DWD's Reviews

Originally published in 1984 by The Free Press . Note: This is a review of the original version of this book, published in 1984 and ending with the first Reagan administration. It has been expanded and updated to include events up to 2012. Way back in my undergrad days at Indiana University I took a class called American Military History . It was taught by a visiting professor from West Point and FOR the COMMON DEFENSE: A MILITARY HISTORY of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA  was an excellent choice for the text for the class. For 30+ years I have carried this book around with me - through 5 different moves and who knows how many book shelves this book was the anchor of my history section because it is quite beefy. But, I decided it was time to clear out some books. Technically, this book was a re-read but I didn't really remember anything from all of those years ago so... The book starts with colonial defense and moves along with the same format up through the early 1980's. The...

Published in 2018 by Ted Halstead. Read by Cody Banning. Duration: 15 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged Ted Halstead's The Second Korean War is a multi-country thriller in which North Korea tries a desperate gamble to force South Korea to submit to North Korean rule. The book starts out on an military base on the far eastern part of Russia. North Korea has found out that Russia has a small nuclear "backpack" weapon (a battlefield nuke) dating from the early days of nuclear weapons that has been lost from the inventory over the years. North Korea acquires the weapon so that they can start a two-pronged effort to force South Korea to surrender and force the United States to withdraw from South Korea without fighting. But, things don't go as smoothly as they hoped, people die and a Russian police detective starts putting things together. The question is, will he put things together fast enough? The last thing I want to do is write out a bunch of spoilers, so I won'...

George Patton (1885-1945) Published in November of 2015 by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Read by Robertson Dean Duration: 16 hours, 2 minutes Unabridged George Marshall (1880-1959) Winston Groom, forever associated with his iconic character Forrest Gump, has written an interesting and solid history of three equally iconic World War II generals: George Patton, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall.  Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) Groom's triple biography format works quite well as all three of these men's life stories were on parallel tracks once they entered World War I and they all knew one another and had worked with one another in one capacity or another through the years (the story of Patton and MacArthur meeting up and working together on the front lines of World War I is a great one). The histories of these men during peacetime only served to reinforce my impression that both of these men were eccentric, sometimes to the point of being bizarre - especiall...

Published in July of 2015 by Fideli Publishing Inc. The World War II generation is rapidly passing away and with them go their individual stories.  Ronald May has collected a number of these stories and had them published in the Martinsville, Indiana newspaper as a regular feature. This book is a collection of these stories with a lot of full color pictures. Some of the stories have been expanded. A photograph from the book of a B-26 Marauder being shot down Typically, each story tells a little about each man's life before his military service, focuses on his time in service and then tells about life after the war (some went on to serve in Korea as well but those efforts are not highlighted in this book). For me, the most interesting part of the book is reading about the wide variety of jobs that these men held during the war. When you read the history books or watch the movies you tend to think that everyone carried a gun, flew a plane, maintained the planes or ...

A Remarkable Tale To be published in the United States on July 21, 2015.  I received an "Advance Reading Copy"  Eunsun Kim's tale of her escape from North Korea, along with her mother and her older sister is remarkably easy to read, remarkable engrossing and just a remarkable tale in general. When Eunsun Kim was 11 years old her mother determined that they could no longer live in North Korea. Eunsun's grandparents were dead, her father was dead, almost everything in the house was sold for money to buy food but there was almost no food to be had because North Korea was in the middle of its Great Famine (1994-1998). Depending on whose statistics you use, the estimates range anywhere from 250,000 to 3,500,000 people starved to death or died from starvation-related causes. Of course, it is hard to say for sure because North Korea is such a closed off society. Eunsun Kim and her family lived in the northernmost part of North Korea and they decided to cross ...

