OT - Book (Non Fiction) Review/Recommendations Thread

[Raellus]

What it's like to go to war Wow. The author has also written the novel Matterhorn, about a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam. This is his book on dealing with his own life, before during and after having been a Marine LT in Vietnam. He delves into myth, religion, psychology, spirituality, philosophy and more.

I already raved about Matterhorn over in the fiction recommendation thread, but I've got to reiterate here just how brilliant it was. I definitely plan on rereading it again soon.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Just read With the Old Breed and Helmet for My Pillow

By Sledge and Lecke, respectively.

Sledge's book is by far a better, IMO, view of the Marines in the pacific from a grunt's eye view. The book is a horror story; although Sledge sees active duty late in the war (the full title of his book is In With The Old Breed at Pelileu and Okinawa) the late-war almost calm that seems to permeate books about the Western European theater (Citizen Soldier, Band of Brothers, Beyond Band of Brothers, Biggest Brother, etc.) the fighting in the Pacific reached a fevered pitch up to the surrender in August of 1945 - and Sledge was in the thick of it.

It's fascinating to read about Sledge's combat experience on Pelileu, and his talk of the airfield - then to read Leckie's treatment of that same battle (Leckie's last; a Japanese field gun chased him down with shell fire until an errant round hit an ammo dump near him and the concussion left him temporarily deaf and suffering aphasia and he did not recover in time to be returned to the line).

Leckie's book is almost poetic in its description of everything, including the horrors of combat. Where Sledge focused on how war ground him down (he almost succumbed to the temptation to take gold teeth from the mouth of a dead Japanese soldier until a field medic cautioned him about "germs", although he relates that the medic was likely more concerned for the health of Sledge's soul rather than his physical well-being), and about the utterly dehumanizing conditions that his unit lived and fought in, Leickie frames the experience in terms of a grand adventure, a boys' own, even his own removal to a rear-area mental hospital for bedwetting which included threatening an orderly (albeit half-jokingly) with a captured Japanese pistol.

They're both great works, of the two, though, again, I prefer Sledge's story the most.

It was interesting (and a bit disappointing) to read them after having seen The Pacific on HBO: while Sledge's memoir was kept "essentially" the same, Leckie's book seemed to have been mined for its skeleton, but surface details wholly erased or recreated to fit a different story. For example, in the book, Leckie talks about stealing supplies from Army depots including canned peaches and apricots which he describes as being so good that he ate until he felt sick: in the miniseries, we're treated to James Badge vomiting profusely after eating part of a can. Likewise, a French expatriot who'd joined the 1st Marines and been given the nickname "Commando" is seen (in the mini-series) as succumbing to shell shock and committing suicide nude in front of the mess tent. Per Leckie, the actual person was stalwart (if a bit wrong-headed in applying urban and suburban guerrilla warfare tactics to jungle combat) and died in combat.

Tonally, The Pacific portrayed Leckie's experiences as much more in line with the way Sledge, perhaps, would have described them rather than how Leckie actually did.

[Raellus]

These would go really well in the Non-Fiction Recommendation Thread. I think I will go ahead and try to merge them.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

These would go really well in the Non-Fiction Recommendation Thread. I think I will go ahead and try to merge them.

Dang it why do I keep forgetting that thing is there! Sorry, boss.

[Fusilier]

I already raved about Matterhorn over in the fiction recommendation thread, but I've got to reiterate here just how brilliant it was. I definitely plan on rereading it again soon.

I followed your recommendation and finished it just a little while ago. Glad I did. Definitely worth a re-read, or in my case a re-listen (I had to go audio). I already have a few ideas taken from it to put to use in my pbp game.

Also, I swear I saw a review of it on Amazon by you...

[Raellus]

I followed your recommendation and finished it just a little while ago. Glad I did. Definitely worth a re-read, or in my case a re-listen (I had to go audio). I already have a few ideas taken from it to put to use in my pbp game.

Also, I swear I saw a review of it on Amazon by you...

Marlantes' novel is amazing, right

I've written a few reviews on Amazon but I didn't write one for Matterhorn. I did, however, write an epic review of the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt, which, IIRC, you first led me to.

