Book Description
Venice came to life on spongy mudflats at the edge of the habitable world. Protected in a tidal estuary from barbarian invaders and Byzantine overlords, the fishermen, salt gatherers, and traders who settled there crafted an amphibious way of life unlike anything the Roman Empire had ever known. In an astonishing feat of narrative history, James H. S. McGregor recreates this world-turned-upside-down, with its waterways rather than roads, its boats tethered alongside dwellings, and its livelihood harvested from the sea.
McGregor begins with the river currents that poured into the shallow Lagoon, carving channels in its bed and depositing islands of silt. He then describes the imaginative responses of Venetians to the demands and opportunities of this harsh environment--transforming the channels into canals, reclaiming salt marshes for the construction of massive churches, erecting a thriving marketplace and stately palaces along the Grand Canal. Through McGregor's eyes, we witness the flowering of Venice's restless creativity in the elaborate mosaics of St. Mark's soaring basilica, the expressive paintings in smaller neighborhood churches, and the colorful religious festivals--but also in theatrical productions, gambling casinos, and masked revelry, which reveal the city's less pious and orderly face.
McGregor tells his unique history of Venice by drawing on a crumbling, tide-threatened cityscape and a treasure-trove of art that can still be seen in place today. The narrative follows both a chronological and geographical organization, so that readers can trace the city's evolution chapter by chapter and visitors can explore it district by district on foot and by boat.
Customer Reviews:
Great architectural guidebook.......2007-02-16
This book is not a typical guide - where to eat and sleep - but rather a detailed architectural guide with enough history mixed in to put it all into context. Having explored most of the sites discussed, I found that the author gives excellent insight into the buildings, adds detail that enhances visits and turns the buildings that would otherwise blend into the city into treasures. A must for architecture fans and those who want to explore beyond the traditional half day in the St. Marks area.
Venetian Masterpiece.......2007-01-05
If you have been to Venice or are planning to go, "Venice from the Ground Up" is a great book and necessary for you to own.
Why would a city become established and then flourish in what would seem to be the unlikeliest place--in the middle of a lagoon? In answering this question this excellent book proves the basic concept of the other "From the Ground Up" book, ("Rome from the Ground Up"), that you can't understand a city without knowing how it developed-and understand the interplay of natural and historical forces, and cultural institutions.
Like the earlier book, this one visualizes a city at various moments in its lifespan. In Rome one grasps immediately that a modern city is overlying a classical one. Venice is different because after it consolidated from clusters of islands and channels became defined as canals, a city of waterways instead of streets emerged which presents a bewildering labyrinth to the visitor.
This book is ingeniously well organized to sort it all out. The text presents a development of Venetian architecture, history and society in stages coordinated to the series of clearly legible maps at the end, with the places discussed in the text located in numbered sequence on the map, so that the book can be also be used as a guide to this exploration of Venice in a slice in time, by foot and boat. (Practical information is included on catching the Venetian bus, the vaporetto, etc.)
I also own a thick comprehensive guidebook to the city organized in itineraries in various neighborhoods which I carried around with me in Venice--but "Venice from the Ground Up" is more valuable in understanding what you are seeing, which is more a matter of perspective and context than of minutiae.
This is still a very complete and scholarly book, elegantly designed, illustrated with wonderful historic prints and paintings and beautiful contemporary photographs which seem to keep you moving between the present and the past. The author is a sparklingly inventive writer, and his descriptions are as vivid as paintings. I had to read through just to find out how the story of Venice would arrive at our own day.
I love Canaletto's paintings, and this book has enlivened his paintings for me in new ways. If you love Venice, or are planning to go there, you need to have this book to enhance your understanding or renew your love of this amazing city.
Book Description
Rome is not one city but many, each with its own history unfolding from a different center: now the trading port on the Tiber; now the Forum of antiquity; the Palatine of imperial power; the Lateran Church of Christian ascendancy; the Vatican; the Quirinal palace. Beginning with the very shaping of the ground on which Rome first rose, this book conjures all these cities, past and present, conducting the reader through time and space to the complex and shifting realities--architectural, historical, political, and social--that constitute Rome.
A multifaceted historical portrait, this richly illustrated work is as gritty as it is gorgeous, immersing readers in the practical world of each period. James McGregor's explorations afford the pleasures of a novel thick with characters and plot twists: amid the life struggles, hopes, and failures of countless generations, we see how things truly worked, then and now; we learn about the materials of which Rome was built; of the Tiber and its bridges; of roads, aqueducts, and sewers; and, always, of power, especially the power to shape the city and imprint it with a particular personality--like that of Nero or Trajan or Pope Sixtus V--or a particular institution.
