REVIEWS

John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot by Harlow Giles Unger

Revolutions need organizers and nations need Founders before armies take to the fields.  For the United States one such organizer and founder was John Hancock.  Heir to the House of Hancock established by his childless uncle, he turned his inheritance into a trading empire that supported his public life.  Beginning as a most unlikely revolutionary, British taxation and other policies drove him into rebellion.  During his lifetime from 1737 to 1793, his service as financier, member and President…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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Pierre Gibault, Missionary 1737-1802 by Jospeh P. Donnelly, S. J.

Though rarely remembered today, Pierre Gibault was a crucial figure in the American Revolution in the West.  A native of New France, Gibault was ordained to the priesthood in Quebec and assigned to the Illinois Country.  Settling in Kaskaskia, Illinois, he served it and other French settlements, Cahokia, Illinois, St. Louis and New Madrid, Missouri and Vincennes, Indiana thereby earning the trust of the habitants.  Gibault’s rendezvous with destiny occurred on July 4, 1778 with the arrival of…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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Views: 16

All Behind You, Winston: Churchill's Great Coalition 1940-45 by Roger Hermiston

Foreign enemies can unite political foes.  One such instance is chronicled in All Behind You Winston: Churchill’s Great Coalition 1940-45.  This volume documents the consensus and disputes, initiatives advanced and those deferred, and the leaders of each party who kept their own ranks in harness.  Unique for this war is the national union coalition that ruled Britain for most of World War II.  Though desirable from a morale standpoint, the Conservative party, if united, had the seats to rule…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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Views: 31

The Improbable Wendell Willkie: The Businessman Who Saved The Republican Party And His Country, And Conceived A New World Order by David Levering Lewis

Karl Von Clausewitz, a renowned Prussian general and military theorist, once famously stated, "War is the continuation of politics by other means."  To understand war then, one must go behind the frontlines into the political realm to the people and movements that guided their countries into war.  One such person is Wendell Willkie.  Previously a trivia footnote as the only major party presidential candidate not to have previously held a political position or served as a general, this tome…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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French Republic's Fighting Men: 1880-1914 by Wendell Schollander

Much of human experience is the fighting of wars.  More of it is preparing for war.  French Republic’s Fighting Men: 1880-1914 is the story of France’s recovery from the Franco-Prussian War and its preparation for the next one.  This brief work is divided into three chapters; The Officers, The Soldiers and the French Foreign Legion.  Its text is liberally supplemented by charts and tables that express the numbers, and photos that present visual images to the readers.  An army reflects the…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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Views: 18

Botha, Smuts And The Great War by Antonio Garcia & Ian Van Der Waag

War History Network members appreciate the multi-faceted impact of war.  Botha, Smuts And The Great War is a fascinating case study of the then new Union of South Africa. Its path to war shared factors with that other USA, the United States of America.  Protected by thousands of miles of ocean, both had strong English influences countervailed by anti-British ethnics, German and Irish in America, Dutch Boer in Africa.  Either could have sat out the war without much disruption to their…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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Views: 23

Commanders In Chief: Presidential Leadership In Modern Wars, Edited by Joseph G. Dawson

Commanders In Chief consists of revised papers read before a symposium of the Military Studies Institute of Texas A & M University in 1990.  Modern wartime presidents studied are William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.  Paper authors include scholars known for their studies of their subjects including Robert E. Ferrel on Wilson and Stephen Ambrose on Nixon.  The first chapter explores the role of the president as commander-in-chief…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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Views: 19

"The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945" review by Scott Lyons

The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 Seventy-Fifth Anniversary By Wladyslaw Szpilman, author. With a new forward by Andrzei Szpilman, son. The Pianist, first written by Wladyslaw Szpilman in 1945 and initially published as Death of a City in Poland in 1946, is a compelling memoir that chronicles the harrowing experiences of Szpilman during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Poland. Those who have watched the 2003 Roman Polanski film adaptation will…

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Started by Scott Lyons
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Views: 144

Revolutionary War Forts: New York by Michael Garlock

Casemate's "Revolutionary Forts: New York" is an illustrated history and travel guidebook. It features 23 forts, spread along Long Island, the Hudson, Delaware, and Mohawk Rivers and Lake Champlain. Some are famous and well preserved, like Fort Ticonderoga, others are obscure and have disappeared without a trace, like Fort Defiance. After the title page featuring a modern photograph of French Castle at Fort Niagara, this oversized work commences with a timeline running from the building of the…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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Views: 13

