What Are You Currently Reading? 2013 [Archive]

davidbfpo

01-01-2013, 10:50 PM

I tend to read books in groups, invariably on holiday, so these four were read late in 2012.

'Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, The Nazis and The West' by Laurence West, pub. 2009 by BBC Books in paperback. Cleverly written from the summits to the battlefield, in places hard to read and Poland gets a special mention:http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Behind-Closed-Doors/dp/B005M50F26/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357075087&sr=1-1&keywords=behind+closed+doors+laurence+rees

'Political Demography: How Population Changes Are Reshaping Internatioal Security and National Politics' Edited by Goldstone, Kaufman & Toft, pub. 2012. A variety of chapters to chose from and an issue politicians prefer IMO to avoid thinking about:http://www.amazon.com/Political-Demography-Population-Reshaping-International/dp/0199945969/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357075924&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=Political+Demography%3A+How+Population+Ch anges+Are+Reshaping+Internatioal+Security+and+Nati onal+Politics

Now for fiction books, both are political/military/technological thrillers.

'Kilo Class' by Patrick Robinson, pub. 1998 (bought second hand); by no means comparable to 'The Hunt for Red October', but in places a taut read:http://www.amazon.com/Kilo-Class-Patrick-Robinson/dp/0060191295/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357076088&sr=1-1&keywords=Kilo+Class%27+by+Patrick+Robinson

Finally the latest Tom Clancy tome 'Threat Vector', pub. 2012. I can't resist these, although the plots are becoming formulaic and one twist was easily identified. Once again China is the enemy, this time reliant on cyber warfare. The best review, 700 pgs. read in two and half days:http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Vector-Jack-Ryan-Novels/dp/0399160450/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357079051&sr=1-1&keywords=Threat+Vector+tom+clancy

Awaiting attention, now for six weeks plus, an Eastern Front WW1 slim book 'Blood on The Snow: The Carpathian Winter War 1915' by Graydon Tunstall, pub. 2010. Likened to the 'Stalingrad of WW1' and I've been in that part of Poland. Very mixed reviews:http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Snow-Carpathian-Winter-Studies/dp/0700618589/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357079495&sr=1-1&keywords=Blood+on+The+Snow%3A+The+Carpathian+Winte r+War+1915

omarali50

01-02-2013, 04:11 AM

several years late, but I loved reading http://contemporarylit.about.com/b/2008/06/03/the-long-march-by-sun-shuyun.htm

As someone who read (and completely believed) Edgar Snow's Red Star over China in high school, this was an education.

Firn

01-03-2013, 05:50 PM

Wild beasts and their ways : reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (1890) (http://archive.org/details/wildbeaststheirw00bakeiala) by Samuel White Baker (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_White_Baker).

Some great hunting stories and tales written with keen observation by a man who had time and money to travel in an age when the world was a different place. Sometimes his opinion is a bit off but he certainly shows that you can observe a lot by just looking - especially when you gralloch and skin an animal. :D

Parts of his study on wildlife are first-class. The simple yet effective way he comes to the conclusion how (old world) vultures find their game with their sight and the sight of other birds is just one of many. It is needless to say that this book does often not reflect always the PC of our age ;).

His discussion about guns and bullets are of course old-fashioned but the principles are still relevant:

1) You have to place your bullet into the right way (anatomy!)
2) It has to penetrate into the right area to do it's job (He prefered heavy solid harderd or heavy solid soft spherical lead for the most dangerous game)
3) There the bullet should wreak havoc.
4) It should be matched to the animal while erring on the right side. (He mentions a lot of cases, some witnessed when the rifle and it's bullet just didn't the job. Sometimes with deadly results ...)

I only differ about the exit wound. Having one just helps to track it in the worst case, but of course it is much easier today. His attacks on 'Express' rifles with fragile hollow bullets are very understandable. Still today, with all our technology some hunters I know use have made a mess by hitting the shoulder of animal like a red deer with too soft of a bullet for the velocity :rolleyes:. (Bad shooting is of course a vastly bigger problem. It can happen to everybody it just happens much more to some ...)

All in all a great read for the hunting-less season.

Backwards Observer

02-01-2013, 07:30 AM

It is not for everyone. John Gray's Straw Dogs.

The prevailing secular worldview is a pastiche of current scientific orthodoxy and pious hopes. Darwin has shown that we are animals; but - as humanists never tire of preaching - how we live is ‘up to us’. Unlike any other animal, we are told, we are free to live as we choose. Yet the idea of free will does not come from science. Its origins are in religion - not just any religion - but the Christian faith against which humanists rail so obsessively.

[...]

Some readers have seen Straw Dogs as an attempt to apply Darwinism to ethics and politics, but nowhere does it suggest that neo-Darwinian orthodoxy contains the final account of the human animal. Instead Darwinism is deployed strategically in order to break up the prevailing humanist worldview. Humanists turn to Darwin to support their shaky faith in progress; but there is no progress in the world he revealed. A truly naturalistic view of the world leaves no room for secular hope.

[...]

The Buddhist ideal of awakening implies that we can sever our links with our evolutionary past. We can raise ourselves from the sleep in which other animals pass their lives. Our illusions dissolved, we need no longer suffer. This is only another doctrine of salvation, subtler than that of the Christians, but no different from Christianity in its goal of leaving our animal inheritance behind.

[...]

Having lost the skills of sewing, fishing and making fire, the indigenous people of Tasmania lived more simply than even Aboriginals on the Australian mainland from whom they had been isolated by rising sea levels around ten thousand years ago. When the ships bearing European settlers arrived in Tasmania in 1772, the indigenous people seem not to have noticed them. Unable to process a sight for which nothing had prepared them, they returned to their ways.

They had no defences against the settlers. By 1830, their numbers had been reduced from around five thousand to seventy-two. In the intervening years they had been used for slave labour and sexual pleasure, tortured and mutilated. They had been hunted like vermin and their skins had been sold for government bounty. When the males were killed, female survivors were turned loose with the heads of their husbands tied around their necks. Males who were not killed were usually castrated. Children were clubbed to death. When the last indigenous Tasmanian male, William Lanner, died in 1869, his grave was opened by a member of the Royal Society of Tasmania, Dr George Stokell, who made a tobacco pouch from his skin. When the last ‘fullblood’ indigenous woman died a few years later, the genocide was complete.

Genocide is as human as art or prayer. This is not because humans are a uniquely aggressive species. The rate of violent death among some monkeys exceeds that among humans - if wars are excluded from the calculation; but as E.O. Wilson observes, ‘if hamdryas baboons had nuclear weapons, they would destroy the world in a week’. Mass murder is a side effect of progress in technology. From the stone axe onwards, humans have used their tools to slaughter one another. Humans are weapon-making animals with an unquenchable fondness for killing. (from Straw Dogs by John Gray)

Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (http://www.amazon.com/Straw-Dogs-Thoughts-Humans-Animals/dp/0374270937) - Amazon

John N. Gray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray) - Wikipedia

***

Straw Dogs review by Terry Eagleton:

John Gray's political vision has been steadily darkening. Once a swashbuckling free-marketeer, he has, in his recent studies, become increasingly despondent about the state of the world. With the crankish, unbalanced Straw Dogs, he emerges as a full-blooded apocalyptic nihilist. He has passed from Thatcherite zest to virulent misanthropy.

Not that nihilism is a term he would endorse. His book is so remorselessly, monotonously negative that even nihilism implies too much hope. Nihilism for Gray suggests the world needs to be redeemed from meaninglessness, a claim he regards as meaningless. Instead, we must just accept that progress is a myth, freedom a fantasy, selfhood a delusion, morality a kind of sickness, justice a mere matter of custom and illusion our natural condition. Technology cannot be controlled, and human beings are entirely helpless. Political tyrannies will be the norm for the future, if we have any future at all. It isn't the best motivation for getting out of bed.

Guardian review of Straw Dogs by Terry Eagleton (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/sep/07/highereducation.news2) - Guardian - 7.11.2002

Terry Eagleton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton) - Wikipedia

***

The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma Translated by Red Pine.

Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice.

The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma (http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Teaching-Bodhidharma/dp/0865473994) - Amazon

***

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.

I was amazed to see a small and pretty doorway with a Gothic arch in the middle of the wall ... Probably I had seen it a hundred times and simply not noticed it. Perhaps it had been painted afresh ... it seemed to me in the dim light that a garland, or something gaily colored, was festooned round the doorway, and ... over the door I saw ... bright letters dancing and then disappearing, returning and vanishing once more.

MAGIC THEATER
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY (from Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse)

Magic Theater (http://www.american-buddha.com/magic.theater.htm) - american-buddha.com online library

Steppenwolf (http://www.amazon.com/Steppenwolf-Novel-Hermann-Hesse/dp/0312278675) - Amazon

Steppenwolf (novel) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppenwolf_(novel)) - Wikipedia

Steppenwolf (Hawkind) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIE0-alireI) youtube

Backwards Observer

02-28-2013, 04:36 AM

The Silence of Animals, the new offering by international man of misery, John Gray.

When Conrad used his experiences of the Congo in Heart of Darkness (1899), he was not telling a story of barbarism in faraway places. The narrator tells the tale on a yacht moored in the Thames estuary: barbarism is not a primitive form of life, Conrad is intimating, but a pathological development of civilization. The same thought recurs in The Secret Agent (1907), Conrad’s novel of terrorism and conspiracy, which is set in London. The anarchist Professor, who travels everywhere with a bomb in his coat that he intends to detonate if arrested, wants to believe that humanity has been corrupted by government, an essentially criminal institution. But, as Conrad understood, it is not only government that is tainted by criminality. All human institutions - families and churches, police forces and anarchists - are stained by crime. Explaining human nastiness by reference to corrupt institutions leaves a question: why are humans so attached to corruption? Clearly, the answer is the human animal itself. (from The Silence of Animals by John Gray)

The Silence of Animals (http://www.amazon.com/The-Silence-Animals-Progress-Modern/dp/0374229171) - John Gray - Amazon

Interview with a writer: John Gray (http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/books/2013/02/interview-with-a-writer-john-gray/) - spectator - 2.22.2013

The Silence of Animals - review (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/15/silence-animals-john-gray-review) - guardian - 2.15.2013

The Silence of Animals - review (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9870015/The-Silence-of-Animals-by-John-Gray-review.html) - telegraph - 2.19.2013

***
Also,

Conrad in the Nineteenth Century by Ian Watt (http://www.amazon.com/Conrad-Nineteenth-Century-Ian-Watt/dp/0520044053) - amazon

Born March 9, 1917, in Windermere, Westmorland in England, Watt was educated at the Dover County School for Boys and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he earned first-class honors in English.

Watt joined the British Army at the age of 22 and served with distinction in World War II as an infantry lieutenant from 1939 to 1946. He was wounded in the Battle of Singapore in February 1942 and listed as "missing, presumed killed in action."

In fact, he had been taken prisoner by the Japanese and remained a prisoner of war at the Changi Prison until 1945, working on the construction of the Burma Railway which crossed Thailand, a feat that inspired the Pierre Boulle book 'Bridge Over the River Kwai', and the film adaptation by David Lean. He criticized both the book and the film for the liberties they took with the historical details of his imprisonment and, more subtly, their refusal to acknowledge the moral complexities of the situation.

More than 12,000 prisoners died during the building of the railroad, most of them from disease, and Watt was critically ill from malnutrition for several years.

"There was a period when I expected to die," Watt told the San Francisco Examiner in a 1979 interview. "But I didn't know how sick I was until they gave me some of the vitamin pills that had just come into the camp. I remember being very surprised that I was considered sick enough to receive vitamins."

Professor Watt died in Menlo Park, California, USA. (from wikipedia)

Ian Watt (Literary Critic) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Watt) - wikipedia

***

Gratuitous film clip:

Lord Jim (1965) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TPxyVmt2Rw) - youtube

Lord Jim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Jim) - wikipedia

ganulv

03-06-2013, 05:14 PM

Kattekoppen (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2013/03/11/130311fi_fiction_mackin?currentPage=all), a piece in the latest number of The New Yorker set in Logar Province and narrated by a DEVGRU member. I really admire how the author (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/03/this-week-in-fiction-will-mackin.html) has managed to create a narrator who is detached and incredibly observant at the same time. And there is a great bit about sleep deprivation and fingernails.

carl

03-06-2013, 07:20 PM

Ganulv:

The most interesting part of that New Yorker story were these lines spoken by the narrator:
As SEAL Team Six, we were at the top of that scheme. Our ideas about the war were the war.

To me that sort of encapsulates in two sentences the supreme and invincible arrogance of the big military, a supreme confidence even though what is being done hasn't worked and isn't working. The stats are good though.

Firn

03-06-2013, 08:22 PM

The Signal and the Noise (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/09/signal-and-noise-nate-silver-review).

A great book. The Baseball chapter was a bit long for my European taste, the poker one maybe too and I have some slight ceveats in other areas. However the positives dominate. Coming from a somewhat different angle it gels well with Kahnemans studies and surprisingly enough with aspects of the works of Ben Graham and Buffet. He ends with the words:
The more eagerly we commit to scrutinising and testing our theories, the more readily we accept that our knowledge of the world is uncertain, the more willingly we acknowledge that perfect prediction is impossible, the less we will live in fear of our failures, and the more freedom we will have to let our minds flow freely. By knowing more about what we don't know, we may get a few more predictions right

Should work well most of the time for investors...

ganulv

03-06-2013, 08:52 PM

The Baseball chapter was a bit long for my European taste
I assure you that you don't have to be European to be bored by baseball.

Backwards Observer

03-09-2013, 04:57 AM

Modern Strategy by Colin S. Gray. Straightforward and readable so far. A useful mainstream foundational primer for the layperson.

The moral of this chapter, perhaps, is that we learn from history both that we cannot learn from history and that human beings continue to be literally capable of anything. The sadness of strategic history that sparks sentimental popular songs with rhetorical lines such as 'when will they ever learn?' promotes the hard-nosed question, 'learn what?' The horror of war has been known to mankind for ever. If full recognition of that horror were all that we humans had to learn, then the social institution of war might have been long banished. Unfortunately, things are not quite that elementally simple. (from Modern Strategy by Colin Gray)

Modern Strategy by Colin Gray (http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Strategy-Colin-S-Gray/dp/0198782519) - amazon

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/THOH_Kang_and_Kodos.png

Old Eagle

03-09-2013, 10:40 PM

Using Gray as a text next term.

davidbfpo

04-05-2013, 05:21 PM

When Sir Michael Howard, the pre-eminent British military historian (who is still attending conferences in London) writes a book review I notice; ah, yes I've not read the book he reviews!

Some four decades ago, the TLS sent me a book to review by a young lecturer at Sandhurst entitled The Face of Battle. It impressed me so much that I described it as “one of the best half-dozen books on warfare to have appeared since the Second World War”. I wondered at the time if I had made a total fool of myself, but I need not have worried. The author, the late Sir John Keegan, proved to be one of the greatest military historians of his generation. It would be rash to put my money on such a dark horse again, but I shall. Emile Simpson’s War From the Ground Up is a work of such importance that it should be compulsory reading at every level in the military; from the most recently enlisted cadet to the Chief of the Defence Staff and, even more important, the members of the National Security Council who guide him.

He ends with:
It is impossible to summarize Emile Simpson’s ideas without distorting them. ...... In short (and here I shall really go overboard) War From the Ground Up deserves to be seen as a coda to Clausewitz’s On War. But it has the advantage of being considerably shorter.

The book is 'War From The Ground Up: Twenty-first-century combat as politics' by Emile Simpson. 285pp. Publishers: Hurst. £25. 978 1 84904 255 0 and in the USA by Columbia University Press. $32.50. 978 0 231 70406 9.

Link to fuller review:http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1239841.ece

Two reviews on Amazon UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Ground-Up-Twenty-First-Politics/dp/1849042551/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365180587&sr=1-1&keywords=War+From+The+Ground+Up%3A+Twenty-first-century+combat+as+politics and no reviews on Amazon USA:http://www.amazon.com/War-Ground-Up-Twenty-First-Politics/dp/0231704062/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365180725&sr=1-1&keywords=emile+simpson

Firn

04-05-2013, 07:24 PM

I assure you that you don't have to be European to be bored by baseball.

:D

I`m actually hard to bore if the matter is discussed with some intelligence but that chapter was a bit much...

In any case I gave Common stocks (http://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Profits-Writings-Investment-Classics/dp/0471119288) a read.

I enjoyed it even if pretty nothing was new, but Fisher did a superb job when he wrote it and forcefully states many an important point.

ganulv

04-06-2013, 04:23 PM

jmm99

04-06-2013, 07:07 PM

For fun - you might like its brand of ironic humor - try Tikkanen's "The 30 Years' War (http://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Modern-Scandinavian-Literature-Translation/dp/0803244150)" (used at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0803244150/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used) and at AbeBooks (http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=9780803294073)).

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31vG7VmfYtL._SL500_.jpg

Tikkanen was a young 18-19 year old soldier in the last two years of the Continuation War (1943-1944) - and a very dissatisfied soldier at its end.

Regards

Mike

ganulv

04-06-2013, 07:25 PM

For fun - you might like its brand of ironic humor - try Tikkanen's "The 30 Years' War (http://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Modern-Scandinavian-Literature-Translation/dp/0803244150)" (used at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0803244150/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used) and at AbeBooks (http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=9780803294073)).
That does sound like it would be in my wheelhouse, I'll have to give it a look. Thanks!

davidbfpo

04-07-2013, 10:44 PM

The former FBI agent and interviewer, Ali Soufan, wrote 'The Black Banners: Inside the hunt for al-Qaeda' and published in 2011, with extensive redactions, some of them a single letter or a short word. I waited till the book appeared in paperback in the UK and took time to read it last month.

I know some here have been critical of his recollections compared to others, but for the context of the LE and intelligence campaign that was aimed at AQ it is very good. Especially on working in the Yemen.

On the value of the interview -v- 'enhanced interrogation' his position is very clear - interviews got confessions, evidence and information; with arguments familiar to those who have followed the controversy and several threads. See 'One Stop Interrogation Resource', this includes pointers to all the relevant threads:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=9446

There are some references to his work in London which I shall have to read again; his comments on one person at liberty known for civil litigation are very interesting.

Link to Amazon, with many good reviews (71 on .com and 27 on UK site):http://www.amazon.com/Black-Banners-Inside-Against-al-Qaeda/dp/0393079422/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365372644&sr=1-1&keywords=ali+soufan and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Banners-Inside-Hunt-Qaeda/dp/0241956161/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365373506&sr=1-1&keywords=ali+soufan

ganulv

04-08-2013, 03:34 AM

I know some here have been critical of [Soufan's] recollections compared to others, but for the context of the LE and intelligence campaign that was aimed at AQ it is very good. Especially on working in the Yemen.

He was on The Colbert Report during his book tour for The Black Banners (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/400168/october-19-2011/ali-soufan) and I found him surprisingly engaging for someone from his line of work. (FBI agents would come around from time-to-time on the Indian reservation where I grew up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Crimes_Act) and let’s just say that neither they nor we tended to part impressed with the other.)

Backwards Observer

04-08-2013, 05:25 AM

You don't have to go out in the midday sun to appreciate the full-contact gentility of old-school British entrepreneurship.

Dedicated - (By Permission) - To The Honourable The Court of Directors - Of - The East India Company; Through Whose Liberality The Mission Was Provided With The Means OF Prosecuting Objects Of Science, - By Their Most Obedient Humble Servant, - Thomas Stamford Raffles.

Introduction

----------------

In the year 1821, a mission was sent by the Governor-General of Bengal to the courts of Siam and Cochin-China, having for its object the opening of a friendly intercourse between those countries and the British possessions, and the establishment of free trade on both sides.

This mission it is well known was not attended with the success expected; little or no positive advantage was gained to our trade, but the foundation of friendly intercourse was laid by the visit, and the knowledge procured may prepare the way for a future attempt under more favourable circumstances. (from The Mission to Siam, and Hue the capital of Cochin China, in the years 1821-2. From the Journal of G. F. [Edited] with a memoir of the author, by Sir T. S. Raffles.)

The Mission to Siam, and Hue the capital of Cochin China, in the years 1821-2. From the Journal of G. F. [Edited] with a memoir of the author, by Sir T. S. Raffles.
by George Finlayson & Thomas Stamford Raffles (https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/mission-to-siam-hue-capital/id471546045?mt=11) - apple iBooks

Sir Stamford Raffles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_Raffles#Singapore_.281822.E2.80.931823.29 ) - wikipedia

Summer in Siam (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6SreNgKpac) - The Pogues - youtube

http://www.streetdirectory.com/stock_images/travel/simg_show/11048448090057/1/sir_stamford_raffles_statue_raffles_landing_site/

-----------------

Also, a second copy of Rust in peace: South Pacific Battlegrounds Revisited by Bruce Adams. The first went missing after a drunken visit by an itinerant amateur frogman who was trying to offload his old SLR before departing for parts unknown.

Rust in peace: South Pacific Battlegrounds Revisited (http://www.amazon.com/Rust-peace-Pacific-battlegrounds-revisited/dp/0869440322) - amazon

Rust In Peace Review (http://www.pacificwrecks.com/reviews/rustinpeace.html) - pacificwrecks.com

Bruce (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_p0CgPeyA) - Monty Python - youtube

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/ki-49/3220/1975/alexishafen-helen-wide.jpg

Firn

04-08-2013, 03:50 PM

albeit only a few pages, chapter 35 of Roland Huntford’s Two planks and a passion (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/arts/11iht-bookjeu.1.18522263.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0). The book is a very well done history of skiing up to 1945. (There is a final chapter with a post-War history of skiing that feels a little tacked-on, but that period has already been covered by a number of books, in any case.)

Interesting, that might be worth a read. Still can't figure out what the author has against our alpine style. Downhill is great fun indeed and 'Alpine touring' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_touring) as it seems to be called in English, is a fantastic sport, which sadly costs quite a bit of lifes every winter.

Touring has become big in the last ten years or so. Some of my relatives did practice it regulary over 40 years ago. Technology has come a long way indeed. The review was a bit meh, seriously:

Huntford reproduces a 4,000-year-old rock drawing from Russia that depicts three Stone Age hunters on skis stalking elk. It's an astonishing image, like seeing a stick figure on a Jet Ski in the caves of Lascaux.

...

ganulv

04-08-2013, 08:21 PM

Interesting, that might be worth a read. Still can't figure out what the author has against our alpine style.

I get the impression that he enjoys the emphasis being put on being out in the wilderness rather than on fancy technique. I didn't get the impression from the book that he had anything against Alpine per se; he is honest about the fact that apart from Telemark that no Nordic style ski or technique is really up to a big run in the Alps.

Downhill is great fun indeed and 'Alpine touring' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_touring) as it seems to be called in English, is a fantastic sport

In the U.S. there are two kinds of touring. Alpine touring emphasizes descent and usually means free heel skis and stepping up to climb (with skins, if need be) with randonee bindings offering the option to clamp down the heels on the way down. Light or Nordic touring allows for kicking and gliding as well as moderate turns during descents (the skis have a little width and metal edges).

which sadly costs quite a bit of lifes every winter.

Avy beacons, probes, and shovels are de rigueur in the western part of the United States, even for a lot of lift-served pistes.

Technology has come a long way indeed.

I spotted a pair of Kandahar bindings (aka bear traps, aka ankle-breakers) while I was rummaging around yesterday. Yikes!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8242/8629376833_73885b8340_n.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtbradley/8629376833/)

Firn

04-29-2013, 12:17 PM

1. A question for the moderator first: Can we include MOOCs* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course) in our 'reading' list?

I recently came after some quick personal research to the youtube channel of Standford and became interested first in a specific class and then in the broader concept.

2. General Overview and the Development of Numbers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk49iM9OT_0) is the specific lecture and it is great from a mathematic but also an broader economic point of view. Great stuff and absolutely logical. Love the Babylonian bank deposits. ;)

It is always a bit funny to hear an Englishman saying Franci, Pisano and so forth. It is of course the same the other way around. :D

P.S: Ganulv, I missed your reply and enjoyed it now. You will love to see how Didier Cuche skies goodbuy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtMmtn20QVg)

*Interesting that MMOs, the games that is came first

davidbfpo

04-29-2013, 04:37 PM

Firn you asked:
1. A question for the moderator first: Can we include MOOCs* in our 'reading' list?

I see no problems with that; we sometimes link elsewhere to podcasts and the like.:)

ganulv

04-29-2013, 04:46 PM

This was on display at the new book table at my local library and I gave it a read. I enjoyed it well enough, but I was most interested in discussion of the author’s time spent as commander of training at Ft. Bragg and there actually is not a lot of that in the book.

P.S: Ganulv, I missed your reply and enjoyed it now. You will love to see how Didier Cuche skies goodbuy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtMmtn20QVg)
That is an awesome video, thanks for sharing! I actually own and regularly use both a pair of boiled wool mitts and a set of waxed wool gaiters (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtbradley/8329870953/)!

Firn

04-29-2013, 07:46 PM

Thanks for the quick answer of the moderator. ;)

Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FME9avU3u2Y) discusses the 'arab' contributions to mathematics, for example algebra. It is amazing and logical to see the geometric roots of many approaches. Love the influence of business on the devlopment of that noble and 'pure' science.

I loved that show by soft-spoken Didier and it really shows how things have changed in the last couple of years. The Austrians also put up a good farewell for the Swiss rival.* It also reminds me to actually spell-check my posts because it was certainly a nice goodbye and has nothing to do with a good buy. Too much finance ruins your brain, but if you watch the online class it shows that it certainly helped a great deal to develop math. Incentives and utility.

*The Swiss and the Austrians are big rivals, even if it has soften up in the last years. I actually had some nice chats with Italian, Swiss and German coaches at the junior level and all of them say that the Austrians have more funding. The Swiss juniors are training often in Italy because is cheaper and the parents face a much steeper bill for giving their kids the chance to compete at high levels. It is not a healthy sport on the higher levels, and the cousin of one of my classmates, a multiple worldcup winner had to recently give up after another brutal training injury.

The great Ghedina has fun (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_onJpunYHO4) and impresses also the Austrians (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wqu5NTyvKk). He is from the small 'ladin' minority in Italy.

P.S: Love the gaitors. For hunting modern ones tend to be a bit loud. Many use Loden gaitors for short hunts. Good for powder and colder temps but terrible in wet snow on warm days.

Firn

05-07-2013, 12:37 PM

The Complete Guide to Tracking: Concealment, Night Movement, and All Forms of Pursuit Following Tracks, Trails and Signs (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Complete-Guide-Tracking-Concealment/dp/0716022052/ref=pd_sim_b_1)

I actually have owned that book for quite a while now, but with the start of the hunting season I like to refresh mentally some of the basics. It helps a great deal to make use of your rifle and sometimes also after the shot your own or that of others.

Cheap and possibly even cheaper looking - not even basic pictures made it into the book - it is arguably the best manual I know and has helped me a great deal. A very well organized and structed book, it blends tracking with other fieldcraft important for a hunter and offers you an efficient path for learning and improving said skills.

The track pursuit drill with it's 7 steps is a no-nonsense approach to follow a track and to stalk. It helped me to slow down, hone my stalking and to increase my overall awerness. If you know the area well you can stalk well and pick up tracks to get a sense of the game patters. We have a vastly different situation from Austria and Germany as well from a good deal of Italy, with the red deer being very hard to hunt.

It goes very well with Practical Tracking (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Tracking-Following-Footprints-Finding/dp/081173627X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367928104&sr=1-1&keywords=Elbrochs) and Mammal Tracks & Signs (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mammal-Tracks-Sign-American-Species/dp/0811726266/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367928104&sr=1-2&keywords=Elbrochs). Fantastic books. The informations on lynx, bears and wolves are becoming highly relevant for my region.

German-speaking, European readers interested in local fauna should like Tierspuren erkennen & bestimmen (http://www.amazon.de/Tierspuren-F%C3%A4hrten-erkennen-bestimmen-Ohnesorge/dp/3809429988/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1367928192&sr=8-10&keywords=Spurenlesen) or Tierspuren&co (Tierspuren: Fhrten Fraspuren Losungen Gewlle und andere).

davidbfpo

05-26-2013, 09:04 PM

Tukhachevskii

05-27-2013, 04:10 PM

...I too like to read multiple texts (are you Dyslexic Dave?;))

Anyway I'm the process of reading or have read the following...

