A must-read for military historians and strategists.
The progress of modern warfare from 1945 to the present and into the future.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to rage, with ongoing reporting drawn to the increasingly sophisticated warfare maneuvers executed from the military on both sides, this conflict serves as a touchstone for authors, and this book is particularly timely. Petraeus, a global affairs specialist and retired Army general, and noted historian Roberts, author of Leadership in War and Master and Commanders, judiciously trace how modern warfare has progressed since 1945 through the present moment, and they set forth the possible implications of the Russian-Ukrainian war for global conflicts in the future. They closely examine key battles that contributed to this evolution—“such as in tactical concepts, or a crucial new weapon, or when defense became superior to offence (or vice versa)”—and consider a future that will likely entail cyber warfare and AI. The authors explore the Korean War, Vietnam, the two Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as where the U.S. had less or no direct involvement: Indo-China, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Balkan wars in former Yugoslavia, and brutal guerrilla wars in South African countries such as Rwanda. Petraeus and Roberts analyze the failures, achievements, and the lessons learned, emphasizing why the need for effective leadership at the strategic level “is absolutely critical—and can, in many cases, determine the outcome of a conflict.” As examples, they cite Moshe Dayan’s command of the Six-Day War in 1967 and Volodymyr Zelensky’s leadership in Ukraine. On the flip side, the authors show when a leader’s ego can lead to disastrous outcomes—e.g., Putin’s hubris in expecting a swift invasion of Ukraine. The authors’ conclusions may spark debate among some military strategists, but their arguments are consistently well grounded and based on vast experience.
A must-read for military historians and strategists.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063293137
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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