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Title: Military Blunders by Michael Coffey ISBN: 0-7868-8470-3 Publisher: Hyperion Pub. Date: 06 September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (3 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Mostly introductory material, and not too complex
Comment: Most of the information found in this book can be found elsewhere, but it stil provides some frame of reference for those early forays into what went wrong for the particpants of WW2. This may be useful for those folks who are simply seeking some quick stories of bad decisions and their results.
Rating: 2
Summary: Doesn't add much to the TV series
Comment: It's vital to learn from mistakes of the past, of course, and no more so than in the military arena. Death and carnage are the seemingly inevitable result of soldiers' mistakes in war- or peacetime. Unfortunately, this work - which is often a verbatim transcript of the History Channel series - does little to examine the deep causes of military failures. Simply asserting that "blunders" caused military tragedies ignores the complex nature of military operations and the equally complex lessons which must be learned to avoid these problems. The book also adopts a superior, Monday-morning quarterback tone; easy to do with hindsight but annoying for the reader. Finally, Military Blunders suffers from small but irritating editing errors. For example - "Bismarck was soon sunk, sitting in port in Norway;" no, she was sunk off the coast of France after a furious battle; Tirpitz was sunk in Norway. The TV series which spawned this book is shallow but interesting, but this book itself adds little worthwhile information.
Rating: 5
Summary: History Channel fans will enjoy this easy to read companion.
Comment: It has been said people go to watch car races in order to see the wrecks. Following that line of reasoning, the History Channel introduced a documentary series entitled Military Blunders. The companion book of the same name authored by Michael Coffey offers the same anecdotes, and the same paradigm, of the televised series.
Military Blunders examines wartime efforts that failed, beginning with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and ending with the invasion of Kuwait. The decidedly twentieth century focus of the book lends itself to the fact that wartime motion picture records came into existence following the turn of the century, and television documentaries are generally more appreciative of motion picture records than written ones.
Thus, the marketing force of presenting military history from a "blundering" point of view is a strong and visual one. Mistakes in wartime are common. Those interested in playing games of "what if" will find this tome fascinating. What if the Archduke Ferdinand's driver had not taken a wrong turn down a Sarajevo street? Also, some mistakes lend an eerie quality of mystery. Case in point: The last flight of the Lady Be Good, an American B-24 that disappeared in the Libyan desert during WWII. Its wreckage and the remains of her crew were discovered years later by a British oil exploration outfit.
Offered in short, easy to digest anecdotal chunks, the book proffers an easy to read litany of historical anecdotes. A handful of photographs in the center of the book help give visual backup to the tales inside. Fans of the History Channel and military history buffs everywhere should enjoy this well written and interesting book.
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Title: What Were They Thinking?: Really Bad Ideas Throughout History by Bruce Felton ISBN: 0762726679 Publisher: Globe Pequot Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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