McGregor traces the successive urban forms that rulers have imposed, from emperors and popes to national governments including Mussolini's. And, in archaeologists' and museums' presentation of Rome's past, he shows that the documenting of history itself is fraught with power and politics. In McGregor's own beautifully written account, the power and politics emerge clearly, manifest in the distinctive styles and structures, practical concerns and aesthetic interests that constitute the myriad Romes of our day and days past.
Customer Reviews:
Good, but not that good.......2007-05-23
I felt this was something of a mixed bag. Parts of it were illuminating and fresh (the geological overview; the argument that Rome is not a palimpsest of overlaid cities but a mosaic of successive cities lying mostly side-by-side), other parts less so (the ho-hum chapter on the Roman Forum).
There are, however, some major historical howlers. Two will suffice: McGregor states that the senate was staffed by patricians and was all-powerful, when in fact patricians were a minority in the senate and it had no legal power whatsoever. It was certainly influential, but it was hardly all-powerful. Elsewhere, McGregor states that Vespasian (69-79) succeeded Titus (79-81), when in fact it was the opposite, as the dates in brackets make clear. Silly errors in fact like this undermine my trust in those parts of the book covering areas I am less familiar with.
All in all, this book is worth having, but not a patch on Aicher's *Rome Alive* or Claridge's *Rome; An Archaeological Guide* for the curious traveller.
a writer trying to find a public.......2007-01-10
Writer trying to find a public
When I bought Rome from the ground up I had no idea what to expect, thinking it was perhaps something along the line of Krautheimers Profile of a city (which by the way is mentioned in the bibliograpy of the book), showing the many layers of which Rome exists and the city's long and complicated history. Just to illustrate what I mean: if you are standing in the Forum and looking at the eight surviving columns of the temple of Saturn, it would be just as easy to write ten pages about what you are seeing, as ten pages about what you are not seeing. Doing both would be quite a job. Krautheimer describes the period from 312 till 1308, skipping republic and large part of imperial Rome, and has, in my first edition, 360 very large, double columned and small lettered pages.
But Rome from the ground up is not that sort of book. Thank God, some readers will say. You' ll find that out just by taking it in your hands. The book has 320 small pages with lots of margin, small pictures, and no maps. It is organised in 8 chronological chapters, beginning with Tiber Island and Forum Boarium, than the Forum, next the imperial part of the city and so on, ending in the 19th century really. The idea of the structure is that in this way you get an chronological overview of the city, of which different parts were indeed built in different and succeeding periods. Every chapter could be a walk, or part of it. A small problem is that you would, in each part of the city, be able to point out things which do'nt fit in, and that now and then you would have to cover quite some distance to find everything that does. In his chapter on the Baroque Mc Gregor passes from the Via del Quirinale, by way of the Palazzo Barberini to the Villa Borghese. I admit that there is a lot of Baroque to be seen, but I sincerely hope he took a bus to do so (number 10, if I am not mistaken). Mc Gregor knows Rome a lot better than I do, I presume, while behind the things he writes looms a lot more knowledge which he doesn't use. And of course, it always is a pleasure to read someone who obviously loves Rome very much. And yes, he writes well, and yes, it must have been fun to write the book too. Yet, Rome from the ground up is really nothing more than a travelguide, without the facilities that normally accompany such a book. I find the title a bit of a gimmick and also the only pretentious part of the book. What is meant, is that a chronological presentation of Rome is from the ground up.
I guess the problem with Rome from the ground up is who its reader is supposed to be. Although the author himself suggest that while "the book stands on its own as a portrait of the city, its format and organisation also makes Rome from the ground up a useful guide to travelers", I don 't think I agree, on both points that is. As a guide it is not of much use, and you would be better off buying a Blue Guide (still the best). As a book to read at home it is only of use if you know Rome well. But then, if you know Rome well, this is no longer the sort of book you read. The long descriptions of streets, palazzi, museums etc. which you don't see, can be very fatiguing. As a travel guide it doesn't work. The author seems to have guessed the problems readers could have with his book. "Maps can be had free everywhere in Rome", he says, "and updating guides all the time has become useless in these modern internet-times." I find that rather silly. When you are walking through Rome, internet is not of much use. Having a map and a guide at the same time is in practice laborious. On the other hand I agree that you will always need a good map. But it is nice if text and maps are integrated in a sensible way, as long as you are walking, especially since Rome is not New York. I usually take several guides with me. At the same time Rome from the ground up, although well written, is also somewhat superficial, even while it has some nice personal touches. But if you for instance would really visit the musea which are described in the book, the texts there wouldn't be of much use. You might even have problems finding the entrance of the place you try to visit, or not find it at all. Ostia isn't there, the catacombs aren't, and 20th century EUR, the part of the city started under Mussolini, and finished after the second world war, gets no treatment, which I find a pity. And it wouldn't be fair to complain about that to the author. A guide doesn't have to deliver an ongoing story and can structure its text in an easier way. And still the Blue Guide needs more than 600 pages. In short, while using Rome from the ground up as a guide would not be comfortable, reading it at home is not much use too. Bit of a waste really.