[Rainbow Six]

Got the usual haul of books for Christmas, which as ever will take me about six months to work my way through.

One that I have to mention though is "The Official ARRSE Guide to the British Army" by Major Des Astor (isbn 9780593065617) which manages to do a great job of being both funny and informative.

Some more info (and a couple of reviews) on Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-ARRSE-Guide-British-Army/dp/0593065611/ref=sr_1_1ie=UTF8&qid=1325083156&sr=8-1

Definitely recommended.

[Adm.Lee]

Outlaw platoon by Sean Parnell

The author commanded a rifle platoon for the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan in 2006. As I read it, I thought that he did a very good job, both at leading his men, and at writing the book.

Also frustrating to read the encounters with base-bound "FOBbits" who fail to understand that they're in a war zone. Ditto for some of the officers and NCOs he had to deal with.

The "village of the damned" chapter, which details the terror tactics of the Taliban, was quite horrifying.

Regarding the SF/line troops controversy we talked of above, I was pleased to see that Parnell's aggressive spirit won the respect of an SF colonel who operated with them at one point.

[Adm.Lee]

God willing: my wild ride with the new Iraqi Army by Eric Navarro

Here's a Marine officer who becomes an advisor to an Iraqi battalion. If you ever want to hear a nightmare about leading troops to battle, this might be it. The below quote from upthread came back to me as I went looking through here.

... however, the Army leadership is conditioned to deal with Joe. Joe is a good guy, but at the same time he generally sucks a**. He requires close supervision for virtually every task. ... His responsibilities mean little to him beyond the fact that he will suffer if he is caught not executing them. The spirit of the law is only to be observed when it comes to his privileges; otherwise, a stricter observance of the letter of the law than a tort lawyer could argue is the watchword. "I was told I couldn't go to the PX. No one said anything about the commissary or the bowling alley."

Navarro came to realize that each and every order had to be given all the time, every time, starting with instructions to use the latrines and/or port-a-potties. Fire discipline was non-existent, and many more things that seemed too wild to believe.

[Adm.Lee]

"The gun" by C J Chivers. Half of this is about the Mikhail Kalashnikov, his AK-47 and its successors, knockoffs, and derivatives, and what they meant to the world. In the '60s, it meant revolutionaries and guerrillas. Since the '70s, that has meant terrorists, and in the '90s, child soldiers and warlords. AK may also stand for "Africa Killer."

About a quarter is the development of automatic weapons, from Dr. Gatling through WW1. WW2 is lightly covered, but the Sturmgewehr 44 is in there. Another quarter is the slow American response to develop an assault rifle, followed by the hasty adoption of the AR-15/M-16 and its teething troubles.

Some of the details here were new to me, but I had read the overall story before. I give it 3 stars.

Now, for what I think could have been added.
The author does take the DoD to task for suddenly jumping on the barely tested AR-15, and not opening up competitive bids. I suspect there was a huge element of the McNamara & whiz-kids mentality of "doing everything in a new way," I might have explored that.

If other American companies might have developed assault rifles, what of Europe Were all of the gun companies also blind to the new type of weapon, did they not have ideas The NATO standardization fight was touched on, but I don't know if it was reopened at any point.

[Littlearmies]

First of all I'd second "Dead Men Risen" by Toby Harnden - easily the best book about the British in Afghanistan that I've read.

Secondly, I'd recommend "Black Hearts" by Jim Fredericks. It sounds wrong to say I enjoyed this book - it is about Bravo Company of 1/502 in Iraq in 2006/7. At the centre of the book is how four soldiers of the battalion murdered an Iraqi family of four and raped the 14 year old daughter before murdering her - but the story of Bravo Company's time in Iraq that places the murder in context is pretty chilling reading. Fredericks has clearly researched his subject pretty thoroughly and describes the emotional impact of a year spent "outside the wire" extremely well - I'd recommend this book for anyone interested in the psychological aspects of war crimes, and I think it should be read by commanders up to at least company level.

I'm interested to hear the views of some veterans on this one. Obviously it always risky to base an opinion on one journalist take on an event but after reading the book I'd have sacked just about everybody involved in the chain of command (one couldn't help contrasting the calibre and style of management in the 502nd with that of the Welsh Guards in Toby Harnden's book) - nobody at any level really comes out of it looking good. Clearly the guys who committed the crimes were guilty and there are no excuses for what they did - but after reading the book I couldn't help feeling that they and their colleagues had been let down at just about every level of management right the way to the very top. Instead pretty well everyone (except for the four perpetrators) who had some command responsibility for these men appears to have continued their careers in the army as though nothing much had happened.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Hearts-platoons-descent-triangle/dp/023075208X/ref=sr_1_1s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345247348&sr=1-1

[Raellus]

Speaking of books dealing with war crimes, I just finished Tiger Force, by Sallah and Weiss. It's about an off-the-books recon platoon from the 101st and its protracted rampage of scores of deliberate civilian killings in Vietnam during 1967. The authors are a pair of newspaper journalists who clearly don't know a whole lot about military matters, but the story they tell is pretty compelling. The military investigated the murders into the mid '70s before someone higher up burried it.

[Littlearmies]

Re Black Hearts - I'd like to stress that this book isn't a hatchet job on the military - the crime itself and the investigation are just a small part of the book. Fredericks has clearly done a first rate amount of research and he writes very well about the stress caused by walking down a road looking for IEDs, or manning a checkpoint waiting for someone to shoot at you. In my view he expresses this better than Sebastian Junger does in "War". He makes cogent points to rebut those that suggest that service in Iraq or Afghanistan is somehow less tough than WWII because the soldiers are only facing insurgents rather than the Wehrmacht. The book is also a real eye-opener for us Brits who see our army in Afghanistan and elsewhere making do with too few soldiers for the job, and not enough equipment to do it - and who perceive the American way of war as riding in by the thousands with Oakley sunglasses and state of the art gear, blowing everything up and then declaring victory (okay exaggerated for effect but you know what I mean). These guys were in allegedly the worst place in Iraq at the time, without enough troops to do what was asked of them, evidently beyond the end of a very long supply line, and had a shitty CO to boot. My personal view is that this book should be required reading for all officers and NCOs as a study in just how the results of stress, undermanning, perceived isolation and poor leadership can result in terrible consequences (in passing there are some wider but still pertinent points made about the US Army as a whole) but there you go...

[Adm.Lee]

Got two for today.

I'm 2/3 through "Ike's bluff" by Evan Thomas. This is good! Not only informative, but an easy read, too. It's a bit before our T2k time, but still important. It's Pres. Eisenhower's foreign & defense policies, how he wrestled with the fact that he could blow the world to Kingdom Come in a day. Ike opted for a light touch and plenty of misdirection. Journalists and historians since have thought of Ike as a bumbling geezer who didn't seem to care about dangers, but that was mostly his act, working to put the American people at ease. He didn't want panic pushing the country into a Prussian- or Soviet-style police/garrison state, and he didn't want to panic the Soviets into starting something they couldn't finish. His "New Look" defense policy (aka "massive retaliation") was meant to keep the US out of all wars, since any war could easily escalate to the Big One.

"Rules of the game" by Andrew Gordon. It's about the Royal Navy's leadership at Jutland. The first 1/3 of the book sets up the battle, and takes us deeply into the first phases of the action. Then, we go back in time, to see how the peacetime RN became so set in its ways, especially in regards to signalling, that hardened initiative and tactical thinking. That's also about 1/3 of the book, and it dragged a bit, IMO. The last third resumes with the battle and the aftermath. There's a good bit on how contemporary navies could pay attention to what happened, and learn how to avoid peacetime mindsets that stultify wartime thinking. The Jellicoe vs. Beatty arguments that riled the service in the postwar years are included.

[Adm.Lee]

American warrior: the true story of a legendary Ranger

by Gary O'Neal, with David Fisher.

O'Neal is apparently one of those super-SF/Ranger guys that we all fear and envy. He's put in a 30+year career, jumping, snooping, instructing, fighting since Vietnam.

He's also deeply spiritual, in a Native American way (his mother was Sioux), and has developed his own martial art, which he has taught.