J.

War and peace it is not

Revisado: 11-15-24

Warming up exercise for his seminal work. Tolstoy experienced the siege of Sebastopol firsthand and what we have here are fictionalized remembrances of his time in the trenches. The short work is rather episodic and unlike War and Peace, there really isn’t much effort in character development.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Be selective

Revisado: 10-31-24

As others have said TMF. Introductory chapters and sections in this book are quite informative. Things get bogged down when we are treated with a litany of sinkings and death tolls. This can be skipped over without losing the main thrust of the authors thesis, namely that capital ships were largely irrelevant to the outcome of the war . What mattered was Germany’s belated commitment to submarine warfare when allocating men and materials to this weapon at the beginning of the conflict might have led to the victory of the central powers. Conversely, had Great Britain committed to Escort convoy instead of deploying its overtaxed cruisers and destroyers to searching for German submarines from the beginning, she would never have faced near starvation during the first few years of the war.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Skewed focus

Revisado: 10-16-24

A competent overview of the war in Europe but the Pacific theater receives only a cursory glance. Little is new here and the author apparently draws most of his information from secondary sources other than the frequent quotes from the memoirs of the principal characters of the war. The narrator clearly enjoys impersonating their voices. Some popular myths are dispelled but overall the student of WW2 history will find this work a rehash

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

An non-academic overview

Revisado: 09-03-24

Excellent examples but each study seems to draw largely upon just one or two secondary sources.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Not your grandfather’s history of India

Revisado: 08-11-24

I was initially disappointed that this was not about the wars, politics and economics that led to the rise of British India. But the lives of those who ran its military, bureaucracy and social circles are so engrossing that I came to appreciate that this book offers a unique perspective. I can find the military and political history of India in a dozen other books. For anyone thinking of writing a novel rooted in British India this is required reading.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

It’s hard to find good help

Revisado: 06-22-24

A testament to Lincoln’s greatness. His ability to manage bickering subordinates and knowing when to intervene and when to delegate. More about naval administration than battles. Diplomatic entanglements were particularly interesting.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Not the nephew

Revisado: 02-11-24

A more PC Flashman. Like the Flashman of old this one also finds himself rubbing shoulders with every historical personage of his day but he’s more Forest Gump than antihero. The narrator is no David Case (Frederick Davidson) and doesn’t differentiate character voices well which is a shame. One eventually gets past the narration and the fact that this is not a Harry Flashman bodice ripper. The historic situations promised in the rest of the series interest me sufficiently to try the next.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Not your father’s Iliad

Revisado: 11-09-23

An accessible translation. In the introduction the author provides insight to the challenges of translating Ancient Greek for modern audiences and yet preserve a classical feel. Unless I missed them there were several famous scenes that were greatly rewritten abridged or completely left out. For example Helen on the walls with Priam pointing out the Greek heroes is missing. Paris’ fight with Menalaous goes a bit differently from what I remember. Nobody seems to take Protrocolas for Achilles when the former dons this armor to rally the Greeks to save their ships. This is a key motive for Protrocolas and why Achilles feels such remorse. Remorse that he channels into hatred towards Hector. If I was not acquainted with other translations I would have missed some of the central themes of this classic

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

48 hours I'll never get back

Revisado: 06-03-23

J.K. Rowlings and Geoffrey Parker share one thing in common; they lack an internal editor. As a former professor of world history, I was eager to read Parker's thoughts on how climate impacted the world system of the Seventeenth Century. Unfortunately, Parker often forgets his purported focus. Instead we have a bloated text that tries to cover every historical, economic, social and meteorological event over one hundred years on five continents. Parker's research is exhaustive and because he cannot edit himself he exhausts us. There is a super-abundance of facts that often stray from his thesis that the little ice age of the 17th C. exacerbated the effects of war, economic recession, and political disturbance that in better climatological times civilizations were able to withstand. When three examples would suffice, Parker gives us twelve. Each goes on at such length that we forget what he's trying to prove. So distracted describing the horrific details of this century he often fails to explain their relationship to climatological change. It doesn't help that Parker repeats the same examples throughout. After the first four hours I thought, "Okay I get it. It was grim.." As a world systems study, however, it falls short. He certainly establishes a correlation between climatological shifts and human misery, but he is much weaker at showing causation.

It doesn't help that the narrator sounds like a Puritan minister giving a Sunday sermon on the inevitable damnation of our souls. This audible recording has the pacing of an Old Testament litany of biblical genocide. Worst still is how the narrator plays into Parker's writing style. Parker cannot simply say that "the besieging forces killed 30,000," he has to add, "men, women" (dramatic pause "and children." The "rule of three" permeates his sentences. resulting in a style that is tedious, depressing and distracting. Long before this book was over I wanted to open a vain. If you still want to give this time-suck of a book a listen, set the play speed to 1.2 and get out of church soon enough to cut the grass.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Anyone planning to die someday should read this

Revisado: 03-12-23

To die well one needs to have lived well .Tolstoy shows us that the inevitability of our death should be one of the salient considerations guiding how we conduct our lives and the choices we make in love work and play

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña