by Eric Bergerud ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1996
Eyewitness accounts by combat survivors of early battles of the Pacific, interspersed with lucid commentary by the author, recounting how green American and veteran Australian troops stopped the seemingly invincible Japanese army in mid-1942 in Guadalcanal and New Guinea. (For an account of one American's war in the South Pacific, see Peter Richmond, My Father's War, p. 672.) Military historian Bergerud (Lincoln Univ.; Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 1993) captures the reality of life in the firing pits for untested Allied soldiers opposing an experienced, ruthless enemy with a reputation for cruelty. The South Pacific, Bergerud reminds us, was a terrible place to fight a war, with its dense and dangerous jungles, extreme heat and humidity, and frequent torrential rains. Diseases like malaria, dengue fever, scrub typhus, and dystentery took as high a toll as combat. Battles were fought at very close quarters, often by small units led by captains, lieutenants, and sergeants, not generals. Bergerud rates General MacArthur, despite flaws, as a great strategic leader, and the Australian army as the best infantry in the South Pacific. In addition, the First Marine Division, with many underage youngsters, fought with great endurance and bravery, and increasing skill, at Guadalcanal. Nevertheless, Bergerud notes that the army greatly outnumbered marines in the South Pacific and did far more of the fighting, despite the general impression created by the outstanding marine publicity machine. In the later central Pacific campaigns, on the other hand, the marines were in fact responsible for some sanguinary victories. The author discusses in detail the daily life of the soldiers and the weaponry and tactics central to the dreadful process of combat. According to Bergerud, the growing Japanese emphasis on fighting to the end resulted in a ``take no prisoners'' attitude by the Allies. Victory in the South Pacific in 194243 was, Bergerud persuasively argues, the first crucial step in bringing the war home to the Japanese and thereby ending it. One of the best books about WW II, capturing both the powerful if narrow view of the combat soldier and the panoramic vantage point of the military historian. (8 pages b&w photos, 8 maps)
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-86158-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
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. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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