through the book he downplays any accomplishments of Patton's 3rd Army in France and Germany.  He indicates that Patton was "lucky" over and over to the point where it's laughable - including a shot at the end of the book where Eisenhower supposedly tells Patton he was lucky.  The other reviews point out the boring details of the German commanders and the dozens of ranks, none of which make much sense unless you are a member of the German military - so I won't harp on this point.  He contradicts himself many times throughout the book  - on page 197 he details the Herman Goering Division facing Patton in Sicily as green with hardly any soldiers who had fought before.  Then after the Division is shifted away from Patton to fight Montgomery on the east coast of Sicily he describes them as the most powerful Axis Division in Sicily.  When Patton is about to attack Metz later in the war, he says the battle is unnecessary and results in many costly casualties for no reason at all.  However during the same discussion on the Metz battle, he says that Hitler refused to allow a German retreat and told his generals to fight to the death.  So why would Yiede say that Metz was an unnecessary battle??  He constantly quotes German generals as saying Patton was cautious and failed to exploit weaknesses in the German lines, yet he also points out on numerous occasions that Patton was ordered to stop, or to go in a different direction, or simply ran out of gasoline and supplies because of his rapid advances.  In addition while he is saying Patton is slow and overly cautious, Patton has the Germans on the run, and on the defensive.  Who does he think pushed the German Army from Normandy back across the Rhine??  He agrees with the Germans who said Patton was average at best, but scoffs at the ones that called him a brilliant tank commander.  He continuously says that the Germans did not care where Patton was,  and that he was mentioned in very few memoirs of the Germans.  Yet there are no examples of where any other American or British generals were specifically mentioned either - in fact the Germans were retreating so quickly and losing men and material so fast, I don't think they cared who on the Allied side were shooting and killing them with increasing speed.  One last thing that was mentioned were the battle maps throughout the book - they were worthless in trying to identify who were the Germans and who were the Allies.  He has arrows going in numerous directions, none of which identifies what side he is trying to depict.  Several times he identifies a town or village as being pivotal to a battle but when you look at the map, the town or village is not even on it.  After about the 5th map, I just quit looking at them as they made no sense.

I was really looking forward to this book as I have read many many WWII books and several on Patton.  By the end of Chapter 2 I knew I had made a mistake and was tempted to just put the book down and call it a day.  But I suffered through it hoping it would get better.  Why I didn't read the reviews before I purchased the book is my own fault - I won't let it happen again.  If you are looking for a good WWII read,  this is NOT the book for you - keep your money!
3171693
The author is a good writer, but his understanding of resource economics is poor. The numbers of giant tanks, military rockets, and military aircraft turned out in these stories would have been game changing indeed. Germany's lack of access to the technology enabling metals required for such production contributed mightily to its loss of the war. Also, at the end teenage boys with bolt action rifles were facing hardened Americans with M1s. At least this author hasn't fallen as deeply into the trap of writing a novel as a description of a war game as has the author of the increasingly boring Kirov series.
3399556
I give this book three stars instead of one because despite all its MANY flaws it did make me pause and really think about the "all too human", as Nietzsche called it, and how it wends it's way into everything we do and think and touch. My definition of the "all too human" is, that no matter how hard we try, no matter how huge our ideas, our being mortals, and not gods, undermines our thoughts and actions making them always tragicomic somehow in the end. In the case of this important bit of VN history, from Westmorland's hubristic relocation plan on down to the supposed elite force that were called upon to enforce it, everything was mired in humanness and it's suseptability to anger, fear, cowardice, deciet, hubris, and ignorance.

But in padding out there articles to make a best seller the authors did everyone including themselves a huge disservice. It is so obvious that these two Ohioans have never been within ten feet of the military. The technical errors are so many that they constantly destract from the story. You can almost feel the authors as they fudge their way through sentences like this: "The twenty-one-year-old had spent the last hour packing his gear: three canteens of water, a bag of rice, eight cans of C rations, two rolls of toilet paper...a poncho...and several rounds [sic] of ammo for his M-16. When they are not supplying guys about to go into combat with two rolls of toilet paper but only three cartriges, they are busy making up weapons like "carbine .15s"; or they have them going out on "maneuvers" [training excercises] in the middle of a war. And watch out for those "20 milimeter bombs" falling! They speek of one unit being bounced around from one area to another like "merceneries". Is that the defenition of mercenery--a soldier who is bounced around a lot? At the risk of sounding nit-picky I will not list the dozens of examples of technical inacurracy in this book. "Tiger Force" will survive for a bit as a moral hand-wringer and understandably concerned literates will seek it out as a way of getting a grip on the war crimes being inacted in Iraq. But it fails miserably as solid military prose and so will be forgotten soon enough. Bernard Fall is probably chuckling in his grave at this one.

Speaking of Bernard Fall and his VN classic "Street Without Joy": Fall writes extensively of units the French created to blend into the jungle in order to live and breathe and think like the enemy. They failed of course, way before the Americans tried the same thing with their various special forces units. It seems no matter how hard you try, it's impossible to become as accustomed to the terrain as the indiginous gurrilla forces are. Read a book called "The War of the Flea" for further insights on this, and how it's almost impossible to win "hearts and minds" when you are an occupier.
1355702
This book tries to be everything for everyone and fails.  I read glowing reviews and at least one excerpt from this book before buying it.  It tries to be more than a history of the AK-47 but it is less than a book on intermediate caliber automatic weapons.  On the plus side, it informed me of Soviet post- World War II small arms development and how it related to German developments.  But it seems more of a collection of vaguely related topics, discussing Gatling and Maxim while almost skipping over John M. Browning and other innovators.  The reviews indicated that this book would do much to discuss the early problem with the M-16 in Vietnam, yet it failed to provide any new information.  Even with Soviet small arms, it leaves huge gaps.  Although it discusses the Automat, there is no discussion of why this was chambered in 6.5mm Ariska or how it was operationally employed.

There certainly is not enough useful or complete information to keep this as a reference.  I suggest you wait until it comes out in paperback or pick up a slightly used copy.  I am certain that the price will fall dramatically in the next few months.
1453537
I looked into this book as I wanted to write a term paper on British warfare - sadly it's true: British official histories are the most long-winded, soporific, and frustratingly vague histories out there, forever dancing around the issues for fear of offending anyone while pushing the partisan agenda of the administration that ordered the history to be written rather than the administration that actually fought the war. Also, these histories are often so badly written that you are constantly looking into the index or the footnotes for cross-references to clarify the precise date or military unit or personality associated with something that the author starts describing on one page but doesn't seem to relate to the previous page. Freedman has the frustrating unthoughtful habit of using so many "it"s and "he"s in one sentence that you just don't know which item or person he is referring to. This makes the book practically impossible to read as a story: it's too much effort to keep track of his subjects. You could use it to look up precise events or persons, but Freedman has a simplistic top-down view of most things and seems to ignore the likely complex bureaucratic interests and wranglings. His interpretation of American interests is really curious: American interests are just clear national interests and he ignores the uncertainty and disputes within the Reagan administration and the Republic Party about American support for the British - sometimes Freedman sounds like a neocon reinterpreting British defense of its own territory as justification for the Bush doctrine. Freedman also seems a curious choice to write an official history about a popular war during the early part of a Conservative government while Freedman was advising a Labour government - I guess Freedman won't be writing any histories about Tony Blair's failed wars, but the Blair government appointed him to investigate this one and often he appears to be looking to discredit Thatcher, particularly over the intelligence failure preceding the invasion and the lack of military preparedness before invasion, but since she had been in power less than 2 years before the invasion, couldn't Freedman blame the previous Labour government? His focus on the person at the top of the pyramid in 1982 seems simplistic and partisan. Since the volumes are actually very short given the scope, the coverage is actually dissatisfying. The first volume covers the background to the war over decades, in fact it begins 250 years ago, but it includes only about 200 pages; the many chapters, on important topics like the international legal arguments between the Argentina and Britain over ownership of the islands, run to about a dozen pages. This is totally insufficient and helps Freedman with his simplistic top-down interpretation of how nation-states behave. Apart from some interviews, Freedman doesn't really introduce any new official information and doesn't have any new revelations about the war. Sadly, I'd like to recommend another comprehensive history, but you can't reach for another official history, instead you should read the most important memoirs and more focused histories.
2114333
The first thing I noticed was the non-military military. Every command is questioned and second guessing seems to be a sport. The amount of time the doctor and a crew member spent chit-chatting should have been rewarded with a firing squad. A few more days, weeks, or months studying technology before writing about it would help this author. I did enjoy not being SPAMMED with environmental crap or profanity or LGBT content.
1506227
I had hoped, in choosing this title, to take an amusing look at some of the nuttier things the U.S. Military has undertaken in order to keep the world safe for democracy. I had hoped to find a good bit of amusing material, and perhaps some insights into their effectiveness.

What I got was one more Brit attempting to tell the world how the Americans are screwing it all up, even though the entire world knows the British empire did little better during their turn as the world's policeman.

What I got was one more liberal telling us how vile and draconian the U.S. government is, even though most of its labrynthian departments were carved out by well-meaning liberals over our governments 200-plus year history.

What I got was one more liberal stuck in the same old cleft-stick of his own devising: Is the U.S. Military clever and diabolical, or stupid and inept? Those who have chosen to side with the terrorists against the current administration for political reasons of their own are going to have to choose their doom: Are the Americans led by George Bush clever, or stupid? If they are clever, then it might be best if they weren't hindered, no matter the political cost. If they are stupid, then what does that make those who find themselves unable to affect change? What does that make those whom they are currently defeating, both in combat abroad and politically at home?

Choose your doom, Jon. If George Bush is diabolical, why are the enemies of the free world afraid of him? Isn't that a good thing? Good, that is, for the free world, and not neccecarily your party, we mean. And if he is to be considered good but stupid,what does that make of your opposition to him?

Consider even Jon's take on U.S. casualties in the war: He seems to feel that the real tradgedy is that American body armor allows more wounded men and women to live, if as amputees. What are you saying, Jon? That it would be better if they died? (Or perhaps better for your party, we should say...)

Poor sad liberal. Forced to choose between his hatred of things military and the political capital to be gained by trotting out brave wounded soldiers.

In final analysis, this book has earned a three for it's clever humor in the first half of the book, as well as an amusing interviewing style. In the end, this book failed to live up to its potential due to the authors' inability to succumb to the temptation of politicizing.

If the author had done a better job of holding to the middle ground, he might have had a work worthy of reading by far more people. As it was, Jon Ronson couldn't, like many liberals, "choose his doom."
785458
In some ways a decent first effort but it falls short so very often.
The author writes with authority about weapons systems that he simply doesn't understand. For example he describes in gory detail how a m249 saw devastates armor that is impervious to the 5.56 round in the M4. Unfortunately for the author the m249 saw fires the same round. He describes the awesome power of the russian 12.7 mm machine gun round taking out a hind helicopter ignoring that this round is the soviet equivalent of the us .50 caliber round and that the hind was specifically armored to defeat both of those rounds.

Then we have Joe, who is a laudable hero but suffers multiple serious wounds, torture, beatings, starvation in a period of two or three weeks, yet recovers not once but twice to full combat efficiency. In his second encounter with the head of the unit that slaughtered 35 of his men he with help bests his opponent in unarmed combat (using none of the techniques that rangers are trained in) and then leaves him alive. unconscious so that he can return to attempt to kill more of his comrades. I have the honor of calling a couple of ex rangers my friends, and there are few more deadly humans on the face of this earth. In a combat situation they kill their opponents, and in hand to hand it is not a fist fight.

The author explains that the C-17 files twice as fast as the Blackhawk - in fact it files three times as fast.

These kinds of error occur over and over throughout the book. I am far from a military expert but the errors are constant and glaring.

It gets two stars because it wasn't a bad read, but if the author intends to speak describe weapons systems in detail he needs to do in depth research to make sure he actually understands the weapons and weapons systems his characters use. Similarly he need to understand tactics and combat techniques in which his characters would have been trained.

Oh and I have had the honor to meet a few members of Blackwater and I can think of no finer men, including a former SEAL and former special forces officer. The authors portrayal of them as careless, mercenaries, who kill only out of greed does a great disservice to many fine men. This causes be to wonder if the author has any first hand experience with the men whose character he stains, and on balance requires me to drop another star leaving this story with only 1.
3683391
short and never really gets to any point on the topic.