A thoughtful and visually striking military survey.
A hybrid history and photographic gallery of 20th-century war machines.
After more than three decades as a research physicist with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, author Miller retired in 2003and focused his attention on photography. In this book, the third and final volume in a trilogy of history and photography books centered on 20th-century weaponry, he blends his knowledge of modern warfare with his keen eye for composition. Its first half provides a narrative overview of the last century’s “unprecedented calamity” of destructiveness, as humanity’s inclination toward violence combined with technological advancements. In the long view of world history, Miller notes, “one cannot help but be struck by the extreme spasms of violence and destruction.” The author expertly traces the development of war machines from the Industrial Revolution through two world wars and a string of Cold War conflicts, adding photos, timelines, and text-box vignettes along the way. Although the work is centered on technology, it also pays ample attention to the imperialism, racism, and ideological divisions that drove the century’s wars. The book’s second half features more than 100 original photographs of war machines taken at museums, historic sites, and parks around the United States and Canada. The well-lit and artfully framed black-and-white images, accompanied by informative text, provide stark commentary on the relationship between technological advancement and a sense of ambivalence toward human life. Miller’s extraordinary photos, which show such items as early Maxim machine guns, World War I–era tanks, massive battleships from World War II, and 1970s Pave Low helicopters, provide tragic reminders of humanity’s investment in deadly machines. Readers who are already familiar with this subject matter won’t find very much that’s new in the narrative portions, although the author’s research is solid and he presents it in an approachable yet learned style. However, the photographic second half is a frankly stunning commentary on the last century’s technological priorities.
A thoughtful and visually striking military survey.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9862127-2-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: The Chelsea Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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