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Title: The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I by Thomas Fleming ISBN: 0-465-02467-X Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 27 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.08 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Illusion of History
Comment: It is astonishing that anyone could write something new and interesting about World War I after all of these years and all of the books already written about that sad, deadly, conflict. Thomas Fleming has written a book that is both new and interesting however like many of the recent crop of books about World War I it is more of an argument than a book of history. In that sense the book is well argued, but in the back of my mind as I read it, I wondered where the argument stopped and the facts began. A specialist will have to answer that. As it is, it is a well written, very interesting story of many of the military and political things that went wrong, and why they went wrong, before, during and after World War I.
It is a wonder how Mr. Fleming could tolerate spending so much time with someone, Woodrow Wilson, that he obviously dislikes and does not respect either as a leader or as a person. The acceptance of the still troubling idea of a nation state for almost every little group that demands it can be traced directly to Woodrow Wilson. Few ideas have caused as much misery as the principle of a right of self determination for all peoples. Leaders as disparate as Ho Chi Minh and Eamon de Valera both heeded this call and used it to justify acts that Wilson would never have approved of, nor even thought possibly related to what he thought that he had proposed in one of his Fourteen Points. When you add in Fleming's bad opinions of Wilson's second wife Edith, England's Lloyd George and France's Georges Clemenceau, there are really a lot of people not to like in this book.
One of the author's points is that it is important to understand how bad things can get when there is little or no objective information available for a democracy at war. How are the decision makers, the voters, to know what is the right thing to do if they are being force fed a constant torrent of lies. That the propaganda, particularly the British propaganda, during World War I took on a life of its own that still influences even supposedly objective histories of the war is another of the books points. According to the author there are many victories that little deserve that name and defeats that are still unknown. The case Fleming makes for each of these is persuasive, but it is not always history. You need to have some understanding of the history of World War I to fully appreciate the arguments that Fleming makes, but if you do this is a very good read. I will have to leave it to others to answer whether the book is good history, or just good argument.
Rating: 4
Summary: Woodrow Wilson's Failure as Wartime President
Comment: Thomas Fleming's study of how and why America got into World War I is indeed a polemic, and a scathing portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, both as political leader and as chief negotiator for the United States at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. While Fleming purports to relate a history of the times (and does a decent, if somewhat abbreviated job of it), he uses that history to paint a portrait of Wilson as a seriously flawed man who was totally unsuited for the presidency. Wilson was at heart an autocrat and a demagogue, and his ambition, arrogance, and complete inability to compromise did his, and America's, undoing. Fleming's book is not a balanced narrative by any means. He has a breezy, informal style that makes for easy reading. Fleming is sarcastic, and his obvious disdain for Wilson can be annoying; but knowing how things turned out, one can readily concur with Fleming's ultimate judgment on Wilson.
Rating: 5
Summary: Parallels between WWI and the war with Iraq
Comment: There is a lot of parallels between the war with Iraq and Thomas J. Fleming's book "The Illusion of Victory:America in World War I." One of which I noticed was when Fleming mentioned how we seem to think it was automatically ok for us to attack Germany in WWI because of the dictator in WWII. But infact we really had no reason at all, because the Germans were merely sticking up for their ally in Austria when the arch-duke of Austria was assassinated by terrorists from Serbia's Black Hand org. So Fleming presents the real case in that there was two completely different situations in World War I and World War II. Rather than Germany being the agressor they were being the defending country which was completely reversed in WWII. Another case is that Wilson was not the only president to blame. Though it is easy to point a finger at him because he abandoned his 14 points when the French (in the bitter thought) told Wilson that what Germany did was unforgivable as well as flew Wilson into the country and had shown him the damage the Germans had done, but the book also shows that Teddy Roosevelt was also at fault for some of the issues of pressure Wilson faced because he was advocating that we send troops to Paris to help with the war efforts. Like today, we easily blame Bush for his involvement in Iraq. Though it may seem like we do not belong there, one person who is partially to blame for this "illusion" is Clinton himself who infact really did nothing except bomb sites in Iraq as opposed to what should have been done when he was in office. There is no doubt Saddam has or at least had Weapons of Mass destruction, but it very well could have been taken care of in the Clinton administration and the burden would be lifted off Bush for the fact that he has yet to find any in Iraq. This book definitely opens your eyes to show you that you don't necessarily have the whole truth and that usually problems in one's administration came from the previous administration.
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Title: The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II by Thomas Fleming ISBN: 0465024653 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by JIM POWELL ISBN: 0761501657 Publisher: Crown Forum Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: The Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Fleming ISBN: 0471267384 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 13 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil by James Bovard ISBN: 1403963681 Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Pub. Date: 06 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan ISBN: 0375760520 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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