  Victor Davis Hanson Delivers Another Quality Book Published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Press Victor Davis Hanson, best known for his works on Ancient Greece, looks at five different generals from five different time periods and discusses how these generals became what he calls "Savior Generals". This book is very similar in structure to his 2003 book Ripples of Battle . Hanson picked five generals to discuss. All are from the West and he notes that this is not an all-inclusive list. They are not even particularly spread out well over history. One is from Ancient Greece, one from the early Byzantine Empire and three of them are American generals. In my opinion, not all of them fit the mold perfectly. In fact, I think only two of them do. To be a Savior General you have to have been on the outs with the establishment and then, when everything has fallen apart and the situation is about as dire as possible, the establishment command structure looks to you to come in with y...

Very Interesting History of the Modern Presidency Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2012 Read by Bob Walter Duration: 22 hours, 1 minute Unabridged Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, both editors at Time , have delivered a very listenable, fascinating look at each American president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. No matter their political persuasion, their life experiences or their qualities as a human being, all 12 of these men share one thing: they were once President. This is an exclusive club and it seems that just about every president has looked to a former president for a shoulder to lean on, advice or even as a personal envoy sent to convey a sense of urgency to the message. The Presidents Club is told in a rough chronological order starting with Truman. When Truman was President there was only one other member of the Presidents Club: Herbert Hoover. Yes, the same Hoover that Truman and FDR disparaged for 12 years. However, to his credit, Truman sent ou...

This short story (Amazon's Kindle Store estimates its length to be about 32 print pages) is the tale of a North Korean tank commander named Choi Chung Ho in a future war against the Americans on a frozen planet. The North Koreans and the Chinese combined forces are taking a beating from an advancing formation of American tanks. There are four people in Choi Chung Ho's damaged tank and two are rookies. His under-gunned, practically crippled tank is the only thing that can prevent the American forces from completely sweeping the field. Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) The story of how Choi Chung Ho repairs his tank and goes back into the fight is interesting enough, but McCarthy spices things up by throwing in little tidbits like having the North Koreans cloning Kim Il Sung (the original member of the Kim family to rule North Korea) over and over again to lead North Korea. Kim Il Sung #58 is in charge now. It seems a little crazy at first, but then again, maybe not. North Korea ...

An entertaining read and a great way to rate the presidents Published in 2012 by Regnery Publishing, Inc. First and foremost, the latest entry in the P.I.G. series is a great read. Steven Hayward is to be commended for making what could have been a very stale read into an entertaining read - he has a light touch. Secondly, how sad is it that grading presidents by how well they "preserve, protect, and defend" the constitution is a unique idea? Hayward begins The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents with a look at what the founders wrote about the office of the president and compares that to the modern presidency. He then looks at the presidency in the 19th century and how most presidents took the restrictions of the Constitution very seriously. As Hayward proceeds to grade the 17 presidents we have had from 1913 until the 2012 (from Wilson to Obama) on an A to F scale (just like in school) he gives a thumbnail sketch of each president with the major issu...

A slow start but don't let that deter you Although I am a history teacher, I have to admit that I am woefully under-informed on the Korean War - at least when compared to our other wars. Sadly, I am not alone in this fact - there's a reason why the Korean War is called "The Forgotten War". Drury and Clavin start off slowly, in part because there is no context as to why the soldiers are marching around in the subzero weather in northern Korea. However, once they explain the purpose of this particular campaign in the war as a whole and show the reader a few maps I got a lot more comfortable with how they were telling the story and appreciated it a lot more. Marines during the Chosin Campaign in the Korean War The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat is not a fancy history - it is told from the ground level perspective of the the Marines on the hill and is full of tales of bodily fluids, men too young to actually join t...

     Fascinating! Informative! As the title implies,  Character Above All: Ten Presidents from FDR to George Bush   is a collection of biographcial essays on each of the 10 presidents from FDR to George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) by 10 different authors who are either expert historians or knew the President while in office. The thing that ties them all together is that each essay is supposed to look at each man as president and find that one part of his character that made him the type of president he was. Each essay is about 30 pages and it makes for interesting reading. Doris Kearns Goodwin A good sample would come from Doris Kearns Goodwin's look at Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She asserts that the most valuable component of his personality was his self-confidence. I thought this quote from FDR makes the point wonderfully: "I'll tell you...at night when I lay my head on my pilow, and it is often pretty late, and I think of the things that have come before me ...