Comprehensive and Illuminating.......2006-01-14
I thought I knew Rome well after living there for several months studying its' architecture, art, and urban structure, but I was constantly delighted by this book's comprehensive scope and illuminative details. McGregor's method of looking at each era of the city through a region's buildings, urban fabric, and artistic treasures is a great way of organizing what can otherwise be an impossible avalanche of information. This method may not be for everyone - if want to pick up a book to find out who built a particular part of the Lateran under what pope, buy the Blue Guide. If you want to know why something was built and how that "why" has affected the physical structure of the city over millennia, this is the book for you. The photographs are magnificent and correlate well with the text, and as for the lack of maps, IMHO you're better off buying a pocket map for a couple of Euro that shows the entire area at a decent scale in order to get a handle on the whole thing, rather than a wee page-sized map that doesn't do the subject justice let alone help you find your way around.
The Key to Rome.......2006-01-04
This is a great book. It must be daunting to attempt to write a new book about Rome, about which everything has already been said, and said better. But this is a truly imaginative and original book. I've been to Rome several times and love the city and I own several guide books. But this is my favorite book on Rome. It is useful as a guide book but is really a long scholarly essay on the city bringing up-to-date scholarship into focus and creating a vivid sense of the city as it was at various moments in its history. The problem with Rome is that almost everywhere you look around you are surrounded with the remnants of classical times, Mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque Romes all mixed together. But "Rome from the Ground up" brings to life a series of cities which existed in succession as the result of changing natural and cultural and historical forces. Usually the more detailed a guide book is the more it fails to capture the likeness of the city it is portraying, but this one manages to be very detailed, and to succeed especially well at sketching the perspectives into which everything fits.
The illustrations are small, but they are extremely well photographed and selected to go with the text. The alternation between the high quality contemporary photographs and the engravings of architectural facades and plans, and paintings is beautiful. And the two historical maps which are the endpapers of the book are very helpful in imagining what the city looked like "then" which is what one is always doing when walking in Rome.
This is the one book on Rome you will want to own as the key to all the other books on Rome you may have.
Entertaining and enlightening.......2006-01-04
Rome from the Ground Up will entertain and enlighten both frequent visitors to Rome and those who have yet to see the city, both the determined walker of itineraries and the armchair traveler. Those intending to use the book as a guide should turn first to the last chapter, "Information," where McGregor describes the itinerary traced in each of the book's historical chapters and provides both the briefest and most practical guide I have seen to useful information for visitors to Rome. (Harvard University Press has made this entire chapter, as well as current links to the websites recommended there by McGregor, available on its website, www.hup.harvard.edu.) The illustrations are colorful and have been chosen to complement the text; the historical maps on the endpapers show both the entire plan of the classical city and the most important regions of the post-classical city (the Vatican, Trastevere, and the Campo Marzio). It is the combination of elegant prose with sharp observation, however, which makes McGregor an ideal cicerone from geologic time and the Tiber's carving out of Rome's canyons through the most recent Jubilee and the very mixed signs for Rome's future.
Average customer rating:
- A misleading title and a mediocre book
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Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics: A Study of Mitsein (Modern European Philosophy)
Frederick A. Olafson
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521630940 |
Book Description
Heidegger thought seriously about the implications of human coexistence, and this book shows that conceptions of trust and responsibility that lie at the very heart of morality are to be found in the sketch of Mitsein--our being together with one another in the world--offered in Being and Time. Written by one of the preeminent interpreters of Heidegger, this book is an important statement about the basis of human sociality that is a major contribution to the continuing debates about Heidegger in particular, and ethics in general.
Customer Reviews:
A misleading title and a mediocre book.......2004-06-24
I thought this book was going to be a thorough study on Heidegger's concept of the " They " - as the title of the book implies. The reality however is that the book is the worst kind of intellectual hodgepodge mixing different ideas (Sartre, obscure intellectuals) while only occasionally touching on Heidegger. I was sorely disappointed.
