Book Description
The failure of the marriage between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has always been considered from one of two conflicting viewpoints: hers or his. Missing for more than four decades has been a third perspective on the events that brought their marriage to its ill-fated end, the story of another—the other—woman: Hughes’ mistress Assia Wevill.
Like Plath before her, Assia shared her life with Hughes for seven years, until she took her own life and that of their daughter at the age of forty-two, in a manner that nearly replicated Plath’s suicide six years earlier. Drawing on previously unavailable documents and private papers, including Assia’s diaries and her intimate correspondence with Hughes, this book shows the vital influence Assia exerted on the poet and his work, and the uneasy life they shared under the long shadow of Plath.
A Lover of Unreason is the first-ever full-length biography of Assia Wevill. It casts a keen light, and explores the emergence of a singular twentieth-century woman. Three-times divorcée, career woman, mistress, and single mother, Assia Wevill openly defied the conventions of a censorious pre-feminist Britain and mesmerized men and women alike with her quick-mind and exotic beauty.
Customer Reviews:
It's about time.......2007-08-14
I find "A lover of unreason: The life and tragic death of Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes' doomed love" completely irresistible and very well researched and written. Those of us lucky enough to be at the Plath Symposium in 2002 at Indiana were teased with some of the information presented in the biography. Shock and awe spread throughout the auditorium when Koren and Negev spoke about the Plath/Hughes trip to Ireland, the deception, and the Hughes/Wevill trip to Spain. That was barely the tip of the iceberg in this very complicated situation.
The success of A Lover of Unreason in my opinion comes from presenting a very full and human picture of Assia; a woman who has been alternately ignored and raked over coals and not given sufficient attention. Here is a woman who was far, far from perfect and revered only for her uncommon and undeniable beauty, presented in a way that reminded me much of how Plath was presented in Bitter Fame. I was not expecting a book of idolatry, but I also was not expecting to find that Wevill did have some redeemable qualities. This is truly an enlightening read and brings an important piece of the Plath/Hughes puzzle closer to completion.
Assia's journals, according to the text, are in private hands. They shed some very crucial information into not just her own mind and life, but also into Plath's and Hughes?. I would not mind being introduced to those private hands! I wonder if there are any plans to publish them or to deposit them with an archive?
Yes and No...but more No.......2007-07-08
Quite simply, "Lover of Unreason" is educational. The material is very provoking and rewarding--especially if you hold a deep and tenacious grudge against Ted Hughes. My issue with the book is strictly in its presentation. It's a dull and obvious take on a biography. Even the cover art is uninspired. I suggest waiting for someone else to write a more gripping account of this irrefutably fascinating woman's life.
Excellent service..........2007-05-20
This order arrived surprisingly quick & was in exactly the condition described. I will definetely use this method of ordering again!! Super easy with no hassle...perfect!
Great Read.......2007-05-19
I have read several biographies of Sylvia Plath, and one of Ted Hughes, but Assia seems to have been the forgotten point of the triangle. This book was very informative, giving lots of insight as to what made these people tick, and explains some of the mysteries of the lives of these three people. A very interesting book.
A great biography, with other implications..........2007-05-13
I've never written a review before, but I saw blurbs for this book in everything from my local paper to Vogue... So naturally, being a wannabe poet and Sylvia-lover, I wanted to read it. It is a very frank account of the life of a remarkably unique woman, her loves, her ultimate weaknesses and her final end. It forces an examination of self: here is a strong, beautiful woman, not unlike her predecessor, Sylvia Plath; who had an intense capacity for life and joy, but ultimately measures her value only by the love of a man. It is also an enlightening view of history: Assia's life spans the beginning of the nation of Israel, World War II, and the so-called "liberation" of women in the 1960's. Also interesting is that the very existence of Assia was hidden from the public for decades and her true identity revealed only recently. Recommended for anyone who ever read "The Bell Jar" and wondered why??
Amazon.com
Karen Elizabeth Gordon is no ordinary grammarian, and her works (including The New Well-Tempered Sentence, Torn Wings and Faux Pas, and The Disheveled Dictionary)--are no ordinary books of grammar. A special edition of the 1984 classic, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is populated by a wickedly decadent cast of gargoyles, mastodons, murderous debutantes, and, yes, vampires (both transitive and otherwise), who cavort and consort in order to illustrate basic principles of grammar. The sentences are intoxicating--"How he loved to dangle his participles, brush his forelock off his forehead with his foreleg, and gaze into the aqueous depths"--but the rules and their explanations are as sound as any you might find in Strunk and White. Outlining the building blocks of the English language, from parts of speech to phrases and clauses, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire goes on to exorcise such grammatical demons as passive voice, fragments, comma splices, and run-on sentences. At last, a handbook of grammar you will actually want to read. In the words of Gordon's preface, "Howling, exploding, crackling, flickering with new life-forms, and drunk on fresh blood (some of mine is certainly missing), this deluxe edition reminds us on every page that words, too, have hoofs and wings to transport us far and deep."
Book Description
Playful and practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit and the blackest of humor. Black-and-white illustrations throughout.
Customer Reviews:
Grammar goes beyond boring.......2007-03-05
The subject of English grammar tends to conjure up vision of stern gray-haired teachers who look like they suck on lemons between classes. This book breaks the stereotype while achieving the almost impossible: making the acquisition of a firm grasp of grammatical conventions enjoyable.
Starting with the basic of the sentence and progressing through parts of speech, and the nuances of verbs and pronouns, the illustrations attract the reader's attentions and the offbeat and tongue-in-cheek examples keep it. Progressing through more complicated structures and finishing off with sentence construction, this is the most fun I have ever had while reviewing sound grammatical style.
The somewhat risqué nature of some of the pictures and content keep this book from being a staple in the average classroom, but its judicious use can pique the interest of even the most grammar-adverse student.
Personally, I would not allow any high school student to unrestricted access to this book because it would destroy the no-fun, sourpuss, and asexual image that English teachers have worked so hard and so long to create. Students actually wanting to read a grammar book would bring absolute chaos the mundane universe of language.
Not much to say, really..........2007-02-28
Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire (Pantheon, 1993)
Gordon followed up The Well-Tempered Sentence with The Transitive Vampire, so it stood to reason that the tenth-anniversary revision of the first would would be followed by one for the second. And there's nothing terribly new here; once again, sticklers will find a few things to attack, while the rest of the world will be perfectly happy with everything represented here. If you liked the first one, you'll like the second. ***
Didn't care for the book..........2006-11-03
Didn't care for the book. I don't think it's easy to follow or well organized.
I think everyone should own a copy!.......2006-08-15
This is my very favorite grammar reference book of all time. With Karen Gordon at the chalkboard, learning grammar does not have to be boring.
The Deluxe Transitive Vampire.......2006-04-14
Absolutely wonderful, fun book. I used it recently to teach adults in my classes on Memoir. They needed help in understanding verbs and basic sentence structure--very helpful and a great teaching tool!
Book Description
How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business
"The real value of this book is that it makes SOA and Web services, which are critical and business-transforming, crystal-clear to the layman, both business and IT leaders. The book stays focused on the real-world issues facing business and government institutions today. In an industry full of experts of many stripes, Ron and Jason are the real thing: savvy, experienced, and realistic. They have produced a must-read book for management."
—Paul Lipton, Senior Architect, Unicenter Web Services and Application Management Computer Associates
"This is by far the finest publication on SOA of our time. From cover to back, Service Orient or Be Doomed! strips away the layers of confusion most IT stakeholders face when confronted with enterprise architecture, and illustrates pragmatic and practical paths towards a sustainable and efficient enterprise architecture. Both the technically savvy and the bean counters will enjoy this book that speaks to the critical points they need to understand."
—Duane A. Nickull Senior Standards Strategist, Adobe Systems, Inc. Chair, OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee Vice chair, United Nations CEFACT (UN/CEFACT)
"If you're looking for a guide that's based on reality, this is it. These guys know how you can service-orient your enterprise and have the best chance of success. This book is the best SOA tool you can buy. I'm recommending it to everyone."
—Dave Linthicum, CEO, BRIDGEWERX
"Jason and Ron are experts on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and have written the first book that is aimed at helping a nontechnical businessperson understand why the SOA computing revolution is critical to business. Rather than provide a nerdy death via buzzword book, Jason and Ron take a humorous, clever, and insightful romp through this new technology and how it impacts business in general."
—Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital
Authors Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer-senior analysts for highly respected IT advisory and analysis firm ZapThink-say it all in the title of their new book, Service Orient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business. That is, if you fail to service orient your company, you will fail in competing with the organizations that do.
This provocative new book takes service orientation out of its more familiar technological surroundings within service-oriented architecture and introduces it as a philosophy that advocates its rightful place within a business context, redefining it as a new way of thinking about organizing your business and its processes.
Informal, challenging, and intelligent in style, Service Orient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business shows you how you can best use technology resources to meet your company's business goals and empower your company to go from "stuck" to "competitive."
Customer Reviews:
Not a credible book.......2007-05-26
I was very disappointed with this book. The authors do not appear to have done adequate research, or were unable to draw reasonable conclusions. Here is a quote from page 27 where they discuss what they call the IT Rat's Nest.
"Remember, the reason people go down the path to the Rat's Nest is because at every step they select the cheapest, most expediant options and don't consider the long-term gains over short-term benefits"
What a bunch of crap. I have worked as an employee and as a consultant at 50 different companies and I can say that this is overwhelmingly NOT the reason for the rat's nest (which I agree exists). In reality, there are many reasons for the Rat's Nest including technology shifts, skill changes/availability, changes in hw/sw economics, changes in business and most frequently mergers/acquisitions. Yes, customers sometime take the cheap path, but often they just make mistakes, or are affected by other events, while they are trying to do the correct long-term thing. A well-designed DCE or CORBA app, no matter how well designed, is a legacy problem at this point no matter whether the IT people took a short-term or long-term approach. This is a big difference and the authors should have discussed that rather than copping out with a superficial, categorization. They might discuss all this in better detail later in the book but after 50 pages (my personal limit for giving the benfit of the doubt) I stopped reading this book. At that point I no longer thought the authors had the credibility to offer solutions when they clearly do not even understand the problem.
Can anyone make a recommendation for a more insightful SOA book?
A great source of ideas for business people.......2007-05-09
Service Orient or be Doomed is an excellent approach to SOA for non-technical people who wants to make IT based businesses flexible enough to match markets evolution.
This is my sixth purchase of the book. I bought it for my personal reading during 2006, and after that I decided to buy additional copies to give as a gift to some of my business colleagues here in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Great book, easy reading and full of concepts and new ideas. I strongly recommend it.
Javier Bazo
Buenos Aires
Argentina
A must read for executives, managers, architects & analysts.......2007-03-06
Overview
Having read a number of other SOA books, I've developed a pretty sound foundation of what SOA is in terms of the technologies that form its basis, and the relative importance of introducing a service abstraction layer between the business and IS domains.
However, this book (Service Orient or Be Doomed!) caught my attention for two fundamental reasons:
1. It has a strong Amazon rating, and
2. It provides a business (vice technical) perspective on the importance of SOA
I started reading the book late last week and quickly found it to be very well written and absolutely compelling with respect to the message that it conveys. The book's message looks something like this:
* Companies need to be more agile than ever in order to compete in today's economy
* Existing technical solutions are inflexible and prevent business agility
* Service-Oriented Architecture can result in increased business agility, more flexible technical solutions and significant ROI over time
* To make SOA viable, the business itself must become Service-Oriented, which means the technical concepts of abstraction, encapsulation and design-by-contract are now important business constructs that result in a more loosely coupled relationship between business activities (e.g. processes) and automation technologies
* SOA requires the "business" and "technology" domains to converge around a new business organizational construct referred to as service domains
* IS must rethink its organization and technology strategies to better align with the Service-Oriented business
* Resistance to Service-Orientation and SOA is expected because of the level of requisite change
* To overcome the expected resistance and create business agility, SOA must be championed by a senior person or group
* SOA must be planned for, and must begin with small, targeted pilot implementations
* SOA (a discipline) is not equal to Web Services (a technology)
As one editorial review put it:
"Jason and Ron are experts on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and have written the first book that is aimed at helping a nontechnical businessperson understand why the SOA computing revolution is critical to business. Rather than provide a nerdy death via buzzword book, Jason and Ron take a humorous, clever, and insightful romp through this new technology and how it impacts business in general."
I couldn't agree more. The authors obviously understand the technical side of SOA, but they've gone the extra mile and actually provided a more business-side treatment of Service-Orientation that makes a very strong case for the need for most businesses to implement changes - and in many cases large, difficult changes - or ... in their words ... be doomed to inflexibility and failure.
The first five or six chapters of the book focus almost entirely on building a case for the need for Service-Orientation by providing historical perspectives on such things as the dot-com bubble and even back as far as the Industrial Revolution. For non-technical readers (e.g. business folks), the first few chapters may be a little ho-hum, but for the technical reader, the content of these chapters lays a strong foundation upon which the remainder of the book is based. In particular, the authors demonstrate how existing technologies, including middleware, EAI and even standalone Web Services, handcuff the business by creating less-than-flexible solutions that are very resistant to changes ... changes that the business MUST make in order to remain efficient and competitive.
More than any other SOA book that I have read (and I've read most of them), this book effectively makes that case that new shared mental models need to be developed and advocated wherein business- and technical-concerns are integrated into a holistic view of the business that is centered on the notion of a business Service that depends on an array of equally important business resources, e.g. people, material, technology, time, money, etc. In effect, the existing walls between the business and IS domains need to be removed, and in their place a service layer abstraction created that allows the business to compose solutions from Services that conform to meta-data driven "contracts."
The net effect of this approach is a more loosely coupled continuum between business operations and the resources (including technology) that facilitate those operations.
However, this new Service-Orientation and overarching SOA landscape introduces new complexities and abstractions as payment for the increased levels of flexibility and business agility. To manage this new complexity, the business needs enterprise architects and enterprise architecture that drive the Service-Orientation perspective into the enterprise's SOA architecture, and manage the organizations "meta-requirement" for overall business agility.
The authors suggest, and I agree, that a new breed of "Service-Oriented Architect" is desperately needed by the business in order to champion the SOA principles and architectural mandates represented by the Service-Oriented approach.
As an example of the sort of quantum changes that need to be made by a company in order to embrace and adopt Service-Orientation and SOA, the authors note that Services are never really "complete", nor are their requirements ever stable. Instead, the business requirements that a Service may address are subject to frequent change as the business continues to adjust its goals and objectives to meet a continuously fluctuating business environment. Therefore, customary software development lifecycles (SDLC) (e.g., waterfall, spiral, iterative, etc.) are not applicable to Service development because SDLCs assume that a project is completed and a deliverable is promoted into a lifecycle that results in the deployed artifact eventually being retired. However, in the Service-Oriented paradigm, a Service is never completed in the sense that development work is done. Instead, the Service is constantly subjected to new requirements and ongoing refactoring activities in order to keep the service relevant and useful to the business.
Perhaps most importantly, the book puts the concept of a Service squarely in a business context and shows how loosely coupled Services can be composed into business solutions without any direct knowledge of (aka coupling to) underlying technical resources that ultimately implement the service. The authors go to great lengths to demonstrate how important the resulting "loosely coupled" relationship between business logic and program logic is to the business' overall agility.
Lastly, I thought that the authors did a fantastic job of demonstrating how current technologies and solution techniques are too narrowly scoped and result in overly tight coupling between business and technical resources, inconsistent with the requirements of Service-Orientation and SOA. Thus, they make a strong and logically based argument that major changes are needed in order to successfully bridge the business and technology concerns into a cohesive enterprise model that exhibits the necessary quality attributes needed to make the business more agile.
Without reservation, I would highly recommend this book to any company stakeholder and all managers, technicians, architects, analysts and executives interested in and/or concerned about business agility, Service-Orientation, SOA, risk management, process control or corporate compliance (just to name a few).
Strengths
Overall, I thought the book's greatest strength was its underlying "business side" emphasis relative to the whole Service-Orientation issue. The authors set out to convince businesspeople of the need to adopt Service-Orientation and SOA, and I believe they did a great job of doing just that.
While some of the historical background material may be old hat for some readers, I thought the authors did a good job of comparative analysis and in doing so provided a larger referential foundation that was effectively reused throughout the book.
Also, I found the authors' treatment of the concept of loose coupling to be one of the best non-technical examples that I've seen in quite some time. I expect that all readers, especially business managers and executives, will grasp the otherwise heavy-weight concept of coupling in such a way that the virtues of SOA will become more apparent from a business operations perspective, rather than a purely technical (e.g. encapsulation and data hiding) one.
I thought the authors did a great job of describing the role of an architect, and in particular the unique idiosyncrasies of the Service-Oriented Architect role. Additionally, they made a very strong case for the need for an Enterprise Architecture group and went so far as to suggest that EA may need to "own" the company's SOA effort and be properly budgeted to do so.
Finally, I think one of the book's most compelling arguments is that major changes are needed vis-à-vis the status quo in order to realize the business benefits manifest in the Service-Oriented paradigm. Implementing Web Services is not enough (it's actually an anti-pattern (read: bad)). Rather, the business needs to incorporate IT into the business planning process, and IT needs to prepare for that role by rethinking its integration strategies (in particular) and probably implementing a non-trivial reorganization in order to eliminate silos and embrace service domains.
Weaknesses
Overall, I didn't find many weaknesses with the book.
However, if I had to finger one aspect of the book with a critical eye (which doesn't necessarily imply that it is a "weakness"), I would perhaps suggest that the books content is very poignant in its assessment of the current state of IT practices, and clearly suggests that more than one legacy IT role may be on the chopping block when a well-formed SOA practice is finally implemented. I expect that some readers may quake in their boots when they read some of the harder-hitting assertions made by the authors. However, I tend to agree with most (if not all) of the author's points.
On second thought, there is one observation that I made which I am comfortable noting as a weakness. Throughout the book, the authors note that a Service is exposed as a Contracted Interface that defines the relationship between the service consumer and the service provider. Given the critical role of the Contract and the central role that it plays in the whole SOA service abstraction layer, I found it noteworthy that the authors never really provide an example of what a contacted interface would look like (format) or consist of (content model).
Otherwise, no other weaknesses noted.
Recommendations
I would highly recommend this book to all interested parties of SOA or Service-Oriented business architecture and analysis.
Perhaps more importantly, I would encourage the book's widest dissemination among business and IS leadership teams. Ultimately, the book's message is intended for them.
I would have given it more than 5 stars if I could have!.......2006-09-29
I truly would have given this book more than 5 stars if I could have, but Amazon allows only a maximum of 5. This is the only book that I know of that treats the notion of service orientation from a "business first" perspective, portraying technology as an enabling factor rather than a primary factor. And that is exactly the way it should be.
The authors also provide very valuable historical information regarding "how we got here" (e.g. history of the World Wide Web, etc.) which is a necessary part of understanding and applying the concept of service orientation. I highly recommend this book to both business and technical audiences. For business folks, it will provide them with a deep understanding and appreciation for service orientation and - as the title says - how it can truly change your business; and for technical folks, it will enable them to "stretch their mind" to see the true potential of technology when it is applied and viewed in the manner conveyed in this book.
A must-read...the only book of its kind. Bravo Jason and Ron!!!
Joseph Chiusano
Great SOA Overview for Non-Techies.......2006-07-30
Right from the beginning, the authors warn that this is not a technology book, but rather a business book about how new technologies will affect the business, what advantages they can bring, and how they will affect the organization. The book has a great outline which covers the topic from soup to nuts.
An entire chapter is devoted to the concepts of architecture, Enterprise Architecture and the relationship of SOA and EA. The authors clearly understand, and stress, the importance of an enterprise level approach to service orientation and identify the EA / SOA organization as the likely or best place for many of the artifacts, initiatives and other factors critical to SOA.
If you're struggling to explain SOA to the business or you're trying to implement or introduce SOA into your organization, pick up a copy of this book and pass it on the manager, business, CIO or CEO. This will be a great aid in getting the concepts of SOA (and incidentally, the importance of architecture) across to them.
Book Description
This landmark study was first published in English by the Naval Institute in 1955 and was added to the Classics of Naval Literature series in 1992. Widely acknowledged for its valuable Japanese insights into the battle that turned that tide of war in the Pacific, the book has made a great impact on American readers over the years. Two Japanese naval aviators who participated in the operation provide an unsparing analysis of what caused Japan's staggering defeat.
Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the first air strike on Pearl Harbor, commanded the Akagi carrier air group and later made a study of the battle at the Japanese Naval War College. Masatake Okumiya, one of Japan's first dive-bomber pilots, was aboard the light carrier Ryujo and later served as a staff officer in a carrier division. Armed with knowledge of top-secret documents destroyed by the Japanese and access to private papers, they show the operation to be ill-conceived and poorly planned and executed, and fault their flag officers for lacking initiative, leadership, and clear thinking. With an introduction by an author known for his study of the battle from the American perspective, the work continues to make a significant contribution to World War II literature.
Customer Reviews:
Mitsuo Fuchida was a liar..........2006-09-03
As a Navy brat who grew up in the postwar era, Midway was a big deal. Of course, I read and enjoyed Fuchida's book. However, I recently finished reading "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" by Jonathan Parshall. In this book, it's clearly demonstrated that Fuchida did more than shade the truth. He lied in such a way to push blame upon others for Japan's defeat at Midway. For example, Fuchida makes the claim that the Japanese were getting ready to launch their strike just at the time the American SBDs dive bombed their carriers. Parshall shows how that was impossible given both Japanese carrier practice and the logs of flight activity. Sadly, Fuchida's book has enjoyed an unwarranted popularily due to our ignorance of Japanese documents and our lack of desire to question something that fits right into our own prejudices.
The Japanese historians consider Fuchida to be a liar. It's time that we do the same.
One of the best works on the Battle of Midway.......2006-09-02
I first read this account of the battle of Midway almost fourty years ago. As an avid student of World War II, I have read many books dealing with this battle, but this is the best in telling the Japanese side of the battle. It gives the American reader an account of the battle from the Japanese viewpoing, with emphasis on the fatal minutes when the Japanese fighters were wave-hopping after the last of the torpedo planes, leaving the sky above open to the three squadrons of American dive bombers to change the course of the battle and the war itself. I have read many versions of this battle from the American viewpoing, but this is still the best coming from the Japanese viewpoint. I have had a copy of this work in my library since I first read it back in the late sixties, and still consider it one of the best.
More grist for the revisionist theory behind Pearl Harbor........2006-02-05
Considering that this book was written in 1955, shortly after the Official US occupation of Japan ended, and considering that the author was indeed a fairly high ranking operational and planner of both Midway and Pearl Harbor Attacks, this book should be part of anyone's libraray whose shares an interest in the war between Japan and the US.
The author's knowledge and his particular place in the pecking order must be considered. As a former US combat pilot, with some operational planning experience, I am well aware that I was not informed of all details, only those that I had a need to know. Mitsui Fuchida was a staff officer, not a flag officer. He may have gained additional knowledge after the war's end, but most of the Admiral's who had overall knowledge of Pearl Harbor and Midway Operations were killed before the war ended.
There were also political concerns Fuchida had to navigate, in order to get his book published in 1955.
As a pilot, I was sympathetic to many of Fuchida's views. I enjoyed his descriptions of a warrior's duties, regardless of nationality. In some respects, we have more in common with our fellow aviators, than with our leaders.
For years, I accepted the standard version of the Pearl Harbor Attack on 7 Dec 41. I was at Pearl during the time the movie Tora Tora Tora was filmed. It was that event that lead to my discovery by talking to some older personnel of Japanese Ancestry, that unlike those in California, they were not sent to camps. I began reading whatever I could find on the subject, which includes this book.
Fuchida's book offers two major questions. How could two task forces covering the same sea lanes, confronting the same terrible sort of weather, without radar, within less than one year do so, under comletely "radio silence". Fuchida admits that during the Midway attack, low power radio signals were used, but were picked up in Japan. The generally accepted Japanese version of the Pearl Harbor attack, was that radio transmissions were not sent. But the question immediately arises. How would Fuchida, an Air Officer, know what conditions were confronting the various ships that comprised the Pearl Harbor attack force? Fuchida and the world knows that the Pearl Harbor force faced terrible weather and had to refuel in less than ideal conditions. They had to make course corrections. Is it unreasonable to think that the same reasons applied in May of 1942, would have applied in December of 1941?
Revisionists have challanged the traditional view of radio silence, by presenting numerous examples of transmissions from the "empty sea" during both periods. Traditionalists have maintained that Japan's sneak attack suceeded because they maintained strict radio silence. Men like Fuchida inforce that view. But was Fuchida the right person to ask? Did he mearly assume that what he was told by his superiors was correct?
Since Midway was a "victory" for the US, knowledge of the attack was acceptable and did not inflict any harm to anyone's careers or poltical postions. The same could not be said of Pearl Harbor. A Japanese Author in 1955, would be less likely of publishing something that discredited miltary and politcal reputations. I would not accuse Fuchida of deception, I would only suggest that he did not know as much about the Pearl Harbor Operation as he did about Midway.
Read the book, see if you come to the same conclussion.
Who Won At Midway Anyway?.......2006-02-04
This classic work of the battle of Midway is basically an entertaining and well written account of the Japanese view of the battle as voiced by the opinions and personal observations of Fuchida. There are many inaccuracies and the book is not nearly as scholarly as "Shattered Sword" which also describes the battle from the Japanese viewpoint.
My first review of this book came from no less than R. E. Best, the American bomber pilot who likely dropped the critical bomb on Akagi. He pointed out several errors and several other attempts to justify Japanese actions. Fuchida's book is comparable to the Lord classic "Incredible Victory" but this one has little place as a reference work. The book has many editor's notes which explain some of the problems but there are many others which are small but basically errors in the account. An example was the American B-26 attack on the Akagi. He describes the one plane that came low over the ship as passing from port to starboard then crashing into the sea. In fact the plane flown by LT. Mori passed straight down the Akagi flight deck from bow to stern and returned to Midway with significant damage. This event should have been directly in front of Fuchida as he reports he was lying on the flight deck. Minor point but it makes one wonder how many other errors in detail exist in the first person account.
The book appears to have been written as an post-war apology to the Japanese readers and contains continual excuses. The author criticizes the Japanese leadership with justification but the book could be titled "20-20 Hindsight at Midway".
One always learns from history........2005-08-06
This book written in the 1950's is an excellant account of the battle from the Japanese's point of view. The Japanese lost this battle because of a bad plan. This book teaches the value of having a good plan based on facts nor fiction. This is of course important for miltary plans, but it also applies to business and life in general. Anyone involved in planning anything should read this book.
Book Description
For over a decade THE WELL TEMPERED SENTENCE has provided instruction and pleasure to the wariest student and the most punctilious scholar alike. Now Karen Elizabeth Gordon has revised and enlarged her classic handbook with fuller explanations of the rules of punctuation, additional whimsical graphics, and further character development and drama -- all the while redeeming punctuation from the perils of boredom. For anyone who has despaired of opening a punctuation handbook (but whose sentences despair without one), THE NEW WELL TEMPERED SENTENCE will teach you clearly and simply where to place a comma and how to use an apostrophe. And as you master the elusive slashes, dots, and dashes that give expression to our most perplexing thoughts, you will find yourself in the grip of a bizarre and beguiling comedy of manners. Long-time fans will delight in the further intrigues of cover girl Loona, the duke and duchess, and the mysterious Rosie and Nimrod. The New Well-Tempered Sentence is sure to entertain while teaching you everything you want to know about punctuation. Never before has punctuation been so much fun!
Customer Reviews:
Cute.......2007-06-03
As an English teacher, I agree with the reviews that express dismay at Ms. Gordon's idiosyncratic application of traditional grammar rules. However, the handbook's examples, illustrations, and dry wit make it a much more palatable resource for the teenagers I teach than the musty handbooks provided by my district. Those who find interesting the vagaries of the English language's structure will be charmed.
Great Review.......2007-05-14
This is what needs to be taught in schools. I taught in high schools for several years and the punctuation was very bad. Any teacher can keep it handy for their own review or for lesson ideas.
Structurally questionable at times, but amusing........2007-01-04
Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The New Well-Tempered Sentence (Houghton Mifflin, 1993)
I'm still not quite sure how much I enjoyed The New Well-Tempered Sentence. A lot of it is dead-on and well worth reading, but there were a few places where I wondered what on earth Gordon was thinking (when did it become grammatically correct to end a question with any punctuation but a question mark?). The structural aspects, though, are not the reason this book (and its companion volume, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire) has been through two editions and a number of printings that's rapidly approaching the "countless" level; the book is still read (and re-read and re-read and...) for the examples Gordon uses to illustrate the structural points, which gradually unfold into, almost, a novel of their own, an odd little comedy of manners that makes very little sense, but is intriguing enough to keep people wondering.
Interesting, and certainly enough so to send me on to The Deluxe Transitive Vampire. *** ½
Appealing with its gothic, romantic presentation, the book offers only moderate help.......2006-02-07
'The Well Tempered Sentence' is a slim volume (only 93 pages) and is well presented with a pleasing font, playful examples, and some interesting illustrations. The good part of the book is the easy layout and vivid, to-the-point examples. The bad part is that it is just a little bit cheesy, and of no great help if you are a serious writer.
I think this would be a fine volume to gift a teenage girl with, especially one who loves to write, whether it is stories or her diary or journals. The chapters are well separated, making it easy to find a quick-and-dirty example of the punctuation's usage. The book covers the period, the question mark, the exclamation point, the comma, the semicolon, the colon, the hyphen, the dash, multiple punctuation, quotation marks, parentheses, brackets, and ellipses.
Certainly a pleasing and helpful reference for those just beginning to find the pleasure of placing pen to paper, it becomes useless after high-school English has been conquered. If you are looking for a nice, useful gift for a budding young female journalist, 'The Well Tempered Sentence' would be a useful tool for her. If you want in-depth help with advanced writing, pass on this book.
A progressive classic for the new age!.......2006-01-23
This book has helped me so much with my grammar. Really! I were flunking out of college English so my friend said to me, "You should get this book - it is really good" and so I got the book and boy was she right it really helped me with my run on sentences and the other problems I was having like not knowing, how to use, commas and stuff.
Book Description
These true-life adventures unfold amid flames, collision, and explosions, with frantic calls of SOS and a rush to clamber aboard lifeboats. Nearly 200 photographs, many from private collections, highlight tales of the vessels whose maritime lives ended in catastrophe: the Morro Castle, Normandie, Andrea Doria, Europa, and others.
Customer Reviews:
Doomed yes, Disaster no.......2007-08-09
I was quite disappointed with this book. Most of the cases used have been historically previously researched and written about. I was expecting to read much more on the deatail of the actual disaster but this was not the case. Maybe its because I am a former merchant marine officer and familiar with the case studies used. Possibly this book would appeal to non-seafarers.
Too broad a topic.......2007-03-16
I was expecting a lot from this and was let down. Usually the William Miller books are excellent. Some great photos that I hadn't seem before, like the Leonardo da Vince at sea with her famous roll, and the Hanseatic on fire in NY harbor.
There is just too much information for a small book like this. Lots of info got left out. It may have been more satisfying in a larger format. As an introduction to the topic it would be useful.
Beyond The "Titanic".......2007-01-27
Noted nautical author Bill Miller has written a new and very fascinating book on doomed ocean liners. Quite wisely he elected to skip the "Titanic" tragedy as it has been so well covered in many other books. He elected to start the book with the sinking of the "Lusitania" on May 7, 1915, by a German submarine, the "U-20." It ends with the capsizing of the "Oriana" at her berth in China during a typhoon in March 2004. Between these two bookends, there are many liner tragedies summarized, including the famous like the "Morro Castle," "Normandie," "Bremen," "Rex," and "Andrea Doria" as well as ships virtually unknown except for those personally involved in the accident in question, such as the "Alcoa Corsair," "Viceroy of India," "Empire Windrush," and "Klipfontein."
The book provides a brief operational history of each ship as well as the vital statistics of each vessel. The accidents are examined in varying degrees of detail: after all there are no commonly available accounts of accidents like the fire that ravaged the "Skaubryn" in the Indian Ocean during 1958 (especially given that all passengers and crew were rescued). This points to a great strength of the book: less well-known accidents are presented here alongside famous disasters, and the lessons learned from all are valuable and interesting regardless of your exact motivation for reading the book. As an aside, I didn't keep track, but an inordinate number of losses occurred due to fire (and water from firefighting). This was especially the case among French built liners, an observation not overlooked by the author.
Overall this is an excellent effort. It accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. It is not encyclopedic, nor does it claim to be, but it is an interesting book on a difficult subject to cover well.
Book Description
From the critically acclaimed author whom The Wall Street Journal called "a first-class historian," here is a riveting account of one of the most spectacular rescue operations in history. On January 30, 1945, American troops staged a successful raid on Cabanatuan, a notorious Japanese POW camp where thousands of prisoners had been tortured and died. Based on interviews with the heroes who survived the raid, this book brings to life in electrifying detail the dramatic events that took place on that historic day.
Praise for William B. Breuer and his books
"A first-class historian." âThe Wall Street Journal
"Fast-paced, detailed, and satisfyingly dramatic." âWorld War II Magazine on Devil Boats
"Another smasher by Breuer, who specializes in thrilling reports of WWII spycraft and warfare." âKirkus Reviews on Race to the Moon
"Vivid . . . skillfully written." âLos Angeles Times on Retaking the Philippines
"Brings to life how airborne soldiers survived, how the human will prevails . . . against overwhelming enemies, tactical failures, and even death."âThe New York Times on Geronimo: American Paratroopers in World War II
Early on the morning of January 28, 1945, a small detachment of volunteers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Henry A. Mucci, leader of the 6th Ranger Battalion, embarked from their base in the Philippines on the most audacious rescue operation ever undertaken. Their objective: Penetrate thirty miles behind enemy lines and liberate 511 POWs from Cabanatuan, the notorious Japanese POW camp where thousands of American prisoners had been brutally tortured and killed. Little did Mucci's Rangers know when they got under way that morning that over the next few days and nights they would be making history.
Written by acclaimed military historian William B. Breuer, The Great Raid on Cabanatuan is a riveting account of that rescue mission and the gallant soldiers who carried it out against overwhelming odds. Based largely on interviews with the heroes who survived the operation, and featuring twenty-eight previously unpublished photographsâmany of them taken while the raid was in progressâit brings to life in electrifying detail the dramatic events that took place on the night of the raid, January 30, and during the harrowing days that followed.
In sketching out the many roads that led to Cabanatuan, Breuer brilliantly combines oral history with dramatic narrative to bring to life some of the most spectacular events of the war in the Pacific. We relive the hellish battles for Bataan and Corregidor, where in 1942 American and Filipino soldiers fought bravely to hold back the Japanese invasion force. We experience firsthand the horrors of the Bataan Death March on which tens of thousands of prisoners lost their lives en route to Cabanatuan. And we learn of the American underground and guerilla operations in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation from the men and women behind them, including Margaret Utinsky, leader of "Miss U's underground," and Claire Phillips, the glamorous lounge singer turned spy- master.
A gripping chronicle of one of the most harrowing rescue missions ever undertaken as told in all its gritty detail by the heroes who made it happen, The Great Raid on Cabanatuan is both a first-class piece of military scholarship and a thrilling adventure story.
Customer Reviews:
Read "Ghost Soldiers" Instead.......2007-06-21
Like many people, I read and generally enjoyed the 2001 bestseller Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission. What I didn't realize when I picked up this earlier book, was that it covers almost the exact same material, but in a much less engaging way. (It should be noted that both books owe a huge debt to Forrest Johnson's 1978 book Hour of Redemption: The Heroic WW II Saga of America's Most Daring POW Rescue, a debt acknowledged in Ghost Soldiers but not by this book.) Here, Breuer provides a workmanlike account of the post-Pearl Harbor political and military context that led to the U.S. "abandonment" of the Philippines, its subsequent fall to Japan, and the horrific fate of the US and Filipino soldiers taken prisoner. He similarly sketches out the spy network that operated under Japanese occupation, the regrouping of U.S. forces as the war in Europe wound down, and the planning and execution of the titular raid to free 511 POWs.
This material all more or less overlaps with Ghost Soldiers but isn't nearly as well written. Breuer has a penchant for trite melodramatic phrasing, and tends to repeat information over and over and over as if his reader has no memory. It also doesn't help that instead of simply writing "three Rangers did X", he writes, "John Q. Doe of Springfield, IL, James R. Doe of Anywhere, WY, and Jesse T. Doe of Plainview, MI did X." I certainly understand his desire to honor every solider he can by naming them, but it makes for very awkward reading. Another small tick that bothered me was that if any soldier had played college football, that merited mention -- but only football, no other sport. Why? Finally, his interviews with veteran POWs and Rangers seemed to yield little more than the most banal of anecdotes and recollections and their inclusion, again, while honoring them, really doesn't help the book's readability.
Unfortunately, behind the weak writing lurk bigger flaws. Foremost of these is a total lack of explanation as why it was deemed so crucial to mount a dangerous, complex, behind-enemy-lines mission to rescue the POWs. Breuer repeats a number of times that it was feared that the Japanese would massacre the POWs, but never tells what foundation that fear rested on. The reader is left to conclude that it was all basically hearsay based on the notion that the Japanese might do it for reasons of revenge as they retreat. This contrasts poorly with Ghost Soldiers, which explains that the U.S. Army's knew of one such massacre (the Palawan Massacre, in which American POWs were burned alive by retreating Japanese), and thus there was a very real fear guiding the raid at the climax of the book. The book also suffers somewhat from Breuer's agenda to lionize Douglas MacArthur and vilify Roosevelt and the "faceless Washington bureaucrats" (can someone please retire this trite phrase?). This is somewhat redeemed by his drawing attention to the massively heroic efforts of Filipino soldiers at the side of the Americans, and their subsequent total betrayal when it came to due honors and compensation from the U.S. government.
However, in the end, there's no reason to read this version of history when Ghost Soldiers is available -- unless you're really really interested in the Pacific Campaign. There's so much overlap between the two that all you'd be getting is different emphases. Related books that might be worth checking out are Silent Warriors of World War II: The Alamo Scouts Behind the Japanese Lines and Manila Espionage, Claire Phillips account of her life as the ringleader of an Allied spy ring in the Philippines (later made into the forgettable film I Was An American Spy).
Real life action story.......2007-05-14
This is the true story of the raid to free over 500 US POWs from the Japanese captured on Battan. It follows the 5 day mission of the 6th Rangers as they penetrate 30 miles behind enemy lines to effect the rescue. Great compaion peice to the "Ghost Soldiers" and the "Great Raid".
Reads like a thriller--but it is history!.......2006-03-24
I first heard about the Cabanatuan raid about 25 years ago, while studying guerrilla operations and special forces employed in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War Two. My studies were superficial because there wasn't much information out there for the casual historian. Then last year the movie, "the Great Raid," hit the screen, and I found books on this daring mission. Breuer's book has a 1994 copyright date; I wish I had found it earlier.
There were previous POW rescue missions in World War Two, but this was the most successful. There was a raid by Patton's forces in Germany. The Son Tay raid during 1970 came up empty-handed due to poor intel and an ossified decision cycle. The rescue of Jessica Lynch almost three years ago has been alternately criticized and lionized, but the Cabanatuan Raid was the pattern for all subsequent raids. At Cabanatuan, aviation and irregulars were cobbled together at the last minute and achieved amazing success at small cost. The commanders anticipated several hundred dead POWs and Rangers.
It was a debt of honor--something that is hard to explain to those without honor. The US Army had been abandoned in the Philippines just a few days after Pearl Harbor. This Roosevelt Administration decision was not an easy one--but Europe First and the destruction of the US Navy doomed MacArthur's forces in the Phillipines. There was no aid to send them. Australia nearly fell, too, during those dark days in early 1942. For strategic reasons, the garrison on Corregidor and Bataan were encouraged to fight the Japanese as long as possible in a hopeless battle--and President Roosevelt decided that the lie, "help is on the way," was the best way to achieve that longer fight. The US Army in the Phillipines was America's best at the time, with the best equipment and most ammunition and biggest supply stockpiles...they were not adequate for a sustained campaign, but only wartime experience would prove that. America had no respect for the Japanese fighting man--an error that cost too much.
Japan was unprepared for that amount of prisoners. Japan could barely feed its own soldiers. There was a cultural difference as well--for Japan, surrender was disgrace. What could Japan do with all of these "able-bodied captives?" William Breuer sets the stage for the Great Cabanatuan Raid by beginning with a brief description of the Japanese conquest (which was behind Tokyo's unrealistic expectations--those American and Filippino soldiers did their duty to the limits of their capabilities) and then paints a picture of Hell on Earth.
The book begins during the raid, with 107 Rangers under Lieutenant Colonel Henry A. Mucci in a village just one and a half miled from the objective--511 POWs in captivity at Cabanatuan prisoner-of-war camp. 6th Ranger Battalion was unique in that it had been raised from a regular unit, the 93rd Field Artillery Battalion, and wasn't trained by the British. Instead, this gang of mule skinners shook out the unfit and took in some replacements--and saw a little action during the initial re-invasion of the Philippines. Until the Cabanatuan mission, 6th Ranger Battalion served as guards at invasion force HQ and as a reserve.
