An exciting, elegantly rendered overview, simultaneously narrating the grandiose theories and the smaller human dramas of...
A comprehensive examination of naval warfare’s rapid and decisive transformations.
Spector (After Tet, 1992), a Marine veteran of Vietnam, demonstrates both academic fervor and hard-won passion. He begins with an intimate account of Tsushima, the climactic 1905 encounter between Japanese and Russian fleets that promoted the “all-dreadnought” navy and spawned an arms race among European powers to construct these enormous, heavily armored battleships. Yet, paradoxically, large-scale encounters between dreadnought fleets were rare in WWI, as German forces pursued “unrestricted” submarine warfare. Early conflicts in WWII contradicted previous theories, as when British defenders in Crete suffered heavy ship losses from Nazi dive-bombing tactics. The Pacific battles of 1942 confirmed the primacy of carriers over battleships: At Midway and Santa Cruz, American and Japanese fortunes shifted frequently, at horrific cost, demonstrating that “it was not technical but human problems that were most critical.” Simultaneously, the Battle of the Atlantic confirmed that U-boat warfare could be countered by aggressive convoy actions, which gave Nazi submariners the war’s highest casualty rates. While much of Spector’s commentary concerns intricate strategic matters, he wisely relies on dramatic eyewitness accounts, as when an Enterprise crewmember recalls a “dive bomber coming right at our guns. He released his bomb and it had my name on it flashing like a neon light.” Chapters such as “My Grave Shall Be the Sea” explore bizarre naval traditions, epitomized by such harsh oddities as the Japanese Kamikaze corps (for whose shabbily treated teenagers landing lessons were deemed unnecessary). Later chapters primarily address the American navy’s difficulty in adapting to Cold War scenarios, as in the maligned river-warfare campaigns of Vietnam.
An exciting, elegantly rendered overview, simultaneously narrating the grandiose theories and the smaller human dramas of men who fought under absurdly difficult conditions.Pub Date: May 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-86085-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.
A ground-level illustration of how the plague ravaged Europe.
For his tenth book, science writer Kelly (Three on the Edge, 1999, etc.) delivers a cultural history of the Black Death based on accounts left by those who witnessed the greatest natural disaster in human history. Spawned somewhere on the steppes of Central Asia, the plague arrived in Europe in 1347, when a Genoese ship carried it to Sicily from a trading post on the Black Sea. Over the next four years, at a time when, as the author notes, “nothing moved faster than the fastest horse,” the disease spread through the entire continent. Eventually, it claimed 25 million lives, one third of the European population. A thermonuclear war would be an equivalent disaster by today's standards, Kelly avers. Much of the narrative depends on the reminiscences of monks, doctors, and other literate people who buried corpses or cared for the sick. As a result, the author has plenty of anecdotes. Common scenes include dogs and children running naked, dirty, and wild through the streets of an empty village, their masters and parents dead; Jews burnt at the stake, scapegoats in a paranoid Christian world; and physicians at the University of Paris consulting the stars to divine cures. These tales give the author opportunities to show Europeans—filthy, malnourished, living in densely packed cities—as easy targets for rats and their plague-bearing fleas. They also allow him to ramble. Kelly has a tendency to lose the trail of the disease in favor of tangents about this or that king, pope, or battle. He returns to his topic only when he shifts to a different country or city in a new chapter, giving the book a haphazard feel. Remarkably, the story ends on a hopeful note. After so many perished, Europe was forced to develop new forms of technology to make up for the labor shortage, laying the groundwork for the modern era.
Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000692-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.
A delightful new translation of what is widely considered the first work of history and nonfiction.
Herodotus has a wonderful, gossipy style that makes reading these histories more fun than studying the rise of the Persian Empire and its clash with Greece—however, that’s exactly what readers will do in this engaging history, which is full of interesting digressions and asides. Holland (In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, 2012, etc.), whose lifelong devotion to Herodotus, Thucydides and other classical writers is unquestionable, provides an engaging modern translation. As Holland writes, Herodotus’ “great work is many things—the first example of nonfiction, the text that underlies the entire discipline of history, the most important source of information we have for a vital episode in human affairs—but it is above all a treasure-trove of wonders.” Those just being introduced to the Father of History will agree with the translator’s note that this is “the greatest shaggy-dog story ever written.” Herodotus set out to explore the causes of the Greco-Persian Wars and to explore the inability of East and West to live together. This is as much a world geography and ethnic history as anything else, and Herodotus enumerates social, religious and cultural habits of the vast (known) world, right down to the three mummification options available to Egyptians. This ancient Greek historian could easily be called the father of humor, as well; he irreverently describes events, players and their countless harebrained schemes. Especially enjoyable are his descriptions of the Persians making significant decisions under the influence and then waiting to vote again when sober. The gifts Herodotus gave history are the importance of identifying multiple sources and examining differing views.
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.Pub Date: May 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02489-6
Page Count: 840
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© 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.