George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved The American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger

War History Network members often look for the story behind the headlines and "George Washington’s Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution" takes the reader behind the shades into the world of espionage. The heart of the story is the Culper Ring that gathered information from their British customers and acquaintances in New York that was surreptitiously transmitted to General Washington as he sought to recapture the city. So secret was their identity, even to Washington,…

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Started by Jim Gallen
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Views: 33

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  • Scott Lyons September 29, 2024 at 11:39am
    Read a great book? Post your review in the Reviews section at right. See a book reviewed in the Archives Library below that you've read? Add to that existing submission by posting your thoughts via reply.
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BOOK REVIEW ARCHIVES LIBRARY

18TH AND 19TH CENTURY WAR AND CONFLICT
· The Dawn of Guerrilla Warfare
· The Pirates’ Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship 
· War Along The Wabash

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
· Appomattox: The Last Days of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia
· Civil War on The Western Border: 1854-1865
· Guerrilla Hunters In Civil War Missouri
· The Last Confederate General: John C. Vaughn and His East Tennessee Cavalry
· A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray
· The Last Confederate General: John C. Vaughn and His East Tennessee Cavalry
· Lost Civil War: The Disappearing Legacy of America's Greatest Conflict
· Make Way For Liberty: Wisconsin African Americans In The Civil War
· The Presidents' War
· This Wicked Rebellion: Wisconsin Civil War Soldiers Write Home
· Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War
· Wisconsin Women In The War Between The States

AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR
· Morrstown: The Darkest Winter of the Revolutionary War and the Plot to Kidnap George Washington
· George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved The American Revolution
· The Philadelphia Campaign
· Revolutionary War Forts: New York
· A Very Fine Regiment: The 47th Foot during the American War of Independence, 1773-1783

ANCIENT, CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL WAR
· King John: Treachery and Tyranny in Medieval England; Road to Magna Carta
· Warfare in the Age of Crusades

THE HOLOCAUST
· The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation
· Elie Wiesel’s Night: One Writer’s Voice from the Holocaust
· The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945
· Tot De Dood Ons Scheidt (Till Death Do Us Part)

MODERN WAR & CONFLICT
· Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
· Future Peace: Technology, Aggression, And The Rush To War
· The Fighters: Americans In Combat In Afghanistan and Iraq
· The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History

VIETNAM WAR
· Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music by John Fogerty
· SOG Kontum: Top Secret Missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, 1968–1969

WAR OF 1812
· A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South
· Don't Give Up The Ship: Myths of the War of 1812
· Tohopeka: Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812

WORLD WAR I
· 14-18: Understanding The Great War
· American Journalists In The Great War: Rewriting The Rules Of Reporting
· American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis
· Asleep in the Deep; Nursing Sister Anna Stamers and the First World War
· Botha, Smuts And The Great War
· Curse of the Narrows
· Faith in Conflict: The Impact of the Great War on the faith of the people of Britain
· General Jan Smuts and his First World War in Africa, 1914–1917: Incorporating His German South West and East Africa Campaigns
· The Great Halifax Explosion
· Letters from the Front: 1898-1945
· The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Dieselby 

WORLD WAR II
·All Behind You, Winston: Churchill's Great Coalition 1940-45
· The Americans on D-Day: A Photographic History of the Normandy Invasion
· The Bedford Boys: One American Town’s Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice
· Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich's Enduring Mystery
· Colditz: The Full Story
· Devil Dogs: King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines: From Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan
· Generals and Admirals of the Third Reich for Country or Fuehrer: Volume 1: A–G
· Hitlerland: American Eyewitness to the Nazi Rise to Power
· How Ike Led
· The Improbable Wendell Willkie: The Businessman Who Saved The Republican Party And His Country, And Conceived A New World Order
· The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945
· The Longest Winter
· Lucky 666: The Impossible Mission
· Nightstalkers: The Wright Project and the 868th Bomb Squadron in World War II
· Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II
· The Splendid And The Vile
· Uniting America: How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans Together to Win World War II
· Warbird Factory: North American Aviation in World War II
· Winning French Minds, Radio Propaganda in Occupied France 1940-42

UNCATEGORIZED
· Commanders In Chief: Presidential Leadership In Modern Wars
· French Republic's Fighting Men: 1880-1914