One hero I met through the pages of "The Great Raid on Cabanatuan" was Filippino guerrilla captain Juan Pajota. I cannot say that any single element of the rescue force was more important than the rest--everybody was important--but Captain Pajota's contributions were many: up-to-date intelligence, local contacts, providing ox-cart transportation for the physically-wasted POW's, providing one of two company-sized irregular units used as a blocking force, and recommending that the Army Air Force send an airplane to fly overhead as a distraction.
Regular US Army didn't interface well with guerrilla forces even as late as the Vietnam War. That's one reason that special forces such as Ranger units were needed in World War Two. The Alamo Scouts were a dedicated recon unit that ranged behing Japanese lines in small bands (2, 3, or 4 men) and snooped around.
Most amazing for modern special operations soldiers is how short the mission planning and preparation for Cabanatuan was. Surprise and speed were everything. The "dead line" was just that--Japan had several reasons to kill POWs in Japanese hands: revenge for losing the war, silencing war crime witnesses, and depriving the United Nations of the future use of these captive soldiers. The Cabanatuan raid was a complex operation, but its execution was virtually flawless. The Japanese didn't expect Americans to do the Japanese thing and infiltrate undetected through 30 miles, then strike with ruthlessness and precision. What's more, the rescue forces, including non-combatant support, seem to have been outnumbered by more than 10 to 1, and the Japanese had all the heavy firepower--tanks, planes, artillery and mortars...
This book reads like an adventure thriller, but the incident is true. Given the hardware and military art at the time, it was a miracle.
A window to forgotten heroes.......2002-08-11
A powerful moving book detailing the experience of Filipino and American soldiers' struggle to free POWs in Cabanatuan, Philippines. As a Filipino-American, whose ancestor were directly affected by WWII, I found the book to be inspirational seeing both my beloved homelands unite to fight for the greater good.
The book gives life to a time in history of great importance, that Americans lack awareness-in and in dept to pay tribute to both Filipinos and Americans who fought for their country.
After reading the book, one is left with sheer amazement, pride, appreciation, and yet saddened by the lack of tribute lacking for these veterans, and The Great Insult America has bestowed upon Filipinos who fought and died for America and America's soldiers.
In July 14, 1941, when the Philippines was still a colony of the U.S., 140,000 Filipino soldiers was call to active service by then President Franklin Roosevelt to fight in WWII along side the Americans under the U.S. flag
Their brave service under the U.S. flag was snubbed when in 1946 Congress sign into law the Rescission Act of 1946, which affectively denied them their right to receive the same right given to other WWII U.S veterans.
Today there are only 12,000 surviving Filipino American veterans in the U.S and 35,000 Filipino veterans in the Philippines.
The book exemplifies the bravery these men did for the country and the injustice they are enduring today.
FANTASTIC ACCOUNT OF BATAAN, THE DEATH MARCH AND POW LIFE.......1999-10-23
TOUGH BOOK TO PUT DOWN. IT IS UNBELIEVABLE TO READ WHAT THE MEN WHO FOUGHT AT BATAAN WENT THROUGH AND ALSO WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILLIPINES DID TO HELP THESE MEN SURVIVE. IT IS A SHAME HISTORY CLASSES IN SCHOOL SAY LITTLE IF ANYTHING OF THIS. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.
Book Description
First published in 1990, Songs of the Doomed is back in print -- by popular demand! In this third and most extraordinary volume of the Gonzo Papers, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson recalls high and hideous moments in his thirty years in the Passing Lane -- and no one is safe from his hilarious, remarkably astute social commentary.
With Thompson's trademark insight and passion about the state of American politics and culture, Songs of the Doomed charts the long, strange trip from Kennedy to Quayle in Thompson's freewheeling, inimitable style. Spanning four decades -- 1950 to 1990 -- Thompson is at the top of his form while fleeing New York for Puerto Rico, riding with the Hell's Angels, investigating Las Vegas sleaze, grappling with the "Dukakis problem," and finally, detailing his infamous lifestyle bust, trial documents, and Fourth Amendment battle with the Law. These tales -- often sleazy, brutal, and crude -- are only the tip of what Jack Nicholson called "the most baffling human iceberg of our time."
Songs of the Doomed is vintage Thompson -- a brilliant, brazen, bawdy compilation of the greatest sound bites of Gonzo journalism from the past thirty years.
Customer Reviews:
The Search for the Brown Buffalo.......2006-02-25
Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu of the 1950's. His earlier writings shows that effect. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson's career. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the gun and for mass circulation media these works show an uneven quality. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.
One should note that `gonzo' journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be `objective'. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter's way.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that this was a period of particular importance which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States and all- around political chameleon. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick him when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the `dark side' of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. Sound familar? If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson's work. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.
Excellent Sampler.......2002-12-24
This is an excellent introduction to the range of Thompson's writings though the early 1990's. It includes samples of his two early novels (Prince Jellyfish, The Rum Diary) and articles and excerpts from his later journalism and fiction ("Let The Trials Begin" is worth the price of the book).No duplication of material fromThe Great Shark Hunt, his earlier collection. An excellent audio version was realeased when the book was first published.
This book gives you some idea of what he was up to during the time covered by the two volumes of letters he's published and shows that his humor and sense of outrage have matured better than, say, Mark Twain's during a comparable stretch of his writing career.
Book Description
Set against the majestic yet unforgiving Himalayan landscape of World War II Tibet-an unknown and tightly sealed land deeply suspicious of foreigners--LOST IN TIBET recounts the taut adventure of five American airmen facing the greatest challenge of their young lives. Hundreds of miles off course and running low on fuel, the airmen bail out of their foundering plane over what they thought was India. Instead, they parachute into the high Himalayan ridges of a Tibet riven with political intrigue and pressed tightly between Westerners involved in a war they didn't understand and Chinese who threatened their very existence. Surviving the parachute drop from the plane was only the airmen's first challenge, and perhaps their easiest. Impeccably researched and well paced, LOST IN TIBET tells the previously untold story of the group's struggle to escape back to the relative safety of their base in India.
Customer Reviews:
Great Story of Survival, Adventure and Courage .......2007-09-05
For those hauling cargo over the Hump, the enemy was not the Japanese but rather what is probably the harshest weather and terrain on the earth.
On their ill fated flight the crew is lost and hundreds of miles off course when they finally are down to their last drops of fuel and bail out over an unknown land. Much to their surprise they ended up in a remote part of Tibet.
Most of the book is their story of their long journey to safety. The book also offers an early insight into the China-Tibet political struggles that continue today.
Very well written and an easy read for a rainy day.
I Was There.......2007-06-25
I enjoyed this book because I was a pilot flying the "Hump" at the same time these men were. Their story is exciting, well written and spell binding and will interest those who enjoy adventure. Almost a thousand aircraft were lost on the "aluminum trail" between India and China. A lot was learned in that operation at the expense of the lives of the young inexperienced airmen who took part. Lost In Tibet gives one an insight of the flying conditions we experienced and also the complicated wartime politics in the Tibetan area of that time. It's a good "read".
Starts out as Fiction.......2007-01-22
I stopped reading a few pages into the first chapter. I couldn't quit thinking about the ridiculous false statements in the 2nd paragraph of the 1st chapter. First it says "the pilot decided to crash," after the engines catch fire, but he doesn't actually crash. Then it says the cause of the fire was because the spark plug gap was too wide which "let raw fuel run straight through the engines and out the turbines and there it had ignited."
The part about crashing is sensationalism. The part about the sparkplugs is completely wrong since they have nothing to do with the flow of fuel. I'm sure the topic of this story is true but with that many errors on the first page of the first chapter I'm going to find another book on this topic I can trust.
Good.......2007-01-18
I bought this as a gift so just going on the quality of the appearance it was excellent. I was really impressed with how quickly it was shipped to my home during the last week before christmas. Great job!
Five airmen lost in Tibet........2006-12-07
Not a typical story about World War II. Five airmen parachute from their crippled supply airplane and end up lost in Tibet. At that time, Tibet was somewhat independent from China. The airmen's landing in Tibet causes a huge political firestorm between Great Britain, Tibet, and China. The airmen are in the middle of this. The result is a diplomatic balancing act as the airmen leave Tibet.
This is a nice little story about World War II. The authors write a readable entertaining book about the story of the men and the magic land of Tibet. This is a very enjoyable read.
Amazon.com
Eighty-five years after a famous but ill-equipped Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 had sacrificed 16 lives, some artifacts appeared on an Internet auction site. They had originated at a "ghost camp," discovered in 1924, where four of the expedition's 28 men, one woman, and two children had perished. Jennifer Niven has completed the unfulfilled mission of survivor William McKinlay to produce a "more honest and revealing account" of the wreck of the Karluk and its aftermath.
The explorers became split into several dispersed groups living "in the shadow of death." Their simultaneously grim and gruesome experiences are interwoven in this minutely detailed and atmospheric retelling, created by combining and comparing firsthand accounts and other sources. The characters are vividly re-created, from the expedition's self-interested leader, whom McKinlay called "a consummate liar and cheat," to the heroic ship's master, who struggled over 700 miles to organize a rescue. Supplemented by haunting and fascinating photographs, The Ice Master makes for harrowing and compulsive reading. This is a momentous story of the Arctic; of adventure, misadventure, and the heights of human endurance. But it is also a story of human failings and the waste of young lives, as poignant now as it was when it was big news in 1914. --Karen Tiley, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
Eighty-five years after a famous but ill-equipped Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 had sacrificed 16 lives, some artifacts appeared on an Internet auction site. They had originated at a "ghost camp," discovered in 1924, where four of the expedition's 28 men, one woman, and two children had perished. Jennifer Niven has completed the unfulfilled mission of survivor William McKinlay to produce a "more honest and revealing account" of the wreck of the Karluk and its aftermath.The explorers became split into several dispersed groups living "in the shadow of death." Their simultaneously grim and gruesome experiences are interwoven in this minutely detailed and atmospheric retelling, created by combining and comparing firsthand accounts and other sources. The characters are vividly re-created, from the expedition's self-interested leader, whom McKinlay called "a consummate liar and cheat," to the heroic ship's master, who struggled over 700 miles to organize a rescue. Supplemented by haunting and fascinating photographs, The Ice Master makes for harrowing and compulsive reading. This is a momentous story of the Arctic; of adventure, misadventure, and the heights of human endurance. But it is also a story of human failings and the waste of young lives, as poignant now as it was when it was big news in 1914. --Karen Tiley, Amazon.co.uk
Download Description
The riveting story of the 1913 expedition of twenty-five people who sailed out of British Columbia in search of an undiscovered Arctic continent. But tragedy struck in January 1914 when an ice cap tore a hole in the vessel's hull, shipwrecking all on board. The castaways abandoned ship and suffered from battle starvation, snow blindness, exposure to the brutal winter, and each other. The Ice Master is an epic tale of true adventure that rivals the most dramatic fiction. Drawing on the diaries of those who were rescued and those who perished, and even an interview with the one living survivor, Jennifer Niven re-creates with astonishing accuracy and immediacy the Karluk's ill-fated journey and her crew's desperate attempts to find a way home from the icy wastes of the Arctic.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book!.......2007-08-17
The start of this book was a little rough for me. The author introduced all the character all at once and I was pretty confused for a while, but once you get into the story you're hooked! This book was like a great episode of Dateline or 20/20. It was full of excitement, mystery, and really kept you on the edge of your seat wondering what happened and what was going to happen. It would be great to take todays forensics to figure out some of the things they couldn't figure out back then...sadly most of the artifacts from the doomed Karluk expedition have been lost.
Poorly written.......2007-03-07
Coincidentally I had just finished 'Alive' - another story about cold weather survival. Perhaps mainly by contrast I found it impossible to get into 'The Ice Master'. While the event is undeniably interesting, Niven's telling ruins it.
Another amazing arctic adventure story.......2006-04-04
I love reading the stories of the great arctic adventures...This one is awesome! It's basiclly the opposite of Shackeltons Endurance...No comradery, lots of death, a coward for a leader and even at the other end of the world. It really offers up a contrast. Yet through all the struggles heros still arise to meet the challenge.
ABSOLUTELY ENTHRALLING!.......2005-08-03
I absolutely could not put this book down. We had a house full of family guests and I found myself sneaking away just to try and grab a few more pages of this thrilling, yet horrifying account of the voyage of the Karluk. On one hand, I almost dreaded to pick the book up because Niven truly brings these characters to life and you become very involved with them. On the other, I just had to know who would and who would not survive and how the ones who did survive managed to do it. Niven did a superb job all around.
Another great Artic adventure, on par with "South".......2005-03-24
For me "South", is the classic Polar expedition tragedy book. This book is on par with it. However in any second source history book, there are sometimes some niggling details that are wrong. The fact that another "doomed" expedition had some survivers, may not have been known to the crew on this one. But its not clear that is what happened. Now I want to go find that book and read it. But had you only read the original books & sources you would have come away with a completely different perspective. Ms. Niven got to the heart of the trip and who were really the heros here and who were the cads.
But, this is more than just a man triumphs over nature book. Some of these folks survived but it wasn't great. It was a good read though and I'm glad I picked it up. I'm going after Ms. Niven's other book "Ada" next.
Books:
- Marvin Gaye, My Brother
- Mastering Elliot Wave: Presenting the Neely Method: The First Scientific, Objective Approach to Market Forecasting with the Elliott Wave Theory (version 2)
- Mover Of Men & Mountains
- Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
- MY FATHER'S SECRET WAR: A MEMOIR
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Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness: A Biography
Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath--A Marriage
The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath
Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath
Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath
