DWD's Reviews

  Published in 1982 by Pocket Books (a Timescape book) Back in the 1980's Simon and Schuster had a division called Pocket Books that specialized in paperback books. Pocket Books had an even smaller division called Timescape . Timescape published sci-fi books, including some of the earliest of the Star Trek novels so they were quite a successful line. Soldier Boy is part of that Timescape line. Michael Shaara (1928-1988) Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels . Shaara had knocked out a few novels before then, but none were about the Civil War. Instead, a great deal of his writing was sci-fi. He started out selling stories to magazines in 1951. This book is a collection of 14 of those short stories. If you read this book, I recommend reading the Author's Afterword first. He wrote commentary on every story and I used those notes as an introduction to each one.  Like all short story collections, they vary in qu...

Published by Random House Audio in June of 2014 Read by Paul Michael Duration: 19 hours, 42 minutes Unabridged   Jeff Shaara is well-known by fans of military historical fiction. The Smoke at Dawn is his fifth book about the Civil War, the third about the campaign in The Western Theater. This book picks up a few months after Grant's victory at Vicksburg and focuses on Chattanooga. The crushing defeat at Chickamauga suffered by Union General Rosecrans was a terrible blow after the Union's massive twin victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg just two months earlier. Confederate General Braxton Bragg swept Rosecrans' army from the Chickamauga battlefield and they fled back to the safety of Chattanooga. Bragg's forces occupy the mountains that surround Chattanooga and have effectively laid siege to the city. Already, the Union forces are suffering and Rosecrans seems confused about what to do next. Luckily, Bragg is worried about dissension among his own junior officer...

Published by Random House Audio in 2013 Narrated by Paul Michael Duration: 22 hours, 5 minutes Unabridged. Just to establish where I am coming from - I am a huge Civil War buff. I have over 100 books on my shelf. Although I live in Indiana, I have managed to make it to three Civil War battlefields in the last two years (Murfreesboro, Fort Donelson and Chickamauga) and I just bought my father the original Shaara Civil War trilogy (the one based around The Killer Angels ) for Christmas. I own Shaara's World War I and World War II series as well as his original Civil War series and his Mexican War book. I am a fan. Confederate Lt. General John C. Pemberton (1814-1881) But, I am not a fan of A Chain of Thunder . I have no problem with the authenticity of the book and there are parts that are amazing, intense and just about perfect. But, the first half of this book feels like it is trying to be "The Great American Novel" and failing at the attempt. There is so much r...

A Great Start to a New Civil War Trilogy Published by Ballantine Books in May of 2012 Jeff Shaara returns to the familiar topic of the Civil War after writing two books about the Revolutionary War, one book about the Mexican War, one book about World War I and four books about World War II. Fans of Jeff Shaara and his father Michael know that they have a special feel for the Civil War and this book shows that Jeff's talents as a writer have only grown. I don't know if Jeff Shaara could have written about just one battle (like his father did about Gettysburg in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Killer Angels ) when he wrote the first and third books that completed the Civil War trilogy about the war in the Eastern Theater. However, he pulls it off magnificently in A Blaze of Glory. Shaara notes in his introduction that his previous books focused on the generals and he has since learned the value of seeing the battle from multiple perspectives. He does it very well here...

A Must for any Civil War buff Published by HighBridge Audio Read by George Hearn Lasts about 6 hours Abridged This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Way back in 1989 I had to read The Killer Angels as part of a American Military History class while I was attending Indiana University. Since then I've read it 3 or 4 more times and I've recommended it to countless friends and students. Surprisingly, hearing it as an audiobook was an entirely new experience for me - it was much more powerful than I remembered. The Killer Angels is the story of the Battle of Gettysburg told from a variety of points of view, but mostly from the points of view of Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet on the Confederate side. The Union side is largely represented by John Buford and Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828-1914) Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of Maine who won the Medal of Honor for his actions on the second day of the battle. The Killer Angels won the Pulitizer Pri...

