Considered to be the definitive book on the Vietnam War. I had read this book many years ago, but I’m glad that taking the Vietnam War course at LSU forced me to reread it. Despite my professor’s hawkish pronouncements, after rereading this book I don’t see any way we could have won in Vietnam, short …
Tag: War
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2010/12/22/vietnam-a-history-by-stanley-karnow/
Nov 11 2010
Four Hours in My Lai by Michael Bilton
My instructor assigned this book, but he mostly glossed over it in class. This is not a book to gloss over. The professor sees My Lai as an aberration, an exceptional case, but I think the lesson to take home from it is that under the right circumstances even decent and honorable people can become …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2010/11/11/four-hours-in-my-lai-by-michael-bilton/
Oct 22 2009
Guerilla Warfare by Che Guevara
I admit that I am one of those spoiled, privileged, affluent Western punks who idolize and romanticize Che Guevara. I admire his courage, his charisma, his dedication, and his manhood. That said, I am not blind to his less sanguine attributes and the wrongheadedness of his ideology, which this book expresses in great detail. He …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/10/22/guerilla-warfare-by-che-guevara/
Aug 25 2009
A History of Warfare by John Keegan
This is Keegan’s best work. In most of his works he analyzes the science of warfare; in this book he also analyzes the psychology and culture of warfare. He takes exception from the beginning with Clausewitz’s dictum that war is politics by other means, and shows with ample evidence from history that war often is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/08/25/a-history-of-warfare-by-john-keegan-2/
May 12 2009
White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies
Just a few short weeks after the end of World War I on the Western Front, Poland and Soviet Russia started fighting again, skirmishing on their poorly defined border that built into full-scale invasions over the next year. Davies’ book White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-1920 tells this complex story clearly and incisively. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/05/12/white-eagle-red-star-by-norman-davies/
Feb 03 2009
The Korean War 1950-1953 by Carter Malkasian
This was a more or less conventional history of the Korean War, focusing on Cold War strategies and policies. It notes that the Korean Was the first and only war in which the major powers…the Soviet Union, China, the United States, and its allies…actually engaged in direct armed conflict with each other. MacArthur is given …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/02/03/the-korean-war-1950-1953-by-carter-malkasian/
Apr 09 2008
Napoleon Bonaparte by Alan Schom
This is a well written and well researched book, but it is the most anti-Napoleon book I have ever read. The author gives the devil his due, acknowledging Napoleon’s outstanding abilities as a battlefield commander, but other than that, he has nothing nice to say about the great man. And he takes the peculiar position …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2008/04/09/napoleon-bonaparte-by-alan-schom/
Jan 18 2008
The Second World War by Martin Gilbert
Except perhaps for Iris Chang’s *The Rape of Nanking*, no other book I have read captures the horror and brutality of World War II like this one. Martin’s trademark style is historical narrative intermingled with individual stories and anecdotes, and it is the individual accounts, replete with documented proper names and direct quotes, that convey …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2008/01/18/the-second-world-war-by-martin-gilbert/
Al Singh
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Lars N. Goldschlager
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Professor X
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