A history of the strategies, operations, and tactics of the Korean War, timed to coincide with that conflict’s 50th anniversary.
Fifty years after the outbreak of the war, publishers and television producers are inundating the public with accounts of the conflict. Standing apart from these opportunistic offerings is British historian Catchpole’s (Clash of Cultures, not reviewed) impressively researched new account. A career officer in the British army, Catchpole successfully combines his professional military insight and keen historical awareness to untangle the Korean War’s complex mix of modern warfare and Cold War politics. Many historians successfully describe the dramatic opening of the war by focusing on the initial lack of US combat readiness, General MacArthur’s brilliant amphibious landings at Inchon, the resultant UN offensive that almost drove the North Korean forces out of the country, and China’s entry into the conflict. As the war stabilized into entrenched mountain warfare and the UN commitment in Korea dramatically increased, however, these same historians often got lost in the conflict’s shift from military to political objectives. Catchpole avoids this pitfall in two ways: first, he incorporates new material from the recently opened Russian and Chinese archives into his book; and second, he includes several excellent chapters detailing British and Commonwealth service in the conflict. This new material transforms the traditionally messy narrative about the war’s end into a coherent story of international cooperation and bravery in the face of communist aggression. The result is a balanced and accessible history that sheds new light on a complicated war.
A practical introduction to the Korean War, particularly useful for readers interested in British military contributions to the conflict. (maps and diagrams throughout)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7867-0780-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | MILITARY | HISTORY
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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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