  T he Glorious Cause is the second in Shaara's two volume piece historical fiction concerning the Revolutionary War. Rise to Rebellion was the first, and I believe the superior of the two, but The Glorious Cause is an excellent novel as well. Rise to Rebellion is the superior of the two novels due to the changes of heart that the readers sees in John Adams and Benjamin Franklin concerning the issue of independence from England. The Glorious Cause has little of that type deep soul-searching. However, it is a fantastic portrayal of the difficulties encountered by the Continental Army and George Washington, in particular. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) If I were to have my druthers, I would have preferred that Shaara had broken the second 600+ page novel into two novels  to make it a trilogy and expanded them both by delving more into the politics of the day and the difficulties of fighting a war with the governmental structures and restrictions that ...

A bit disappointing. Published in 2011 by Ballantine Books. Jeff Shaara's European Theater World War II trilogy covered America's participation in that theater completely - from before the invasion of North Africa to the occupation of Germany. All of my reviews of those books can be seen by clicking here . He did a great job of discussing the grand strategies and showing the view from the trenches. I really was hoping for the same treatment here. Shaara alludes to problems with his publisher in an introduction, but the reader is left with a truncated version of the war in the Pacific Theater. Shaara picks up this story with the dates he left off in his European Theater trilogy - Spring of 1945.So, no Pearl Harbor, Battle of Midway or threat of invasion of Australia. No occupation of the Aleutian Islands. No Bataan Death March. The B-29 bomber Enola Gay Instead, we are told the story of one major campaign (Okinawa) and the story of the Enola Gay and the bombing of ...

Originally published in 2006. The Rising Tide: A Novel of World War II is the first book in Jeff Shaara's series about World War II. It is the weakest in many ways. Shaara approaches most of his books with the docudrama format - a little bit of narrative history, a lot bit of historical fiction. His narrative history is quite well written and flows nicely. The historical fiction in this book is its weak point. The action is very good, but there is not a lot of action - just a few pages in the Africa Campaign and some very solid stuff from the Sicily campaign. The majority of the historical fiction part of the book, among the Allied characters at least, is Shaara's characters putting themselves into place to fight Rommel and setting the scene for the second book. It would have moved more briskly if Shaara would have reverted to the historical narrative form, but it would severely limit the fictional aspects of the book. Jeff Shaara On the Axis side, Rommel is...

The Steel Wave is the second book in Shaara's World War II series and is a superior book to the first in almost every way. There is a lot more action (hundreds of pages) and it is intense. The political wrangling that Eisenhower had to endure and master is a theme in every book, but is strongest in this one. The title of the book comes from a comment that Rommel makes about the Allied invasion coming in like a wave of steel into France. Erwin Rommel Rommel continues on as a major character throughout. It is interesting to note that he was correct to fear an Allied invasion of France (which most of the German high command poo-pooed) but picked the wrong place. Hitler picked the right place, although he doubted it would happen. It is also interesting to note that Rommel thought that D-Day was a feint and failed to respond correctly to it until it was too late. Rommel is still the most interesting "officer" character on either side - he knows that Germany will be ru...

Originally published in 2009. No Less Than Victory: A Novel of World War II is the final book in Shaara’s World War II trilogy. It is very similar to the second book, which makes sense since it is a continuation of the same campaign. The Allies continue their quest to push across France and into Germany. Patton looms as a larger and larger character. The part of the noble German soldier, previously played by Rommel is filled by Karl Rudolf Gerd Von Rundstedt, so much so that the reader may not even miss the Rommel character at all. The battle sequences are stirringly told. The “Battle of the Bulge” is told quite well from the point of view of three of the very few soldiers of the 106th  that made it through the battle without being killed or captured (this was Kurt Vonnegut’s unit, by the way, but he does not appear in the book). Eisenhower at Ohrdruf  Shaara spends a lot of time in the book among the inner circle of Hitler’s loyal command, with peo...