Book Description
"The word `alterity' is found infrequently in Heidegger's work, yet Vallega makes the compelling case that the effort to trace the enigmatic force of alterity is at the heart of that work. Suggesting that we find in Heidegger an enactment of that enigma by looking at what he calls `exilic grounds' in Heidegger's thought, Vallega makes an important and original contribution to Heidegger scholarship. Well written, clear in its presentation of difficult issues, precise in delineating solutions to some thorny problems which come out of Heidegger, this is a provocative and exciting book."—Dennis J. Schmidt, Penn State University
As the only full-length treatment in English of spatiality in Martin Heidegger's work, this book makes an important contribution to Heidegger studies as well as to research on the history of philosophy. More generally, it advances our understanding of philosophy in terms of its "exilic" character, a sense of alterity that becomes apparent when one fully engages the temporality or finitude essential to conceptual determinations. By focusing on Heidegger's treatment of the classical difficulty of giving conceptual articulation to spatiality, the author discusses how Heidegger's thought is caught up in and enacts the temporality it uncovers in Being and Time and in his later writings. Ultimately, when understood in this manner, thought is an "exilic" experience—a determination of being that in each case comes to pass in a loss of first principles and origins and, simultaneously, as an opening to conceptual figurations yet to come. The discussion engages such main historical figures as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and indirectly Husserl, as well as contemporary European and American Continental thought.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting but not a great introduction.......2003-12-05
With a very interesting theory about "Thinking on Exilic Grounds" Vallega shows some perspectives and problems in Heideggers thoughts. While this is inspiring, this book doesn't really give you any broad overview of Heideggers thoughts on space. It focusses mostly on Sein und Zeit, and on the reason why Heidegger DOESN'T write much about space in that work. Rather I had hoped for an investigation and explanation of Heideggers later works, as these explicitely focusses on the philosophy of space. For example "Art and Space" and "Building Dwelling Thinking". Such later works are treated in only 20 pages! And again the words "exilic grounds" appear several times on each pages, as have they done all the way through the book. The interpretation somehow gets ahead of the explanation, I fell.
So this book may offer an interesting point of view concerning space, in relation to Heidegger, but isn't an introduction to Heideggers philosophy of space. A work like Strökers "Investigations in Philosophy of Space" is much more systematic and broad. It explains many keynotions, that are very helpfull in further discussion and thinking about the issue of space, whereas, roughly said, Vallega only introduces one. Ströker doesn't go that much into details about Heidegger though.
This critique applies even without considdering the high price for less than 200 pages (55 US $).
Average customer rating:
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Wehrmacht at War 1939-45: The Units and Commanders of the German Ground Forces During World War II
Andris J. Kursietis
Manufacturer: Aspekt B V Uitgeverij
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 9075323387 |
Customer Reviews:
Top Rate Professional Job.......2006-05-16
I echo what others have said about this book. It is not a fun or easy book to read but it is an excellent study of one of the most useless wastes of American soldiers in the ETO. How 28th Division CG Coda, one of the heros of D-Day, could turn into such a poor operational commander is sobering. I was also struck by how the author pointed out the weakness of the US policy (continued thru Vietnam) of plugging individual replacements into front line units with predictable disastrous results. Our current rotation of units is 100% more effective. He does all this in about a page and a half. This is indicative of the insights the author brings to the work.
Attrition warfare at its worse, chronicled at its best.......2004-11-25
Edward G. Miller's "A Dark and Bloody Ground" is a tour de force piece of academic-grade conflict history. Miller's research is solid and thorough and he covers a lot of ground in 200 or so pages, taking us from the initial commitment of American troops to the forest so oft referred to simply as "Hell" (by both sides!), through nearly three months of attrition fighting involving parts or all of TEN US Army divisions, to the final capture of the Roer River dams that lie on the other side of that seventy-odd square miles of Hell. Miller states up front that he wishes to provide a clear and concise overview of the Battles for the Hurtgen in a way previously not done. In this he is quite successful.
With respect to readability, Miller's writing style is quite easy to follow but it is made a bit choppy and (at least initially) hard to follow because he switches between American and German units frequently and unless/until the reader is familiar with which side of the line what unit numbers belong this can make the going tough. A simple use of italics to refer to German units (for example) would have gone a long way towards providing clarity for the reader. Robert Rush (or his publisher) used this tactic in his book on the Hurtgen (see comparison to Miller's book below) with great success.
The final chapter of Miller's book, entitled "Analysis" is worth the price of admission for its insights. Miller provides testimony from commanders who were there and can, looking back, see where problems arose and successes were achieved. The biggest "problem" with the battles of the Hurtgen forest, as Miller and his supporting players see it, was the lack of proper tactical goals, namely the Roer River dams. The dams were not in fact objectives until late in the game after many thousands of casualties were sustained on both sides. Until these proper objectives were articulated the US Army goal in the Hurtgen was to drive the enemy back and capture roads and settlements, as had been the case in Normandy and Brittany. Breaching the Westwall was important and laudable but the casualties were not. Hindsight is always clearer than foresight.
"A Dark and Bloody Ground" is, in the end, a solid piece of historical work worthy of a read. Despite some potential "readability" problems Miller has crafted a four star gem. Anyone interested in learning more about the Hurtgen Forest battles should check out Robert Rush's "Hell in the Hurtgen" which, unlike Miller's book which deals broadly with the whole campaign, focuses on a single 4th Division Regiment, the 22nd, and its time spent dying in the Hurtgen. In a literary sense Rush's book is superior, although both hold their own against each other on content!
Same Sad Song: Miller Covers MacDonald's First Hit.......2004-11-11
If _ A Dark and Bloody Ground: The Hurtgen Forest and the Roer River Dams 1944-1945_ (1995) were a song, it would be a cover tune first recorded by Charles B. MacDonald in 1963 (see my review of MacDonald's _The Battle of the Huertgen Forest_). Like Elvis Presley's rendition of Frank Sinatra's standard "My Way," opinion would vary as to who performed the song better. A younger generation might even hold that Presley was the original artist, while older fans would stand by Sinatra's as the better performance. The song has not changed, only the artist's style and delivery has. Such is the case with Edward G. Miller's contribution to the Huertgen Forest canon. Miller emphatically echoes MacDonald's original thesis that the American planners chose road junctions and towns as primary objectives when in fact they should have concentrated their efforts on two Roer River dams. Miller contends that the dams should have been the main objective from the onset of the campaign. If this had been the case, he argues, there would have been no need to enter the Huertgen Forest, thus eliminating the chance of becoming embroiled in a bitter contest there. In addition, Miller supports the claim that in order for the Americans to cross the Roer River successfully they first had to secure the dams to prevent the Germans from destroying them, flooding the entire region, and causing substantial delay. This last point is just the type of 20/20 hindsight that Miller and others cannot resist when supporting this argument. This is exactly what happened in February 1945, delaying the American attack crossing of the Roer River by two weeks.Miller also rehashes other criticisms such as the Americans had sacrificed mobility and firepower by entering the forest; the American planner's failure to consider the harsh weather conditions and terrain favorable to the defense, and the forest should have been by-passed altogether. As narrative history, Miller is top-notch. The author skillfully retells the sequence of events that made up the Huertgen Forest Campaign. From the VII Corps's first encounter with the forest in September 1944; the failed October attacks of the 9th Division; the tragedy of the 28th Division efforts in and around heavily fortified town of Schmidt in early November; to the renewed two-corps offensive that finally broke out of the forest. Miller covers the complete campaign with thoroughness and efficiency.Along the way, Miller conducted an enormous amount of research that includes the standard primary and secondary sources, as well as a substantial amount of correspondence and personal interviews from both American and German veterans of the fighting. The author has certainly succeeded in blending thorough analysis with readable narrative, however, he got a little careless at one point. To support a contention that Eisenhower and the high command were obsessed with reaching the Rhine River in favor of destroying German forces, Miller paraphrased Martin Blumenson in the official history. Upon checking this source, it clearly showed Blumenson was referring to Germans trapped within the Falaise Pocket in August 1944, not at the German border as Miller had hinted. The biggest question with all these notions is "how? How should the Huertgen Forest have been avoided? The author admits that it would probably been dangerous for the Americans to by-pass the forest initially, but that this does not mean First Army should have committed units time and time again in a fruitless battle of attrition. I agree! Miller states that the area north of the city of Aachen presented the best avenue of approach into Germany, yet he stops there without substantiating this claim or offering a suggestion of how this maneuver could have been carried out. How could the dams have been captured earlier? Miller implies that had there not been an American manpower shortage, they "might have succeeded" in taking the Roer River Dams in September or October. Again, the author offers no clear plan on how this would have been performed. He then goes on to state that had V Corps been reinforced with one or two regiments, it "would likely have" taken the two dams in November. "Ifs," "might haves" and "would likely haves" are not concrete enough in this unending controversy. Miller has written a fine book, equal to MacDonalds first study. That is an impressive achievement in itself. Whether you like the cover tune or the original is a matter of taste. They are both the same sad song.
A closely detailed study of the brutal fighting.......2003-06-19
A Dark And Bloody Ground: The Hurtgen Forest And The Roer River Dams, 1944-1945 by Edward G. Miller (an active-duty army ordnance officer) is a closely detailed study of the brutal fighting which took place in the Hurtgen Forest near the end of World War II. Those deadly battles in the Hurtgen Forest have been overshadowed in military history and popular imagination by the more famous "Battle of the Bulge", and yet the gripping depictions of combat, terror, and the revelations of lethal blunders in A Dark And Bloody Ground make it a truly recommended resource for avid students of Military History in general and World War II Studies in particular.
A Dark and Bloody Ground.......2002-07-02
I purchased this book as part of research I am doing. I found it to be very informative and interesting reading. The author does a wonderful job putting names of men with places throughout the book. I was even able to find reference to my Dad, Capt. Gilbert H. Fuller, 2nd Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment.
This book will prove very helpful in my writing of a WWII memorial of my parents and their contributions to the effort.
I would certainly highly recommend it to others.
Book Description
On May 12, 1945, the 6th Marine Division was nearing Naha, capital of Okinawa. To the division's front lay a low, loaf-shaped hill. It looked no different from other hills seized with relative ease over the past few days. But this hill, soon to be dubbed, "Sugar Loaf," was very different indeed. Part of a complex of three hills, Sugar Loaf formed the western anchor of General Mitsuru Ushijima's Shuri Line, which stretched from coast to coast across the island. Sugar Loaf was critical to the defense of that line, preventing U.S. forces from turning the Japanese flank. Over the next week, the Marines made repeated attacks on the hill losing thousands of men to death, wounds, and combat fatigue. Not until May 18 was Sugar Loaf finally seized. Two days later, the Japanese mounted a battalion-sized counterattack in an effort to regain their lost position, but the Marines held. Ironically, these losses may not have been necessary. General Lemuel Shepherd, Jr., had argued for an amphibious assault to the rear of the Japanese defense line, but his proposal was rejected by U.S. Tenth Army Commander General Simon Bolivar Buckner. That refusal led to a controversy that has continued to this day.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Combat Narrative.......2003-02-15
James H. Hallas's book `Killing Ground on Okinawa' is one of those books that should be in any decent military history library. Having previously read his account of the fighting on Peleliu, `The Devil's Anvil' I couldn't wait to read this account of the battle for Sugar Loaf Hill. I am happy to say that I was not disappointed in this book.
The author allows the Marines who took part in the fighting tell the story and its incredible to read what these blokes went through for what looks like a very small piece of Pacific Island real estate. The accounts of the fighting men are detailed and to the point and you are forced to sit back and think of how these men endured this hell, it is almost beyond the comprehension of today's generation.
The narrative is full of details but the real guts of the book is the first-hand accounts by the men involved in the assaults against the well constructed Japanese defensive positions. Not only were the Japanese well dug in and protected but they used their firepower and weapons to great advantage. They wrought destruction upon the advancing marines. Men and machines were continually being knocked out with no gain being made against the determined Japanese defence.
Finally after a heroic night attack the marines secured a toehold on Sugar Loaf but then had to hold against Japanese counter attacks and massive counter fire from artillery, mortars, machine guns and snipers. The casualty list for the marine units were massively high causing some questioning of the strategy and tactics used by the Army High Command. In over seven days of fighting the 6th Marine Division suffered over 2,000 casualties fighting for this pimple of a hill which secured the Japanese Shuri Line.
The only fault that I could find with this book was the standard of the maps and photographs. I am sure that they could have been of a higher calibre. Overall this is a great story of combat, dedication, bravery and Espirt de Corp. I think it is one of the better combat accounts of the Pacific Theatre that I have read in some years and I am certain that anyone interested in the Pacific War would be fascinated by this account.
Wow.......2003-01-12
This is a great telling of what is often an untold battle. These Marines went through hell and back and this is an excellent telling of their hardships.
A ferocious Fight to the finish!.......2001-01-21
This book is another amazing account of a ferocious battle engaged by the US Marines at the close of WWII at terrible personal sacrifice. It ranks among the best narratives I have read. If you want to take a trip into the trenches of Okinawa with the men who bled their, this book is a must read. The story is fast paced, action packed, gripping and heart rending. I cannot imagine what the outcome of the Pacific war against the Japanese would have been without the sacrifice these brave young men made on behalf of freedom.
A great, eye-opening Read.......1999-02-18
As a proud member of the U.S. Marines, I can't help to be a fan of the colorfull and violent history that is the legacy of my Marine Corps. This book is a fine example of the amazing feats that American Marines (with a few Army guys) have made the trademark of the Marine Way. I whole-heartedly recomend this book as is is very fast-paced and leaves you with a constant feeling of amazement and respect for all the men that were at that fatefull battle.Having traveled to Okinawa this summer, I had a chance to take an amazing tour of the historic battle sites on Okinawa island. After reading this, I'm begging to go back.
Excellent battle history........1996-10-25
Amid the VE-Day euphoria of 1945, Okinawa was captured at a
cost (including civilians) of over 200,000 lives. Mr.
Hallas persuasive argues (with others) that had Marine General
Lemuel Shepherd's end-run plan been adopted, many of those lives
might have been spared. The narrative particularly focuses on the key to
Japanese defenses, Sugar Loaf Hill, where the 6th Marine
Division lost over 6,000 men in a brutal slugging match
unsurpassed in the annals of American courage. Meticulously
researched and based on interviews with nearly 100 susvivors,
this is a fitting tribute to the struggle, largely unknown
to most Americans.
Average customer rating:
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On European Ground
Alan Cohen
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0226112942 |
Book Description
A profound visual meditation on the trauma that scars twentieth-century Europe, Alan Cohen's On European Ground considers the battlefields of World War I, the Nazi death camps, and the Berlin Wall, and records the distance between what we remember about these places and what we can still observe in them today. By walking these sites and photographing the very ground in which their history has dissolved, Cohen opens a space for reflection on their complex gravity and legacy.
Cohen's images achieve a solemn beauty even as they engage history at its most topical. Pictures of trenches and bunkers at the battlefields of Somme and Verdun explore the tension between the violence of the past and the inscrutability of its remnants. Photographs from the grounds of Dachau and Auschwitz solicit a provocative dialogue between the ordinariness of these sites today and their haunting memory. They teach us, as the New Art Examiner notes, "that the living perceptual connection to the Holocaust is vanishing." Images of the Berlin Wall show only the footprint of the barricade that once separated two hostile ideologies. They record the physical erosion and looming disappearance of the Wall while capturing its reappearance as a memorialized abstraction.
Accompanying the photographs in On European Ground are essays by Sander Gilman and Jonathan Bordo, as well as an interview with Cohen by critic Roberta Smith of the New York Times. The essays present both an introduction to and aesthetic analysis of Cohen's work, while the interview discusses the intractable problems of history and memory that his photographs so uniquely capture.
Customer Reviews:
very disappointing.......2007-01-18
I had high hopes after reading the Editorial Review and seeing the photo on the book cover. But I have to say this is the most disappointing book of photographs I've purchased in a long time. For me, the best photographs grab my attention with little or no explanation of what I'm looking at. That said, I do enjoy the reading the photographers' comments regarding location and why they took the photograph.
On European Ground is exactly that - the book focuses on the ground of old WWI battlefields, Nazi death camps and the Berlin Wall. Included are photos of steps, brick streets, railroad tracks, gravel, dirt and fields. This could have been interesting, but the photographer chose to zero in on his subjects so closely that we cannot tell where he is. In many of photos I found myself struggling to find something that would give the photo a sense of scale. Mr. Cohen seems to think that we will be moved by his photograph of a manhole cover once we are told that it is at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. Or by his photo of sun-baked, cracked dirt as long as the words Buchenwald are below the photo. These photos do not tell a story.
This is the worst kind of elitist photography. I cannot stand the concept that I will appreciate a photo more once the photographer explains it to me. As far as I am concerned, a photograph has to stand on its own merits. If you have to explain it to me then you have lost me. The photo should grab me and draw me in. I should want to read about it. In the back of On European Ground the author provides notes on each set of photographs. So I spent two hours looking at a photo, then jumping to the back of the book to try to figure out why he thought this piece of ground required a photograph. Very frustrating. For photos this unremarkable, the author would have done us a favor by putting the notes next to the photo.
The book itself is nicely done, and the photographs are well-printed. I really wanted to like this book, but it was not to be.
If the concept interests you, I would suggest you buy Deathly Still: Pictures of Concentration Camps by Dirk Reinartz and Christian Graf von Krockow.
Book Description
In The Native Ground, Kathleen DuVal argues that it was Indians rather than European would-be colonizers who were more often able to determine the form and content of the relations between the two groups. Along the banks of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers, far from Paris, Madrid, and London, European colonialism met neither accommodation nor resistance but incorporation. Rather than being colonized, Indians drew European empires into local patterns of land and resource allocation, sustenance, goods exchange, gender relations, diplomacy, and warfare. Placing Indians at the center of the story, DuVal shows both their diversity as well as our contemporary tendency to exaggerate the influence of Europeans in places far from their centers of power. Europeans were at times more dependent on Indians than Indians were on them.
Now the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, this native ground was originally populated by ancient indigenous peoples, became part of the French and Spanish empires, and in 1803 was bought by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. Drawing on archaeology and oral history, as well as documents in English, French, and Spanish, DuVal chronicles the successive migrations of Indians and Europeans to the area from precolonial times through the 1820s. These myriad native groups--Mississippians, Quapaws, Osages, Chickasaws, Caddos, and Cherokees--and the waves of Europeans--French, Spanish, British, and Americans--all competed with one another for control of the region.
Only in the nineteenth century did outsiders initiate a future in which one people would claim exclusive ownership of the mid-continent. After the War of 1812, these settlers came in numbers large enough to overwhelm the region's inhabitants and reject the early patterns of cross-cultural interdependence. As citizens of the United States, they persuaded the federal government to muster its resources on behalf of their dreams of landholding and citizenship.
Book Description
Including extensive information only found in scattered sources or official documents and archives, this book provides detailed coverage of all organizational aspects of the Marine Corps units in World War II's Pacific Theater. It gives in-depth background information on the units' functions, evolution, designation practices, tactical organization of combat units, and extensive statistical and technical data including 21 maps. It covers atypical subjects such as Marines in China, and female and African American marines. Extensive additional data on weapons, U.S. Navy and Army backgrounds, Japanese Army and Navy backgrounds, code names, and comparative ranks of U.S. forces appear in the appendices. The book is a valuable one-stop resource for researchers, historians, military history enthusiasts, and war gamers. As a complete reference source on the Marine Corps, the book provides an evolutionary study of the Marine Corps' wartime expansion and organization. It closely examines the prewar and wartime growth of the Marine Corps as well as its postwar reduction while providing complete background information on all ground and air units in the Pacific and their evolution. Information on each Marine Corps unit includes: dates in combat, location and code name of landing beaches, time of landing, island operation code names, date the island was declared secure, task organization for combat order of battle of the opposing Japanese units and their casualties, attached U.S. Army and U.S. Navy units, and much more. The book is the definitive source of organizational information.
Customer Reviews:
Indispensible research resource.......2005-02-07
This book is everything the previous reviewers have said it is, a unique and indispensable resource on the World War II Marine Corps. It is not cheap, of course, but it saved me many hours of digging through archives, not to mention the time spent getting to them.
The main chapters cover: 1. USMC organizational profile; 2. USMC shore establishment; 3. Fleet Marine Force (FMF); 4. Amphibious corps and forces -- Marine divisions, brigades, and tactical groups (including a summary of the history and actions of each); 5. FMF ground units (including a brief summary of the history and actions of each regiment and significant independent unit); 6. FMF ground unit operations (brief description of each major action, with order of battle on both sides and summary of results, including one or more maps for most); 7. USMC aviation profile; 8. USMC aviation units (to squadron and detachment level, with brief summary entry for each); 9. FMF aviation unit campaign participation.
There are useful appendixes covering the characteristics and utilization of weapons, aircraft, and landing ships and craft, as well as: a recap of USMC casualties; unit citations and commendations (as well as a statistical summary of individual awards); succinct but useful summary information on the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, and Japanese forces; a listing of code names; and a comprehensive table of comparative rates and ranks.
As noted by another reviewer, the tables of organization are not always so detailed or complete as might be wished. Those who have been directly involved in military operations, however, will know that such tables always represent objectives rather than reality and that the actual organization is constantly in flux -- particularly so in war. One can get a detailed look at unit personnel strength (in most cases) by consulting the muster rolls (available on microfilm), but it is not practical to try to include all this information in a book even of this size.
With its oversized (7" × 10") page format and 600 text pages one would expect this book to pack a lot of information. The author manages to provide more even than might be expected by organizing the material well, which also makes it easy to find what you are looking for in this sea of data. Despite its "just the facts" orientation, readers will find many fascinating tid-bits. It is inevitable that in a book with this much information some bits will not be quite correct, but errors are few and inconsequential.
Most people probably neither need nor can afford this book for themselves, and the publisher has wisely positioned it as a library title. If you have any need or desire to study the Pacific War in depth, however, you will definitely want to urge your library to acquire it. This book is naturally complemented by Rottman's _World War II Pacific Island Guide : A Geo-Military Study_ (ISBN 0313313954), which provides details of the places where the Marines fought.
Will O'Neil
True to the title and more ..........2001-12-12
This book has excellent (repeat excellent) depth of information on the Marine Corps Order of Battle, as expected from the title. It also contains very interesting lineage and background data and a wealth of related information. I would rate it excellent in these regards. Anyone with an interest in these subjects should have a copy of this book in their library.
I was a little disappointed to find the Tables of Organization (T/O) data somewhat less complete. There is considerable data buried in text and higher level summary data (such as number of men and major weapons at company level) in the tables, but unfortunately the book does not contain the detailed T/O of Marine units that I had hoped for. This is especially true for pre-war and early war organizations and for ancillary units (like Engineer and Pioneer units). The Bibliography does mention that Tables of Organization are retained by the Marine Corps Historical Center in original paper format and are not complete. This would make the accumulation of complete Tables of Organization a difficult task, but perhaps Mr. Rottman and/or Mr. Frank will be able to turn their considerable research abilities to detailed T/Os in a future work.
All in all an excellent work and one that I recommend very highly!
Outstanding! A maserpiece of research and scholarship.......2001-12-09
This book is truly one the best books on the topic of military orders of battle. Not only does Rottman present the complete order of battle of the USMC in WWII, but he also discusses the changes in its TOE and the doctrine behind the organization. Not only does he present a detailed OB that covers all land and air units, he also presents a battle by battle OB as well. This book is a must have for serious fans of WWII history, the USMC, and Order of Battle afficianados. This book will be a resource to scholars for generations to come.
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