A valuable book for anyone interested in international affairs.
Nations are constantly preparing for war, and a major part of that preparation is predicting what the next war will be like. An expert in military strategy provides a detailed look at how that process has evolved.
Freedman (Emeritus, War Studies/Kings Coll. London; Strategy: A History, 2013, etc.) focuses primarily on British and American approaches, beginning in the mid-19th century, when a consensus arose that wars were decided in decisive battle, on the model of Waterloo. This encouraged military planners to aim for a knockout blow, preferably at the beginning of hostilities. Despite ample evidence of its flaws, this doctrine held sway for more than a century. With the arrival of the Cold War and its persistent theme of nuclear stalemate, Great Power wars became unthinkable. New technology that would avoid nuclear involvement became the holy grail of military thinkers. Then, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, local civil wars began to dominate the landscape. Western involvement—e.g., in Kosovo—became common, with results that often disappointed. Especially after 9/11, it became clear that traditional military methods were inadequate to win the new kind of conflict. The importance of cyberwar and the introduction of remote ways of killing—drones, in particular—came to the forefront, while grinding civil wars and terrorist action dominated the landscape. To show how contemporaries viewed future war in various eras, Freedman cites novels such as H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach along with more official military texts to show how the brass was thinking. More often than not, everybody guessed wrong, especially as they fell under the “decisive battle” illusion. Freedman consistently brings the discussion down to real cases, covering a wide range of history and geography. The final section, which considers the place of gang warfare and civil unrest in many parts of the world and the likely role of China in future conflicts, is especially thought-provoking. The author’s lively style adds to the interest for general readers.
A valuable book for anyone interested in international affairs.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61039-305-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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