Brian ldiss, The Dark Light Years (http://www.sfreviews.net/darklightyears.html)

K. S. Friedman, Myths of the Free Market (http://www.amazon.com/Myths-Free-Market-Kenneth-Friedman/dp/0875862241)

Frederick Forsythe, The Dogs of War (http://www.amazon.com/Dogs-War-Frederick-Forsyth/dp/0553268465). Much, much better than the film.

L. I. Held, The Quirks of Human Anatomy (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quirks-Human-Anatomy-Evo-Devo-Look/dp/0521732336) (A real gem)

G. Till, Seapower (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seapower-Twenty-First-Century-Series-History/dp/0415480892)
&

D. J. Lonsdale, Alexander the Great: Lessons in Grand Strategy (http://trainings.altpere.com/downloads/GYC/books/Alexander%20Great%20Strategy.pdf)

Red Rat

05-28-2013, 01:38 PM

Just finished: Blood, Steel, Myth: II SS Panzer Korps at Prochorowka (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Steel-Myth-II-SS-Panzer-Korps-Prochorowka/dp/0974838942/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369745716&sr=1-8&keywords=kursk)

and about to start

Demolishing The Myth: The Battle of Prokhorovka (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Demolishing-Myth-Battle-Prokhorovka-Kursk/dp/1906033897/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369745847&sr=1-6&keywords=kursk)

The large scale of the fighting highlights the significant impact of what may seem minor variations in TTPs between german Army (Heer) units and Waffen SS as well as the cumulative impact of combat fatigue and the impact of airpower.

On my Kindle I am currently getting through a very readable:

History of the Peloponnesian War (http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Peloponnesian-War-ebook/dp/B002RI99EQ/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369746157&sr=1-5&keywords=peloponnesian+war)

and have just finished:

The Heights of Courage: A Tank Leader's War on the Golan (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heights-Courage-Leaders-Golan-ebook/dp/B001DW2Y8K/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369746302&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Heights+of+Courage)

More big war then small war at the moment. :wry:

ganulv

05-28-2013, 09:59 PM

On my Kindle I am currently getting through a very readable:

History of the Peloponnesian War (http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Peloponnesian-War-ebook/dp/B002RI99EQ/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369746157&sr=1-5&keywords=peloponnesian+war)
Have you taken a stab at Herodotus? I don’t think anyone would go so far as to call The Histories readable—the historical geography in The Landmark (http://www.thelandmarkancienthistories.com/Herodotus.htm) edition helps, as does Carolyn Dewald’s Introduction in the Oxford World’s Classics (http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199535668.do#.UaUgQoX85T0) edition—but that has a lot to do with the scope of his ambition. As the editor of The Landmark edition says, Thucydides was interested in politics and warfare, Herodotus was interested in everything.

Steve Blair

05-28-2013, 10:06 PM

ganulv

05-28-2013, 10:10 PM

That's always been one of my favorite areas (Eastern Front).
As one of my professor used to write in the margins of my papers from time, “Are you sure that is what you mean to say?” ;)

Steve Blair

05-29-2013, 02:42 PM

As one of my professor used to write in the margins of my papers from time, “Are you sure that is what you mean to say?” ;)

Maybe.....;)

Bill Moore

05-31-2013, 08:54 AM

http://www.amazon.com/Gomorrah-Personal-Journey-International-Organized/dp/0312427794

This book has been out for awhile, but I just recently got around to reading it. I give it two thumbs up a big toe and look forward to the author's next book on the Cartels in Mexico.

Roberto Saviano is powerful writer who knows what he writes about. His writing style very much reminded me of Michael Herr's writing style in his book "Dispatches" about the Vietnam war. Roberto writes about (although uses different terms) many topics of interest we discuss on SWJ ranging from global networks, criminal insurgencies (he points out that the mafia needs the state so it doesn't want to overthrow it, but it does want to control it and it does in much of Southern Italy), control of the populace through coercion and a prevailing fear, mixing legal and illegal business methods, etc. I think most will find it insightful and relevant to the study of Small Wars. A couple of excerpts.

Since I was born, 3,600 deaths. The Camorra has killed more than the Sicilian Mafia, more than the Ndrangheta, more than the Russia Mafia, more than the Albanian families, more than the total number of deaths by the ETA in Spain and the IRA in Ireland, more than the Red Brigades, the NAR, and all the massacres committed by the government of Italy.

Imagine a map of the world, the sort you see in newspapers such as Le Monde Diplomatique, which marks places of conflict around the globe with a little flame. Kurdistan, Sudan, Kosovo, East Timor. Your eye is drawn to the south of Italy, to the flesh that piles up with every war connected to the Camorra, the Mafia, the Ndrangheta, the Sacra Coronal Unita in Puglia, and the Basilischi in Lucani. But there's no little flame, no sign of conflict. This is the heart of Europe.

They cut off his ears, cropped his tongue, shattered his wrists, gouged out his eyes with a screwdriver--all while he was still alive, awake, conscious. then to finish him off they smashed his face with a hammer and carved a cross on his lips with a knife. His body was supposed to end up in the trash so that it would be found rotting in a dump. The message inscribed on his flesh was perfectly clear to everyone.

A discussion the author is having with his father,

"Robbie', what do you call a man who has a pistol and no college degree?"

"A #### with a pistol."

"Good. What do you call a man with a college degree but no pistol?"

"A #### with a degree."

"Good. What do you call a man with a degree and a pistol?"

"A man, papa!"

"Bravo, Robertino!"

If you read this book, or have read it already, you'll better understand why I posted this tribute to a heroic anti-Mafia fighter earlier.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=18169

omarali50

06-01-2013, 01:29 AM

Tombstone: the Great Chinese Famine http://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374277931

Its an amazing, moving book. And a must-read for anyone who still thinks the term "Maoist" is not a term of abuse. Though the Long March book http://www.amazon.com/The-Long-March-Communist-Founding/dp/B008SMGP6A is perhaps even more of a mythbuster than this one.

Firn

06-11-2013, 11:47 AM

Thanks to a "lurker" I have finally read 'The Defence of Duffer's Drift' by E.D. Swinton; well a retired police officer takes his time to read classic texts for the military.:wry:

Well worth a read, although I suspect many here already have. On a search I found it featured on nearly twenty threads, with Tom Odom especially citing it's value.

There are numerous places to get a copy, here is one I found:http://regimentalrogue.tripod.com/duffersdrift/Duffers_Drift.htm

Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defence_of_Duffer%27s_Drift

I finished that book quite recently. I really like the way it presents a problem and helps the reader to interact and to learn step by step. Needless to say that the specific pedagogic approach can be valuable in other areas as well.

From a military point of view firepower certainly made it's weight felt already there and even earlier with all the logical ramifications.

Backwards Observer

06-13-2013, 05:42 PM

Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1941-1960 by Ronald H. Spector.

The idea that the appropriate use of American power will provide a satisfactory outcome to even the most intractable problem in the Third World is far from a novel one. It was succinctly, if inelegantly, expressed in the slogan which one saw everywhere in Vietnam, “Once we have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” The work presented here suggests a fundamentally different conclusion, but one which was also embodied in an expression commonly heard in Vietnam, “You can’t make somethin’ out of nothin’.”

...

Added to this propensity to make something out of nothing was an American ignorance of Vietnamese history and society so massive and all-encompassing that two decades of federally-funded fellowships, crash language programs, television specials and campus teach-ins made hardly a dent. In Chapter 1 of the present work I attempt to show how infrequent and tenuous were American contacts with Vietnam before 1945 and what little knowledge of IndoChina there was in the U.S. even among specialists. U.S. contacts with Japan and China, however distorted by mutual suspicion, ignorance and prejudice, were rich and varied in comparison to those with Southeast Asia. (from the preface to the 1985 edition)

Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1941-1960 (http://www.amazon.com/Advice-Support-United-Vietnam-1941-1960/dp/0029303702/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371142344&sr=1-5) - amazon

http://indochine54.free.fr/photos/t-pungi.jpg

***

Something For Nothing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=096LhjGNNCk) (Rush) - youtube

davidbfpo

06-20-2013, 09:11 PM

A "lurker" lent me a slim AUSA book, 'Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot' by Howard E. Simpson. It is a long time since I read on the French Indo-China war, notably Bernard Fall in 'Street Without Joy'. Originally published in 1994 and my edition 2005:http://www.amazon.com/Dien-Bien-Phu-America-History/dp/1574888404/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371760353&sr=1-1&keywords=Dien+Bien+Phu%3A+The+Epic+Battle+America+ Forgot

Simpson writes well, although the editor missed some strange spellings and grammar which jarred an easy read. He has interviewed on both sides, including General Giap and clearly has admiration for the stoicism of the French (including a good number of non-French nationals and local tribesmen). Some new information was found; the UK & US official visits, the extent of US civilian pilots flying most of the transports and the use of quad .50 cal. machine guns.

I still marvel at those who volunteered to parachute in the last days, many with just a few days training:
800 French, 450 Legionnaires, 400 North Africans & Africans and 150 Vietnamese - only 681 jumped in.

Finally the author was there, as a diplomat, before the siege began.

ganulv

06-20-2013, 09:20 PM

I still marvel at those who volunteered to parachute in the last days, many with just a few days training:
I read Peter G. MacDonald’s biography of Giap earlier in the year. Didn’t that jump land all of them in POW camps (and from to their graves for many of them)?

davidbfpo

06-20-2013, 10:09 PM

Ganulv asked:
Didn’t that jump land all of them in POW camps (and from to their graves for many of them)?

Simpson refers to:
11,000 French Union able-bodied and wounded being captured, approximately 3,300 were returned.

The possible factors that caused their motivation is mentioned, multi-faceted yes and now too late to research properly. No doubt other examples in military history exist.

carl

06-21-2013, 01:04 AM

I read Peter G. MacDonald’s biography of Giap earlier in the year. Didn’t that jump land all of them in POW camps (and from to their graves for many of them)?

