An astute examination by an expert war historian that sifts through the collective “theatres of attrition” in this...
A rigorous look at the grinding war machine involved in the making of the Great War, both at home and on the battlefield.
Author of the authoritative Three Armies of the Somme (2010), Philpott (War Studies/ King’s Coll., London) plunges into the complicated factors that allowed the war of attrition, which had been used effectively since ancient times, to “come into its own” during World War I. The clash of the powerful industrialized armies created a three-year stalemate within the trenches of the western front in France, rather than a swift, decisive victory anticipated by the Central Powers by Christmas 1914. As such, the fighting required the strategic coordination of four other “fronts” in order to defeat the enemy: the maritime front, whereby Britain and Germany would contest superiority of the seas, most effectively through economic blockade; the home front, encompassing raw material resources and maintaining the wills of the populations to support the war; the diplomatic front, involving war and peace negotiations, including the introduction of President Woodrow Wilson’s appeals to “peace without victory” in 1917; and the “united front”—i.e., the ability of the cohorts to work together, as the Allies managed to do more effectively than the Central Powers. Philpott looks at how each engaged country addressed each front, from the shift from short-term thinking to long-term slog, as the old-style generals were learning that, as British Secretary for War John Seeley noted, “the armies have outgrown the brains of the people who direct them.” The author also addresses the “essential and practical” construction of the trench systems; the diversion of war materiel to the Middle East to fight Turkey, which was allied with Germany; and the manipulation of press and propaganda while mobilizing manpower and morale.
An astute examination by an expert war historian that sifts through the collective “theatres of attrition” in this unprecedented slaughter.Pub Date: May 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0268-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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