An intriguing exploration of Operation Wappen that gets bogged down by political tangents.
A writer offers the history of a failed CIA/MI6 coup in 1950s Syria.
It was not until about a half-century later that Maddock, a Marine veteran who participated in early Cold War operations, found evidence of his potential involvement in a planned joint CIA/MI6 coup in Syria code-named Operation Wappen. Fearing the encroachment of communism in the Middle East, the United States spent millions of dollars bribing Syrian military officers in anticipation of the forthcoming 1957 coup. After some of these officers told the Syrian government, the U.S. denied involvement, and, in the words of Maddock’s book subtitle, the failed overthrow became “A War That Never Was.” Though Operation Wappen is the author’s titular focus, the first half of the book attempts to place the attempted coup in the context of not just Cold War history, but also world history spanning nearly two centuries. The true origins of the Cold War are traced by the author to the death of Gen. George Patton. An entire chapter is devoted to espionage conspiracy theories, including cyanide spray guns, that question the official government account that Patton died in a car crash. While referencing problematic sources (such as Killing Patton by former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, and Wikipedia, which is cited throughout the volume), the work provides speculations about the general’s death that fit into the author’s personal Cold War recollections, which accompany his story of the failed Syrian coup. His other dissections of past events have a distinctly conservative ideological bent that may turn off some readers in his attempt to challenge modern “revisionist” historians hampered by “political correctness.” Maddock’s analysis of American history, for example, emphasizes the advantages held by an “advanced civilization” over “primitive” Native Americans while his appraisal of the Middle East bluntly describes “the 1300 Years’ War” between Muslims and the West. His examination of Operation Wappen, including his personal experiences with the Marines, adds a captivating chapter to the history of the Cold War in the Middle East. But it’s a story often muddled by politicized and sometimes irrelevant historical analysis.
An intriguing exploration of Operation Wappen that gets bogged down by political tangents. (afterword, index)Pub Date: July 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64361-780-0
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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