Hickey’s text is clear and concise but falls short of a definitive history of the Korean War—too much is left out to justify...
A British officer’s history of the events of “The Forgotten War” in Korea.
Hickey (The Unforgettable Army, not reviewed), a Korean War veteran, reports on the main events of a war fought amid the extremes of sub-zero cold and exhausting heat. The US Army was taken by surprise when the North Korean Army crossed the 38th parallel in 1950, and it lacked combat readiness after five undemanding years of garrison duty in postwar Japan. Together with unreliable Republic of Korea troops they were thrown into the bloody cauldron of combat against a prepared, ruthless enemy—and almost driven into the sea after a panic-filled retreat, until a reinforced defensive line finally held at the Pusan Perimeter in southernmost Korea. MacArthur’s brilliant landing at Inchon, plus a renewed UN allied offensive saved the day. But, as everyone knows, MacArthur ignored the orders of President Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, driving relentlessly to the Yalu River at the Manchurian frontier. Truman, fearing another world war with China and the Soviet Union, replaced MacArthur with General Ridgway after massive Chinese armies entered the war and forced UN forces to retreat. Hickey notes the heroic performance of the US Marines, their engineers, and the US Air Force at the Chosen Reservoir. Ridgway rallied his troops after the famous “bug out” of US and Allied troops before the huge numbers of Chinese, and he stiffened the UN lines before the long stalemate during the peace talks and the bloodletting at Pork Chop Hill. Hickey dwells at length on the experiences of the British and Australians, although the US contributed most of the manpower, supplies, and air and naval power that decided the war’s end. Hickey’s viewpoint is that of the commanders and has little to relate about the grunts on the firing lines who suffered and died, so the reader does not get the tragic sense of the terror, heroics, and high emotion of combat. His approach suggests the reporting of a staff officer in the rear—out of harm’s way.
Hickey’s text is clear and concise but falls short of a definitive history of the Korean War—too much is left out to justify the title.Pub Date: June 25, 2000
ISBN: 1-58567-035-9
Page Count: 412
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