That is what David marveled at, me too. They knew what the odds and they went anyway.

Maybe the motivation was what I read motivates most things like that, they can't stand to leave their mates unaided.

carl

06-21-2013, 01:20 AM

I am just finishing Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Applebaum.

http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Curtain-Crushing-Eastern-1944-1956/dp/0385515693/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371774677&sr=1-1&keywords=the+iron+curtain+applebaum

The book is excellent. It is comprehensive and very readable. More than readable really. The author manages to convey what those people went through in a deeper sense than a mere recounting of history.

The Soviets managed to subjugate, pacify if you will, a number of disparate countries with disparate cultures in a very short time. And a lot of those countries didn't have much use for Russians or Communists. That was a remarkable achievement.

The book recounts how they did it and some of things critical to that accomplishment are a bit surprising to me. For example the mass rapes helped them. Those along with all the other brutalities functioned to terrorize the populations right from the start. Also all the ethnic cleansing and ethnic killing that we see in so many places today, was seen in Eastern Europe at the end of the war, on a vast scale.

I recommend it highly, for several reasons. First, modern people tend to forget what brutes the Soviets were. Second, despite that, they pulled off a hell of a trick in subjecting all those countries and I think it important that we realize that. Third, though ultimately all they did depended upon the Red Army being there, there was a lot more to it than that. Fourth, it is darned interesting.

jmm99

06-21-2013, 01:28 AM

After the war, Pierre Langlais ("Gars Pierre"; CO of the 2nd Airborne Brigade at DBP) carried on a 2-year battle with the French Army to award parachutist badges to the surviving "first jumpers" into DBP, despite their (obvious) lack of regulation airborne training jumps, etc. Bureaucratic indifference to combat courage won out (as is usually the case).

On DBP (the "pi$$pot" battle): Bernard Fall, Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu (http://www.amazon.com/Hell-In-Very-Small-Place/dp/030681157X); Jules Roy, The Battle of Dienbienphu (http://www.amazon.com/The-Battle-Dienbienphu-Jules-Roy/dp/0786709588); and Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Valley-French-Vietnam/dp/0306814439). Windrow's is the latest academic work - and very comprehensive. Fall and Roy were there at the time.

Background (Franco-American viewpoint): both by Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle In Indochina (http://www.amazon.com/Street-Without-Joy-Indochina-Stackpole/dp/0811732363); and The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Viet-Nams-Political-Military/dp/0999141791) (essential and cheap).

Regards

Mike

Chants Des Appelés.Le Gars Pierre (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-0rwggOeQA) (YouTube)

Red Rat

06-21-2013, 02:03 PM

Have you taken a stab at Herodotus? I don’t think anyone would go so far as to call The Histories readable—the historical geography in The Landmark (http://www.thelandmarkancienthistories.com/Herodotus.htm) edition helps, as does Carolyn Dewald’s Introduction in the Oxford World’s Classics (http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199535668.do#.UaUgQoX85T0) edition—but that has a lot to do with the scope of his ambition. As the editor of The Landmark edition says, Thucydides was interested in politics and warfare, Herodotus was interested in everything.

I have taken a stab at Herodotus and intend to return again to him (a copy is also sitting on my Kindle).

I studied a lot of Greek philosophy while at university, I am finding The Histories readable in comparison :wry:

Red Rat

06-21-2013, 02:17 PM

Be curious as to your opinions about the two Kursk books. That's always been one of my favorite areas (Eastern Front).

I'll drop a further line in due course.

Blood Steel & Myth: Lavishly illustrated with maps and photographs and provides a day by day, almost hour by hour account of the battles of II SS Panzer Corps. Good statistics with sources and workings demonstrated (important when one considers the conflicting claims as to just who killed what with what at Prochorowrka). Some anecdotes of the soldiers' experiences.

Demolishing the Myth: Not as well illustrated as 'Blood Steel and Myth' and while the mapping is adequate it could be better. The content though is superb, setting the context extremely well and taking pains to explore commanders' backgrounds and experience often down to brigade level well. Perhaps because I am less familiar with the workings of the Soviet Army, but I am finding this book engrossing, hugely educational and very enjoyable.

Added by Moderator: See Post 31 for links to both books.

ganulv

06-21-2013, 02:55 PM

I have taken a stab at Herodotus and intend to return again to him (a copy is also sitting on my Kindle).
One of my teachers told me that he grades with two things in mind: the scope of the student’s ambition and his/her success in fulfilling it. Herodotus scores well on both!

I studied a lot of Greek philosophy while at university, I am finding The Histories readable in comparison :wry:
I have studied very little Greek philosophy, but just last night I was reading a short piece about ontology (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19877909/Taylor%E2%80%94Distinguishing%20ontologies.pdf) which makes reference to “competitive metaphysics in the Greek style.” :o

Steve Blair

06-21-2013, 05:11 PM

I'll drop a further line in due course.

Blood Steel & Myth: Lavishly illustrated with maps and photographs and provides a day by day, almost hour by hour account of the battles of II SS Panzer Corps. Good statistics with sources and workings demonstrated (important when one considers the conflicting claims as to just who killed what with what at Prochorowrka). Some anecdotes of the soldiers' experiences.

Demolishing the Myth: Not as well illustrated as 'Blood Steel and Myth' and while the mapping is adequate it could be better. The content though is superb, setting the context extremely well and taking pains to explore commanders' backgrounds and experience often down to brigade level well. Perhaps because I am less familiar with the workings of the Soviet Army, but I am finding this book engrossing, hugely educational and very enjoyable.

Added by Moderator: See Post 31 for links to both books.

Thanks for the initial thoughts!

I've got this (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Green-Beret-Commandos-Cambodia/dp/1477273085) coming in the mail, which I'll update folks on if anyone's interested. SOG has always been an interest of mine, and this looks to be either good or hugely disappointing...:wry:

ganulv

06-21-2013, 05:31 PM

I've got this (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Green-Beret-Commandos-Cambodia/dp/1477273085) coming in the mail, which I'll update folks on if anyone's interested. SOG has always been an interest of mine, and this looks to be either good or hugely disappointing...:wry:
Sure, keep us updated. That was “back when the Green Beanies were cool,” as a veteran of the 82nd who I once worked with informed me. :p

bourbon

07-12-2013, 03:11 AM

Just finished Red Sparrow: A Novel by Jason Matthews, which is an espionage thriller centered on present-day Russia and the CIA vs SVR spy-war. This is an excellent novel from a debut novelist, who just so happens to have also served 33 years in the Directorate of Operations at the agency. Matthews was a denied area operations specialist and station chief in several locations.

In-short, Jason Matthews has taken his significant real-world expertise and gift for the written-word and created a first rate spy novel. I recommend Red Sparrow to anyone who considers themselves a fan of the genre.

gute

07-18-2013, 05:54 PM

Currently reading this book http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2/179-8246372-9522738?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=carivore which I find to be both interesting and amusing. If you go to Amazon you can read reviews, most of which are negative. The author is definitely full of himself, but his descriptions and explanations of the workings of the M2 Bradley, M1 tank and the armored reconnaissance squadron are interesting. So is the information about what his troop and the rest of the his ARS did during the run up to Baghdad. The author's Sgt. Rock love fest with himself makes this book IMHO a 5 out of 10. For those not familar with the workings of the M2/M3 Bradley it's worth a read.

Moved here at author's request: I gave the book a separate thread when I should have just added it here. My initial post gave the book a 5 out of 10. I'm thinking now 6 or 7 out of ten. Sure, at times he thinks he is all that and a bag of chips, but his story, the crews story, and the other soldiers in the 3rd ID Cav squadron are interesting. The book is easy reading unlike The Revenge of Geography by Robert Kaplan.

jmm99

07-22-2013, 04:02 AM

gute

07-22-2013, 04:12 AM

WWI Marines - Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_K), Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Company-K-Library-Alabama-Classics/dp/0817304800), Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq_1aZdnEjg) - movie is 1-1/2 hrs.

Regards

Mike

Years ago a bought an out of print book about Marines in WWI called Make the Keiser Dance. Look around for it and if it is something you really want to read, but can not find let me know and we might be able to arrange something.

jmm99

07-22-2013, 11:20 AM

At Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Make-Kaiser-Dance-Forgotten-Experience/dp/0385127995).

Thank you for the ref.

Regards

Mike

carl

07-25-2013, 12:47 AM

I just finished War Comes to Garmser by Carter Malkasian.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Comes-Garmser-Conflict-Frontier/dp/019997375X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374708928&sr=1-1&keywords=war+comes+to+garmser

Everybody who hasn't actually been to Afghanistan, and I don't mean a big base somewhere, must stop reading whatever they are reading and read this book. Right now. For its conflict, this is as good as The Village. The author aspired to emulate War Comes to Long An. It has been a long time since I read that book but I remember how impressed I was with it and how it seem to shine a light on what had been dark. This book strikes me as the same.

The great thing about this book is it is about the Afghans. There stories and their names constitute most of the story. At the same time the British and the Americans are part of the story, a big part, but always as a influence on what is happening amongst the Afghans, not as the main show.

The author says three things give the Taliban an opening in Garmser, political infighting amongst the leaders of the dominant tribes, the sanctuary provided by Pakistan and the social disruption caused by the canal project. Taliaban's main support comes from mullahs who were elevated politically by them and poor immigrants who had no firm title to the land they stayed on. The story of how this all came to be is related in a way that is understandable. By the end of the book keeping track of mullah Naim vs Abdullah Jan (now he was something, a Magsaysay type) vs Omar Jan is a natural thing, as it probably should be when viewing this conflict.

One of the main points made in the book that I found surprising was that one of the very great strengths of the Taliban was not that they were furthering the interests of the Pushtuns, the conflict in Garmser was basically Pushtun vs Pushtun. The advantage over the Afghan gov was that Taliban was a hierarchical, disciplined organization with clear chains of command. There was one boss who decided and was responsible for an area. That was not the case with the Afghan gov (and not with us from what I've read) and it made a huge difference.

Another thing that struck me was something similar I read in Owen West's The Snake Eaters. In both books, on the eve of something important and good happening, the spec ops types did a night raid and 'effed everything up, to the extent people died who should not have died. The Afghans did not like night raids and repeatedly stated that to the author.

An additional point Malkasian makes is that things were not written over there and some of the bad things that happened happened because of things we did and decisions we made. A case in point is the woefully slow growth of the Afghan Army. In the 5 years between 2001 and 2006 only 36,000 troops were raised so there was nothing much to oppose the Taliban offensive of 2006.

I could go on and on but this is a great book and people should read it.

jcustis

07-25-2013, 02:24 AM

It will be interesting to see how his books reads. I was in Rig District, just south of Garmsir, during my '10 deploy. I've seen Carter in action during a security summit that brought in district governors and the NDS and police chiefs from their locales.

Carter gets COIN, and he put it in practice in a backwater district far from Camp Leatherneck or FOB Dwyer. He'd been in country for who knows how long before I got to see him speaking Pashto among the men gathered at the district center. He wasn't burned out yet, and I admire the work he put into being a stability advisor. Our STABAD paled in comparison.

He was a brilliant point of light in an otherwise very dim constellation of failed initiatives, corruption, and security half-measures. People like Carter should have been running the PRT, rather than serving downstream and working against the inertia of that worthless organization.

I don't even have to read the book to recommend it, based solely on what i know first-hand of the guy.

His story is very much the same story of my district and district governor, Ahmed Jan Massood, who was another young turk of sorts and good friend on the Garmsir DG.

carl

07-25-2013, 03:45 AM

jcustis:

The USMC comes out magnificently in the book. Mr. Malkasian said their efforts were something like a masterpiece of tactical application of COIN (or something like that, I just took the book back to the library). But I figure you already knew that.

A point he made that was a surprise is that sometimes anti-corruption efforts backfired, specifically regarding the police. They resulted in a very effective but hard edged commander being replaced by a series on non-entities. Omar Jan was the guy he referred to. I figure you are familiar with him. That was part of another and broader point in the book, we have to accept some rough types who will fight in order to effectively prosecute the war.

I have a question. Do you think that overall, all the spec ops things specifically the night raids were worth it? I don't. I figure the opportunity costs far outweighed the benefits in addition to all the Afghans hating them. And I don't mean just the physical opportunity costs, the men and machines, I mean the brainpower that could have been applied more effectively if it hadn't been busy with nocturnal swooping. If that course of action had not been available, possibly all those smart people would have come up with something better. But I am very interested in what a guy who was there thinks.

jcustis

07-25-2013, 03:05 PM

Carl,

Re: night raids is an interesting question. As a tactic, I think we developed a fetish for them in Iraq, but I was always on the ground with the unit that had to deal with the mess left in their wake. Yes, the resources and brainpower dedicated to them sucked a lot of energy away from making other tactical/operational investments.

We got our share of bad guys, which is necessary in COIN, but the sh#t stirred up in the wake of dry holes did more harm than good. There is a lot I can't discuss that would really make you shake your head.

It didn't even have to be night raids though. I finally got around to watching Nat Geo's "Battleground Afghanistan", and while I'm not trying to second guess the planning of the young captain that led his men to disrupt and disturb so many Afghan families as they patrolled in the wee hours, I would have employed a totally different approach. It would have required more resources that may not have been made available though.

On the note of the district police problems, we experienced similar issues with a corrupt DCOP. The problems were exacerbated, in my opinion, by issues at the Provincial level with the PCOP, some security advisor named Shazzy (IIRC), and the PG himself. Individual actions by those characters, framed against the overall structural problems we faced in everything ANSF, made advances in ANSF development very hard to come by.

When you have to navigate the issues of a DCOP extorting protection money from the ducant owners in the bazaar, while also trying to keep the police patrolmen engage and just doing their job, it takes away from training, intel work, targeting, etc.

The one blessing to the removal of our DCOP was his replacement. He kicked ass and was a 8+ on a scale of 10. We were just lucky, however.

You just brought back a flood of frustration that I'd repressed and didn't know I was sorta still holding down. I imagine there are a ton of us who have bottled up a lot of that conflict because it was so frustrating and hollow to spend 7-8 months there and leave with things essentially the same as when you arrived. We increased the raw metric of the number of ANSF on the ground, but I doubt it is translating into more security. I need to read up on VSO and see how that is doing.

Steve Blair

07-25-2013, 07:25 PM

Years ago a bought an out of print book about Marines in WWI called Make the Keiser Dance. Look around for it and if it is something you really want to read, but can not find let me know and we might be able to arrange something.

Berry has two other books out as well dealing with Marines in World War II and Korea. Both are excellent.

Old Eagle

07-26-2013, 04:25 PM

Hank Crumpton's explanation of espionage and covert action. Crumpton was a long-time member of the Former Directorate of Operations at CIA. Thinking about working the book into one of my intel courses.

His tactical descriptions of HUMINT ops is pretty graphic. I'm a little surprised they got cleared.

His description of the initial deployment into Afgh is also very interesting. I recommend coupling it w/Gary Schroen's First In, Gary Berntsen's Jawbreaker rant and Bob Woodward's Bush at War. Maybe by comparing multiple sources you might get a clearer picture of the action. I'm still looking for a good military book on the same op.

To my way of thinking, there are some loose ends that never quite get tied up, but the book still deserves critical reading.

DDonovan

07-27-2013, 12:14 PM

For those interested in a view on counterinsurgency not coming from the usual suspects, you might take a look at David Donovan's new ebook, War of a Kind: Reflections on Counterinsurgency and Those who do it. Donovan is the author of Once a Warrior King, a well-regarded memoir of his experiences in a counterinsurgency program in Vietnam.

WAR OF A KIND addresses key issues in counterinsurgency, but it does so without being a technical manual. Rather, it is a commentary based on personal counterinsurgency experiences from Vietnam with many years of thought applied afterwards. Real-life vignettes from the author and others illustrate many of the issues discussed. WAR OF A KIND will be of interest to those who work in counterinsurgency and to the general reader who wants to understand a style of war that affects American foreign policy and defense planning.

Link to Amazon for 'War of a Kind', no reviews:http://www.amazon.com/War-of-a-Kind-ebook/dp/B00E4UIU4A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374931683&sr=1-1&keywords=War+of+a+Kind+by+david+donovan

Link to Amazon for 'Once a Warrior King', with excellent reviews:http://www.amazon.com/Once-Warrior-King-David-Donovan/dp/0345333160/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374931981&sr=1-2&keywords=once+a+warrior+king+by+david+donovan

jmm99

07-27-2013, 05:59 PM

You caused me to download the Amazon and Kindle apps to my Android tablet - previously used to read pdf files. The funny thing is that I couldn't order the e-book directly using the Android (it wouldn't place the order). But, adaptation being in order, I ordered it on my desktop and it was automatically delivered to the Android. :)

Warrior King was an excellent book.

Regards

Mike

TheCurmudgeon

08-01-2013, 10:58 PM

I know I shouldn't be, but because I became so interested in the idea based on my recent research into primitive war I am reading "less than human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312532725/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

It has an interesting slant:

In this book, I will argue that dehumanization is a joint creation of biology, culture, and the architecture of the human mind."

Dehumanization is a scourge, and has been so for millennia. It acts as a psychological lubricant, dissolving our inhibitions and inflaming our destructive passions. As such, it empowers us to perform acts that would, under other circumstances, be unthinkable.

ganulv

08-20-2013, 12:02 PM

Lawrence in Arabia is on my reading list after yesterday’s Fresh Air interview with (http://www.npr.org/2013/08/19/209573091/lawrence-of-arabia-from-archaeologist-to-war-hero) author Scott Anderson. Non-fictional T. E. Lawrence was actually even more interesting than semi-fictional T. E. Lawrence, if this interview is at all accurate.

Bob's World

08-20-2013, 02:12 PM

I just placed my order on Amazon for Colonel Brian Petit's first (there will be more) book. I had the distinct pleasure to serve with Brian in both the Pacific and in Afghanistan. Brian is one of our great operators as well as one of our great thinkers. He has served in critical SOF assignments in Iraq, the Philippines, and Afghanistan. Perhaps as important he served in a critical SOF assignment at Fort Leavenworth where he was often the intellectual connective tissue between the Army and Army SOF.

From the Amazon page:

Going Big by Getting Small examines how the United States Special Operations Forces apply operational art, the link between tactics and strategy, in the non-wartime, steady-state environments called Phase Zero. With revised and innovative operational art constructs, US Special Operations offer scalable and differentiated strategic options for US foreign policy goals. This book analyzes light footprint special operations approaches in Yemen, Indonesia, Thailand, and Colombia. When a large military presence may be inappropriate or counterproductive, Colonel Brian Petit makes the case for fresh thinking on Phase Zero operational art as applied by small, highly skilled, joint-force teams coupled with interagency partners. The past decade (2002-2012) of operations focused on large-scale, post-conflict counterinsurgency. Less publicized, but no less important in this same decade, was the emerging application of nuanced campaigns, actions, and activities in Phase Zero. These efforts were led or supported by special operations in countries and regions contested, but not at war. This book fills a gap in the literature of how to adapt the means, method, and logic of US military foreign engagements in a diplomacy-centric world with rapidly shifting power paradigms. Going Big by Getting Small is not a yarn on daring special operations raids nor a call for perpetual war. It is the polar opposite: this book contemplates the use of discreet engagements to sustain an advantageous peace, mitigate conflict, and prevent crises.
Show more
Show less

Link to Amazon.com, note no reviews:http://www.amazon.com/Going-Big-Getting-Small-Application/dp/1478703857/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377012876&sr=1-1&keywords=Going+Big+by+Getting+Small

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author
Colonel Brian S. Petit is a US Army Special Forces officer with worldwide experience in combat, conflict, and peacetime environments. He has written articles on special operations for Special Warfare and Military Review.

Backwards Observer

11-15-2013, 05:15 AM

Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoit Chantre (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture). A discussion of Clausewitz by the anthropological philosopher, Rene Girard. Interesting if you like that sort of thing.

Ren Girard: Achever Clausewitz is a book about modern war, really. Clausewitz is a writer who wrote only about war; he was in love with war. He hated Napoleon, the enemy of his country, Prussia, but he also loved him because the emperor had restored war to its glorious nature after the eighteenth century, which weakened war by having conflicts that made maneuvers and negotiations more important than actual fighting. That is why Clausewitzs hatred for Napoleon was curiously united to a passionate admiration for the man who had restored war to its former glory.

CH: The love-hate nature of mimetic rivalry is apparent here but is there anything else that attracted you to this offbeat topic?

RG: I found another interesting correspondence with my own work. Because Clausewitz talks only about war, he describes human relations in a way that interests me profoundly. When we describe human relations, we usually make them better than they are: gentle, peaceful, and so forth, whereas in reality they are often competitive. War is the most extreme form of competition. That is why Clausewitz says that business commercial business and war are very close to each other.

CH: Youve pointed out that our whole contemporary society is reaching a point of mimetic crisis. What, exactly, causes a mimetic crisis?

RG: A mimetic crisis is when people become undifferentiated. There are no more social classes, there are no more social differences, and so forth. What I call a mimetic crisis is a situation of conflict so intense that on both sides people act the same way and talk the same way even though, or because, they are more and more hostile to each other. I believe that in intense conflict, far from becoming sharper, differences melt away.

When differences are suppressed, conflicts become rationally insoluble. If and when they are solved, they are solved by something that has nothing to do with rational argument: by a process that the people concerned do not understand and even do not perceive. They are solved by what we call a scapegoat process.

CH: You say that the history of scapegoating is suppressed by those who do the scapegoating.

RG: Scapegoating itself is the suppressing. If you scapegoat someone, only a third party can become aware of it. It wont be you, because you will believe you are doing the right thing. You will believe that you are either punishing someone who is truly guilty, or fighting someone who is trying to kill you. We never see ourselves as responsible for scapegoating.

If you look at archaic religions, it becomes clear that religion is a way to master, or at least control, violence. I think that archaic religions are based on a collective murder, on a lynch-mob murder, which unites the people and saves the community. This process is the beginning of a religion: salvation as a result of scapegoating. That is why the people turn their scapegoat into a god.

Christianity will be victorious, but only in defeat. (http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/07/christianity-will-be-victorious-but-only-in-defeat) - Girard Interview - First Things - 7.16.2009

During a meeting last year of an informal philosophical reading group, Girard recounted the Old Testament story of Joseph, son of Jacob, bound and sold into slavery by his "mob" of 10 half-brothers. At first, "they all get together and try to kill him. The Bible knows that scapegoating is a mob affair." Joseph establishes himself as one of the leaders of Egypt and then tearfully forgives his brothers in a dramatic reconciliation. It is, Girard said, a story "much more mature, spiritually, than the beginning of Genesis." Moreover, the story has no precedent in archaic literature.

"Like many biblical stories, it is a counter-mythical story," he said, "because in myth, the lynchers are always satisfied with their lynching."

History is a test. Mankind is failing it. (http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=29620) - Girard Interview - Stanford Magazine - July 2009

Rene Girard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren_Girard) - wikipedia

Battling to the End (http://www.amazon.com/Battling-End-Conversations-Benot-Chantre/dp/0870138774) - Amazon

***

The Cambodian Wars: Clashing Armies and CIA Covert Operations (http://www.amazon.com/The-Cambodian-Wars-Clashing-Operations/dp/0700619003) by Kenneth Conboy.

***

The Whole Heart of Zen: The Complete Teachings from the Oral Tradition of Ta-Mo (Bodhidharma) (http://www.amazon.com/The-Whole-Heart-Zen/dp/1575872331) by John Bright-Fey.

http://ih2.redbubble.net/image.12093612.2345/fc,135x135,eggplant.u2.jpg

the violence inherent in the system (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKIWjnEPNY) - monty python

Up the Irons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOPhXIYiqHw) \m/

davidbfpo

12-08-2013, 04:19 PM

I have finally finished reading Carter Malkasian's slim book 'War Comes to Garmsir: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier'. Read on the train commuting to London and Oxford and finally at home.

There are a number of other SWC reviews of the book in this thread and his name appears in nearly a dozen threads.

His style and the content are simply gripping. Human terrain at it's best, context, details and insight.

I have not read many of the books on the contemporary Afghan conflict, it is for this "armchair" observer too sad. This book is different, it is about the Afghan people, their leaders, institutions and their visiting foreign guests.

The last chapter, the conclusion 'The End or the Intermission', is excellent. I expect those who have served anywhere in Afghanistan, outside the wire, will agree with his reflections and so taken from his final paragraph:
What I think I can say is that Afghanistan surely will not be the last of America's interventions in messy wars in developing states - our history is too full to think otherwise......Garmser offers no answers as to whether such conflicts are worth it. It merely suggest they are likely to be troublesome, murky, messy and grey.

Link:http://www.amazon.com/War-Comes-Garmser-Conflict-Frontier/dp/019997375X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386516203&sr=1-1&keywords=carter+malkasian

If you now intend to buy a copy there is a SWJ link, so we get a commission.

Firn

12-16-2013, 09:50 PM

I have come back to the great book Wages of Destruction (http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208) to get the German economic reality in one or two periods of interest.

The British author, which speaks more then excellent German, has in my opinion been able to write the book on the German economy of that timeframe which will set the standard for quite some time. Based upon increasingly better research, good economic understanding and clear thinking he is able to tie up a considerable amount of lose political, military and economic threads. Many decisions, right or wrong, make a lot more sense when you can put them into the big picture of the specific timeframe.

You can put yourself into the shoes of many different German decision makers from the Weimar days onward which had to face stark and diverse constraints. A cronic lack of foreign-currency reserves, evaporating exports due to the Great Recession, severe lack of investment and the inferior capital stock, the severe economic and political damage inflicted by the hyper-inflation and the harsh austerity, the resulting long-term damage of the economic potential, the policial instability and so forth were arguably bigger problems then those faced by the rest of the Powers. It is no surprise that the rearmament could only operate within severe limits even when it was greatly pushed after the rise of the brown shirts.

Some chapters were especially insightful like the one showing the trade-offs between production, human capital and food and the 'rational' consequences of the grim logic under the brutal ideology with the implications for the Jews, other 'foreign' labor, German army logistics and the German labor force. The relationships between the small, undermechanized and relative inefficient Central European agriculture and the partly hidden high participation of women in the work force which in turn can be tied up with the desperate need for foreign labour. The low degree of efficency was partly due the low mechanization which can be explained by the small farm sizes and the more general lack of capital and ressources. It is impossible to mention even all the most important relationships, some already quite known some not.

It is quite ironic to read about the dire situation in oil and food the British war economy faced in the darkest days of the Uboat war and to compare it with the small amount available to the German one. Amusingly the British came up with a surprisingly accurate account of the the German oil reserves and oil production around 1940 but doubled the former because they just could not believe that Germany could be able to wage war with that.

I think it is fair to say that it is difficult to get a good understanding of the whole war without understanding some key concepts presented in the book. Some may know them from other studies and sources but for people with less available time the best way is to read it in Toozes work.

P.S: It is also highly informative to look at the current world through the lens of that book, for example from an European/American/Indian/Chinese/Russian point of view. As an European the even greater reliance on imports for many basic ressources becomes obvious and many vital supply chains have links overseas which sometimes are impossible to replace. The substitution of others would greatly decrease efficiency and productivity. Sadly my secret plan for world domination is thus unlikely to work.

AmericanPride

12-19-2013, 02:27 AM

I recently started reading Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars.

Granite_State

12-19-2013, 02:01 PM

I have finally finished reading Carter Malkasian's slim book 'War Comes to Garmsir: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier'. Read on the train commuting to London and Oxford and finally at home.

There are a number of other SWC reviews of the book in this thread and his name appears in nearly a dozen threads.

His style and the content are simply gripping. Human terrain at it's best, context, details and insight.

I have not read many of the books on the contemporary Afghan conflict, it is for this "armchair" observer too sad. This book is different, it is about the Afghan people, their leaders, institutions and their visiting foreign guests.

The last chapter, the conclusion 'The End or the Intermission', is excellent. I expect those who have served anywhere in Afghanistan, outside the wire, will agree with his reflections and so taken from his final paragraph:

Link:http://www.amazon.com/War-Comes-Garmser-Conflict-Frontier/dp/019997375X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386516203&sr=1-1&keywords=carter+malkasian

If you now intend to buy a copy there is a SWJ link, so we get a commission.

Agreed, great book for anyone looking to understand the campaign in Helmand. I was also just across the river from some of the places and people mentioned, the book made me aware (far too late to be of use) of a lot of local dynamics that I either didn't know or partially puzzled out during my last deployment.

omarali50

12-19-2013, 10:45 PM

Just finished "Pirates of Barbary" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0224085263?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwgoodco-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0224085263&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2
My quick review on Goodreads: This book is NOT a systematic history of the Barbary pirates. The chronology is sometimes confusing and there is little attempt to present facts and figures systematically, nor is there much in the way of social or economic analysis.But its a very readable collection of highlights and anecdotes. The focus is on Britain, so don't expect much about the French, Italian or Spanish sides of this saga (all of whom had more experience with Barbary pirates than Britain did, but then, this is a British book). The Arab/Turk side is presented with a lot of sympathy and one hears more about their side of the story than usual. I also had no idea that so many "renegade" Christians played such a large role in this business. There is a mild postcolonial tinge at times, but by recent standards the book is not too overloaded with political correctness.
After a rollicking read, the author decides to wrap it up with a strange sentence about colonialism finally solving the problem. I say "strange", because just a few pages earlier he has explained how the US and the now VERY powerful Western fleets finally ended the long saga of Barbary piracy around 1816 or so and the last persons to be hanged for piracy in Britain were in 1830 (and they were NOT Barbary pirates), and colonial invasions did not even start until 1830 (when the first French invasion had nothing to do with piracy). That reference to colonialism seemed a bit out of place.

Overall, great fun to read. Lots of very interesting anecdotal history. A bit thin on analysis

Firn

12-20-2013, 01:19 PM

In the current year I read You are you own gym (http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Your-Own-Gym/dp/0345528581/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387540434&sr=1-1&keywords=you+are+your+own+gym) and pushed on with it's training plans.

Overall the book has a clear structure and keeps things simple. Some explanation are a bit questional but the core is logical and fits with the best supported scientific evidence I have gathered. More about warm-ups and cool-downs would have been nice in my opinion as well as some integration of some more aerobic exercise. Still one should not discount the aerobic qualities of some sessions, as they are do make your lungs and heart work for a considerable time with a good intensity. I think that is also partly due to large amount of muscle mass you need to work in some exercises.

As I do a good deal of aerobic activities and I'm still very flexible the training sessions fit my needs very well. If you have little time in the evening or in the morning or little equipment while traveling you can easily integrate them into your routine. Overall I'm very happy with the results so far, as I was able to claw back a great deal of the fitness I lost after stopping swimming on a uni level and having far fewer chances to go climbing. The good thing is that the progress can be monitored in a objective way and you get a good deal of positive feedback in different ways. :wry:

*P.S: My very personal explanation why the body is able to build up muscle efficiently after a intensive workout lies in the logic of evolution. Getting a lot of food after having worked hard is fantastic feedback, promoting the muscle groups which help the organism to secure a meal, be it a hunters kill or a gatherers find. Sadly nowadays we have to fool our body as our environment has become so different.

Firn

12-31-2013, 05:08 PM

I finished recently my last book of 2014, The British War Machine (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-War-Machine-Weapons-Resources/dp/0141026103/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388488118&sr=8-2&keywords=the+british+war+machine) by David Edgertron. It is the third book I have read which was mostly dedicated to the economic reality before and during WWII, covering the British Empire. The brilliant Wages of Destruction (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-War-Machine-Weapons-Resources/dp/0141026103/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388488118&sr=8-2&keywords=the+british+war+machine) did an amazing job to analyse the German situation while the decent Freedom's Forge (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freedoms-Forge-Arthur-Herman/dp/1400069645/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388488442&sr=8-1&keywords=freedom+forge) shows a partially good view of the economic framework of the USA. I hope to get decent works on the Japanese and Soviet realities.

There is a suprising amount of interesting details in the book, an understandably rather confusing picture about the politics concerning research and technology and a somewhat irritating focus on some after-war quirks of British Historiography. I will focus on the implication of the relative economic strenghs and weaknesses of the British empire compared to the other powers, especially Germany.

1) There is no doubt that Britain itself had a considerably higher GNP per capita and still a bigger one in absolute terms then the German empire. Overall productivity was higher, to a good degree due to the different structure of agriculture and the capital stock was far bigger with foreign investment playing a big role. Needlessy to say that Britain was for good reasons a net importer.

2) This high GNP was partly due to the effects of the empire and the deep intergration into international trade facilitated by the dominant role Britain played as a trading hub. The international acceptance of the pound sterling and the high credit made it the access to foreign capital and ressources in relative terms far easier.

3) The European trade was surprisingly important compared to the one with the USA. Scandinavian ships played the dominant part in it and came mostly over to the British side after the German conquests.

4) After the fall of France European trade was pretty much non-existent and shipping became quite streched as a higher amount had to cover much longer distances. As an reaction the British tried to cut down on bulky, low-value imports like timber and animal feed and pushed hard for high-value, finished imports to get as much bang for the buck as possible.

5) Shipping losses were severe in the first two years but the increasingly efficient imports, counter-measurements and vastly increased ship-building shaped the trend firmly into the Empires favour. (The German U-boat war was of course an efficient use of ressources for the German side, however hampered oversea trade is vastly better then having no oversea trade)

6) The high $ reserves of the Empire enabled them to tap very early into the big US production reserves and stimulated its mobilisation.

7) Lend-Lease became increasingly important after the first two war-years but was at first considerably less important then the credit given by the rest of the Empire.

8) The British government spent a surprising high amount of its GDP pre-war on rearmament and was not greatly outspent by Germany. Obviously Britain could ramp up the investments for productions in Britain and abroad far easier then Germany for the reasons mentioned before.

9) For similar reasons the war production itself tended rather naturally to be more efficient. An extreme example was of course the ability to import vast amounts of oil instead of having to get it from coal in hugely expansive plants with and inefficient conversion process.

10) The many land defeats in the first years were, as it is now well documented by recent works, not due to inferior and fewer machines but due to and inferior performance of the British army especially compared to the German one.

11) Much of the former advantages rested of course on the shoulders of the vast navy with its many long-lead investments in shipping and it's ability to cut overseat trade for its European enemies, protect it's own and force the neutrals to switch theirs to the Empire.

12) The military success of Japan was more dangerous then I thought for Britain due to it's big navy, strong military forces and the ability to disrupt and conquer vital ressources of the Empire.

13) The British way of war seemed pretty American in comparision with the German one, with far superior capital endowment per fighting man.

I will leave it at that for the time being, the party does not wait. Happy new year.

omarali50

01-01-2014, 04:32 AM

Am in the middle of "Empires of the Silk Road" and absolutely loving it. A must read. A complete re-evaluation of the role of Central Asia in history.
http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Silk-Road-History-Central/dp/0691150346

omarali50

01-01-2014, 04:37 AM

and simultaneously reading (aka listening in the car) "Lawrence in Arabia". An interesting read, but the "Guardian" level determination to correct "historical wrongs" sometimes gets a bit irritating. It would have been a better book if it had more of the stories, less of the interpretation. Its still a lot of fun and full of interesting information, so dont get me wrong. That irritation is personal and rather mild.
http://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabia-Deceit-Imperial-Making/dp/038553292X

Biggus

01-01-2014, 05:33 AM

I would be more than happy to second Firn's recommendation of Wages of Destruction. I think that it was the first book that challenged my beliefs about the motivations driving the major players. I'd always looked at the politics of the period through an exclusively moral (and somewhat awestruck) eye, but Tooze significantly altered my perspective to one far more focused on the economic reality. I'm not entirely sure why, but understanding the economic and social pressures of the era made it all somewhat more relatable.

I'm currently reading (and enjoying) Four Ball, One Tracer by Roelf van Heerden and Andrew Hudson. It's a great book, well written and edited. I get a little bit uncomfortable when an author badmouths other individuals (deservedly or not - I find it a little cringeworthy when the other parties have no recourse to defend themselves) but it's an important element in understanding the dynamics of EO at the pointy end of the spear. I'm not yet finished, but right now I'd recommend it. I'd really like to read Eeben Barlow's EO book, but it doesn't appear to be available on Kindle and the actual books are somewhat out of my price range.

Firn

01-01-2014, 04:51 PM

I just wanted to add a podcast (http://www.podcasts.com/new-books-in-european-studies/episode/david-edgerton-britains-war-machine-weapons-resources-and-experts-in-the-second-world-war) about with David Edgerton, the author of Britain's war machine. Obviously it lacks the depth of the book and the stats but it gives a decent overview on the economic and military situation. I just had to cringe that the interviewer, after coming up with good questions and decent imputs finished it off with the terrible conclusion that in 1940 Britain, not Germany actually understood how to win a modern war.

Modern research makes it in my opinion rather obvious that while there was (almost naturally) a great amount of miscalculations on all sides the importance of a highly productive economy for the modern's war effort was all too plain for both. Mr. Hitler himself was all too concerned with the lack of basic ressources like oil, ore and food that the purpose of wars was to conserve, get and to secure access to them. Ironically Britains plans concerning Norway reflected a very similar British mindset in that instance, but in general Britain could get it's necessary imports, financed mostly by others no less, by different means. In short a negative outcome does not necessarily mean that the problem was not understood, in this case there were certainly wrong conclusions but most of all one side just had far weaker starting position. There are a great amount of ifs and buts to go into as well as much scope to discussions but economically I will leave it there.

@Biggus: I agree and it retrospective it is surprising that it took the scientific community so long to come up with a book like Wages of Destruction or partly Britain's War Machine. The importance of economic aspects was very well understood during the war by all sides but those aspects became pretty unpopular compared to the 'real' cool, heroic or brutal stuff. Sadly it is understandable as its narrative tends to be far less gripping and spectacular but fortunately there are examples like Tooze's work which are excellent proof to the contrary.