This Is A Study In Tactics, & Futility
345830
Rhea offers a vivid history of the opening efforts of the Overland Campaign initiated by Grant. This battle was an event that occurred in a hellish tangle of scrub in Virginia. Such a landscape would complicate the efforts to not only win a battle, but to survive. This book tells how the complications worked to create one of terrifying battles. Leaders could not meet the demands on  them, and others would simply cease to be effective in this battle. The soldiers would struggle to execute their responsibilities. The Wilderness was a huge disaster in human terms as people were killed by bullets and burnt to death while they lie wounded. It made little strategic sense, as the fog of war clouded all who were involved. It would mark the start of a new era of fighting in the Civil War, an era that would require more heroics just to survive. Rhea captures this all in a very readable, but still very vigorous work. I would recommend this to anyone!!!!
2517011
Heavily scripted(!) strategic(?) gameplay. Enemies position themselves as if they know the composition of your squad and the actions you took within the fog of war. You rarely can use a rocket or grenades since aliens stay just outside the radius, questionable upgrades all across the board, workshops more important than research facilities... Lot's of bugs and glitches: meld canisters impossible to collect, units stuck in the walls, 1% chance to hit an enemy with soldier staying right next to it. Poor airspace gameplay. Even much more thoughtful than "X-COM EW" mod called "Long War" can't redeem the scripted madness plaguing the title, for it's based on it. Where would have "Firaxis" been if it weren't for Gollops. 3 stars for an attempt.
3220274
I thought this would be a breath of fresh air in the world of close in fighting, in up close and personal self defence. Who wouldn't think from the cover and description of the book that we were about to be treated to the ancient techniques of the native American Indian, tribes rightly renowned for their fighting skills. Wrong, It is merely a rehash of American Kenpo techniques albeit, ably demonstrated by the 'Chief. Where one or two simple pre-escape blows could be delivered, the author, who I have no doubt is highly skilled in his art, slews for example, towards an escape from a hold including a strike and then a lock! A lock! Dated dangerous stuff against serious attacks. These locking techniques are demonstrated by a woman as well. Sorry ladies, but unrealistic for unskilled women to rely on locking a bigger assailant. Whilst an expert such as the Chief and skilled Kenpo practitioners could probably make this type of technique work, this particular book (a booklet really) is a very lightweight treatise on American Kenpo. Thats it, nothing of the Native American skills to be seen apart from some 'thoughts' and ideas but nothing very prophetic. The photographs aren't really that good either.
1556493
This game simply does not hold one's interest.  It moves slowly, and the choices a person has to make to keep it on track are mundane.  It would be much more exciting if the game demanded multifaceted decisions with unexpected outcomes.  It is easy enough to see that avoiding war wins a lot of points, but nowhere is there an Adolf Hitler maneuvering to build alliances to attack you from all sides; thereby, forcing you to go to war early or lose everything.  That is just one example.

Guess I am expecting too much.

The visuals are excellent, but it takes more than visuals to build a game.

AD2
2611766
The Yom Kippur War was one of the most incredible contests of arms of the Twentieth Century; Israel, against impossible odds, managed to turn a disasterous beginning into a complete victory against overwhelming invading forces.
If you want to learn the dynamics of that war; how it was planned by Russian advisors and executed by Syrian and Egyptian armored forces; how unprepared and surprised Israeli forces absorbed the near fatal impact of the first assault and improvised a winning strategy, how America's just in time resupply of exhausted stores snatched success from the throat of the Arab forces;
You will have to find it elsewhere, it is not in this film.
Apparently the movie makers wish to show the futility of war by showing only futile actions by powerless actors.
How did the war start? It just fell out of the sky like a meteor.
How was it fought? In utter futility.
A aerial shot of an empty field full of tracks from armored vehicles that have gone on to somewhere else, shows the utter futility of trying to understand the battle by the marks left on an empty field by armored vehicles that have gone on to somewhere else.

Imagine sitting down to watch a film about the Grand Canyon and seeing two hours worth of a tight focus shot of one pebble in the tourist center parking lot. Then near the end, a bird dropping plops on the rock, and the credits roll.
1287801
There are few major battles of World War II less well known than the Marine invasion of Peleliu. Even the later meat-grinders the Marines struggled through on Iwo Jima and Okinawa might, at the very least, be considered worthwhile to a degree. Peleliu has none of the satisfaction of victory. It was ultimately worthless and an absolute waste of one of the finest divisions in the US military at the time, the First Marines.

James H. Hallas gives a vivid account of the assault which was the brainchild of General William Rupertus. Conceived as an opportunity to protect the flank of General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, the attack on Peleliu was adamantly opposed by, of all people, Admiral Halsey, whose tactics of battle were "Kill Japs, kill Japs, keep killing Japs!" Halsey saw it for what it was, a horrible sacrifice over a virtually worthless rock.

The Marines went ashore with little useful intelligence about what they faced. They were told that Peleliu would be just like Tarawa: three days of tough fighting, and then it would be over. They were off by about seventy days!

I would recommend this volume highly to anyone interested, as I am, in military history or to those who enjoy true stories of men in combat. Hallas tells his story in compelling fashion taking the points of view not only of the commanders, but of the line Marines, the men doing the fighting. It is a fitting tribute to the over 5,000 members of the First Marines, the "Old Breed," who were casualties of the fighting.
1017468
A very poor book. It focuses on a very select set of engagements but still manages to be so general in its treatment of them as to be almost worthless.

Very little time is spent on any analysis of the effectiveness of either side in relation to the other save for some very obvious and very pedestrian comments. Indeed the book ends with a bizarre section of the structure of either sides formations which, by necessity, there's precious little on the Mujahideen owing to their ad hoc nature anyway.

After this pointless digression the book just peters out, not even containing the an analysis or concluding statement typical of this Osprey series.

Overall this is the worst example of a rather woeful Osprey 'series' which, until Osprey comes up with some definite direction for its writers in this category, should be avoided.
616837
I have played a handful of squad based games and I have to say that this is probably one of the most disappointing and frustrating games I have ever played.

Once I am done with it, it is going into the thrift store box (or better yet, the trash).This is a highly disappointing game. While the graphics and sound themselves are not bad, the game is not really well thought out and not very flexible or realistic. While it is touted as one of the most realistic simulation/squad based games, I found some of the premises of the game to be anything but. For instance, if you don't move your squad the correct way, you can have both your

squads killed by a single exposed oppfor (enemy) in an open area. Now give me a break, that is eight against 1 and you still lose! When you outman and outgun an enemy by that much this is simply ridiculous!

Another gripe that I have against the game is that (unless you use the cheats) you are given a very limited amount of heavy duty ammo. That is, you only get 4 frags, 4 smoke grenades and 2 mortar grenades between your two squads. And that is supposed to last you an entire level (a level is comprised of 7-10 missions)!! Even if that is supposed to be "realistic", they could designed the game so that you could resupply your heavy ammo at more frequent intervals.

Another source of great frustration is the unrealiability of game replays and the inability to save a game in progress. In a couple of missions I had to repeat the entire last hour or so of play because the replay didn't save all my progress. You are also forced to complete a section of the game before you can save its progress or else restart the mission the next you play. Retarded!

As far as replayability is concerned (a game that you can come back to and pick up at a random level), this game is a one shot deal. Once you figure out the very predictable but frustrating script, you are done (if you have the patience to finish) and probably don't want to go back and play again. If you want playability pick up any of the Battlefield titles.

Overall, I would have given this game a higher score if it wasn't for the fact that the game is so frustrating, and contrary to how the game is touted, it is not really that realistic. It's a very frustrating exercise in figuring out the game's script before you get misterously killed by your very dumb opponents. The game designers could have done a better job of planning the game and making it more enjoyable and replayable. Sorry, this is not a winner in my book.
4837432
Superfluous to the point of being obtuse. Reading this book is an exercise in patience so extreme one may lose their sanity prior to its completion. Dunning is overbearing in his opinions saying you must consider this or that and do things his way. Perhaps if he were more succinct and clear one might be able to find his way, but I believe he is hiding a lack of understanding through exhaustive verbosity.
4798805
Two stars for the author's passion, and because the ingredient lists, at least, really look worth trying.  But as for "rescuing" paella from "worldwide ignominy" (as Penelope Casas immodestly gives her objective...and where exactly is paella regarded with "ignominy", anyway?), this book must be regarded as a failure.

Paella, like risotto, is about technique as much as ingredients, and the techniques presented in this book are baffling.  How can an author sing the praises of tradition as loudly as Casas does in her introduction, and then devote the entire book to her frankly non-traditional technique that bakes paella in the oven for 20 minutes?  With 50+ recipes, you'd think she'd find time to at least give one recipe for paella cooked over wood fire or on a charcoal grill, or using one of the special-built paella burners you can buy, or even just cooking the entire dish on the stovetop.  Alas, this is not to be--Casas has her oven technique, and essentially repeats it 50 times with different lists of ingredients.  This is scarcely believable, but there is is--she has photographs of paella cooked over fires in Spain, and even tells you "if paella is not made over a wood-burning fire, you are not likely to achieve a socarrat" (the crusty, almost-but-not-quite burnt layer of rice that makes paella lovers swoon), but can spare scarcely one paragraph to give you a few scanty notes on cooking over a fire.  The crowning glory of paella--written off utterly in a cookbook devoted to the dish.  Ridiculous.

Another sad deficiency is the photography, which is scanty and black-and-white.  For a showy dish like paella, for which a beautiful presentation is such a big part of the fun, a few full-color photographs would have gone a long way--but the lovely cover shot is the only such one you will be getting here.

I enjoyed reading the introduction, and I admire Casas for her devotion and the passion with which she writes about paella--but the body of the book falls far, far short of the promise of those first pages.

Footnote: Alton Brown, of Food Network's "Good Eats" program did an episode on paella in 2010 which represents a huge leap over anything in this book.  He builds a charcoal fire in an ordinary Weber kettle grill, and cooks a really admirable paella on it.  There: was that so hard?  The video is easy to find on YouTube.  The humor is a little corny for my taste, but the technique is impeccable.  You'll do a lot better there than with this book.
1339743
On the whole, more pain than pleasure. Yes, the subject matter, an attempt to identify and promote a new discipline, is worthy, though this study of the science of ignorance purports to cover so much ground--the corporate denial of scientific data, the legal (and sometimes justifiable) enforcement of secrecy, social support for certain kinds of ignorance--that the concept's viability is called into question.  But the book itself is an interesting slant on many recent and historic influences on public consciousness, from the mechanics of sexual arousal, to the tobacco lobby's duplicity, to the ongoing denial of global warming.

It is the level of writing that is atrocious.  Maybe I should have waited for the Bill Bryson version, or for anyone who could use these materials to fashion a book that doesn't insult the language and waste one's time.  These writers, to a person, are academics, and almost all should be soundly thrashed with a hardbound copy of Strunk & White. This is a compendium of every fault scholarly writing is heir to:  wordiness, redundancy, needless complexity of sentence structure (often designed to mask or extend mundane observations), pointless jargon, infelicitous phraseology, obscurantism, even lame humor (as per the double entendres in the essay on the clitoris, by a feminist no less!) that probably plays better in the senior seminar than in a book intended for mature adults.  These scholars write as though being paid by the word--and for a nonexistent editor.  The book could have been half its length with no sacrifice whatever to the content.

My advice, if you are intent on owning this insult, is to skim or speed-read the essays as fast as possible, gleaning the ideas without having to indulge the authors in their padding and verbal ineptitude.
423585
The book is an interesting attempt at trying to bring innovation to soccer through statistics.  Unfortunately, it was too easy to  disagree with their methods and conclusions.  There are so many, that I don't know where to begin.  They try to lead you to believe that you have a better chance at winning by upgrading your weakest player than having a Messi or Ronaldo on your team.  You can spin and twist your stats all you want, but history has proven that championships are won by the most skilled players much more often than not.  The game is not driven by chance over skill like the authors believe.

I am afraid that soccer fans would not miss much by skipping this book and looking elsewhere.
3615489
The grand problem with this beautiful game is that it's scripted through and through. Not only can you move through the world in only one way, there is only one possible outcome to every battle scenario, every piece of the story, and every cinematic sequence. A striking example of this game design occurs during the final chapter. Our hero, Marius, must chase a villain down a hallway and battle menacing soldiers along the way. However, he is so weakened that only one specific move per enemy.
The gameplay allows for only one precisely timed move.  Otherwise you die and start all over. At this point I felt like I was the dumb marionette, mashing the buttons until I finally got the sequence right, only to be rewarded with a video transition.

I'm not asking for "choose your own adventure" but at least allow me to figure out my own path and my own way of fighting. The game, even on its hardest setting doesn't take as much skill as it takes patience.  Once you learn how to deflect attacks there isn't much to stop you. Marius has exactly 5 moves in this game, one of them being blocking.  I hope Crytek continues using this game engine because it is *astonishingly* good. I would love to play Ryse2 with expanded combat possibilities and less scripted game play..
687635
The subtitle of this book is "Confederate Strategy Reconsidered." An accurate subtitle would be "Confederate Strategy Defended Without Explanation of What It Was, and Without Reference to Facts, Logic, or Results."

In case you haven't noticed, the Confederacy lost the War of the Rebellion. As a Union man this pleases me, but as an amateur historian, I wonder if there might not have been a better strategy -- especially since most observers in 1861 thought the odds in the South's favor were overwhelming.

What was Confederate strategy? Tanner never gives a coherent explanation, but it seemed to be a mixture of "annihilate Union Armies," and "defend all territory at all times." Obviously, these goals can conflict. Further, neither leads directly to victory.

Victory in war consists of getting the enemy to give up his resistance to your aims. The U.S. succeeded in doing this to Britain, twice. The strategy wasn't pure annihilation or total territorial defense. Rather, offense, defense, maneuver war, guerrilla war and strategic retreat were combined. A reconsideration of Confederate strategy might think about this, and discuss options.

Instead, Tanner gives us false dichotomies -- e.g., either the Confederacy had to do exactly what it did, or it could retreat from its northern border to approximately Florida.

Sometimes, Tanner pretends to discuss manuver warfare, such as Stonewall Jackson's. This is rejected by using logical fallacy: if the number present for duty was (reportedly) less after hard marching, the marches caused the drop. Also because battle casualties sometimes recover, because the wounded can sometimes keep fighting, and because Confederate casualty statistics were extremely shaky, we should assume marches kill, maim, and hospitalize as many as major battles! (I know it must seem that I'm distorting or misunderstanding Tanner. Well, see pp. 59-61, and if you can come up with another meaning, write me and explain, PLEASE!) Never discussed is the fact that Union armies had to move fast when chasing Jackson, and so presumably incurred their own march casualties.

Then there's a chapter on Clausewitz. It ignores most of what the great Prussian wrote.

There also seems to be a good deal of flat lying in this book. For example, Tanner's version of Braxton Bragg's invasion of Kentucky is contradicted on most points by every other source I've consulted. Since these sources agree, and base their accounts on the official records, I can only conclude Tanner made his story up.

Tanner does bring up real difficulties with possible Confederate alternatives. But they existed in previous wars, and the U.S. won when using them. That goes undiscussed.

A real reconsideration of Confederate strategy would be welcome. This isn't it.
606917
For all I know, Carl Vancelette's The Elusive Masterpoint may well be an entertaining narrative of one man's struggle to achieve the bridge milestone of Life Master. Unfortunately, I did not get very far as I found the efforts at analysis to be too painful to proceed through.

The Elusive Masterpoint makes no pretense of being about expert-level bridge. That said, the back jacket does make a claim to the effect that it will teach the reader a thing or two about the game, and on that point I cannot recommend this book.

For example, in the second chapter the author makes what I would consider a normal, or at the very least reasonable acceptance of a game invitation, yet he treats that decision as some sort of mental aberration on his part (with his partner's angry reaction as backup), and only discusses what led him to take such a horrible action.

Worse still comes in the next chapter, as he encounters a "former state champion" who he (perhaps inadvertently) portrays as having no notion as to how competitive auctions work.

Perhaps a few more chapters down the road the author reviews those incidents and rebuts his thoughts at the time as given in those chapters, but long before that my patience with the book ran out.

Let me emphasize again that it is not the quality of the bridge itself that detracts from the book in my opinion.  There is plenty to be learned from bad bridge: the legendary final chapter of S. J. Simon's Why You Lose At Bridge proves that beyond question.  Unfortunately this book was badly in need of someone to make sure the lessons being taught are useful ones.
3922666
The focus of my review will be specifically on the Online Multiplayer mode of the game because that is what I believe most people, myself included, purchased it for.  I'm just going to keep this short and to the point because I don't think this game deserves much more than a few paragraphs.

To get right to it, the idiots at EA Sports who designed this game must have had only ONE thing in mind:  "How can we make the gameplay as cheap and as troll-friendly as possible while simultaneously screwing over all the decent gamers in the world who just want to have some fun on their days off from work or school?"  This is the only conclusion I could reach; that it must have been intentional because there are SO MANY holes and exploits programmed into the fight engine that any no-life loser could just come along, learn a few EXTREMELY CHEAP moves, and completely rob everyone else of a fun, fair, and competitive gaming experience.  "Why would they do this", you ask.  Your guess is as good as mine, but they have KILLED this game by doing so.

What they have done is created a new group of players called "Punch Spammers", as they are notoriously referred to, that have now COMPLETELY overtaken the Online Multiplayer to the point where it is entirely pointless to even play anymore.  Face one of them with the intention of having a good, clean fight and you will soon find yourself filled with nothing, but rage and disgust as they exploit every single weakness the game has (most likely intentionally) built into it.

What could have been a great game, if the programmers had any sense at all, has been completely destroyed by a tremendously flawed foundation that is much too easily taken advantage of.  Therefore, I'm giving this game the LOWEST rating possible:  NOT fun at all and I HATE it.  I have quite literally removed this game from my collection, destroyed it with my bare hands, and thrown it into the garbage where it belongs, so that it can no longer aggravate me or, worse, waste even another SECOND of my time.

Therefore, my simple advice to all the good and decent gamers out there is PASS on this one or you'll be REALLY sorry you didn't.
3076254
Dear friends and comrades:
Most of you know the extent to which I read and the honesty with which I render my opinions on books. Keeping this in mind I'm inviting you to pick up a copy of Paul Rieckhoff's Iraq War memoir "Chasing Ghosts." It is now available at Amazon much cheaper than I bought it for as it has been released in paperback and it is worth far more than that. (I bought my hardcover for double that price and relentlessly acknowledge that it was worth every penny.) I'll qualify that statement.

What scant coverage of the ACTUAL WAR that is taking place over in Iraq is being transmitted to you from the Green Zone (which means the safest place where no actual fighting or sense of the tasks, attacks, and sacrifices--not to mention reality of the war can be observed.) People who have never been outside of the Green Zone, and often are being spun by the Establishment to the extent that they are willing to dole out any real information at all are preparing these reports.

Conversely, "Chasing Ghosts" is a work, which has been birthed through and blazes forth from the literal fire and destruction of THE RED ZONE. There is no journalism in this country that compares to a first person account of the circumstances, fears, brutality, boredom, monotony, occasional hilarity, and, in summation, the total experience of what serving in Iraq was, and is like. He writes about chasing an enemy which is almost unilaterally indistinguishable from the civilian population until they have a machine gun pointed at you and the wracking of nerves that come in such situations. He writes about one particular child and in other cases lends faces to our "enemy" who are never portrayed on television. He writes about the inadequate armor and supplies and the lack of translators as well as the ground troops lack of knowledge and lack of respect for their culture, in general
.
Mr. Rieckhoff has captured all of these elements with remarkable clarity as well as his return to the states amid a troubling atmosphere, which was largely swirling with either ignorance and obliviousness or 'go team' blind following and parroting about with regard to the legitimacy of the war. Fortunately the tide has turned the other way since the book has been published.

He begins to speak out about the war and becomes one of the first highly visible soldiers to do so. He spars with Sean Hannity and suddenly finds himself in demand and as a spokesman of sorts for the troops still in harms way. All of this leads up to his writing of this book. You can read this one in a flash but it is not due to a lack of content. It's merely that the author does not mince words although you can still feel the unforgiving heat and sand in your lungs in the details of daily life that he does describe.

The purest and most potent amalgam of patriotism and disgust has compelled Rieckhoff to found IAVA (a non-profit organization which shines light on veterans issues) and he continues his work with great vigilance. I encourage everyone to pick up a copy, join in the IAVA's efforts in any capacity that you can, and be a true patriot through giving back to those who have sacrificed, be it a just war or not.

Kevin W. Mattingly
Harrisburg Times.