Carrier Books

I would not recommend this book to anyone. The whole cast of characters rang false. Don't bother.

I am so sick of the political undercurrents in Patrick Robinson's books that I have stopped reading them. Though the stories are good, Robinson diminishes them by labeling and pigeonholing and demeaning anybody he does not agree with politically - especially Democrats. I stopped reading Scimiter SL-2 because I got so sick of it. I'm sure HarperCollins would sell more books if they could get him to stop the bashing.

Kept me on the edge of my seat, couldn't put it down. Inaccurate? Hardly. This was written with the consultation of the retired commander of the British submarine fleet.

This is a book for right-wing people who never met a military person who didn't cause them to think, "What a man!!" (There aren't that many military women in this book.) And people who think that the US military goes all over the world making it safe for us and others. And people who think it's fine to talk about shutting down a newspaper that prints things disagreeable to the military. One might wonder why someone like me kept listening to this book. I can only answer that I was promised excitement and many twists and turns. But there were hardly any of these. I skipped many tracks and followed the story just fine. And exciting??? The protagonist can't drink a cup of coffee without your having to hear how it tasted. If you think this is exciting, have at it.

Nimitz Class is so bad it's funny. It's like a fairy tale or cartoon, with the Red State conservative supermen-- always handsome, brilliant, with piercing blue eyes, and much given to remarks about the "goddamn towel heads"-- strutting around the stage being manly and admirable. You get hilarious combinations like dashing naval officers who are also MIT Ph.D.'s in physics, who are also cowboys, who are also 'American royalty' who love opera and know their wines, whose mother lives on a cattle ranch but went to Wellesley...and on and on. It get pretty silly.

But the real howlers come from comparing the book with the reality of the Bush Presidency and the disaster he has fashioned post 9/11. The President is depicted as a man from the Southwest, who was a brilliant success at Harvard Law. Well-- LOL!-- mediocrity at Yale, undistinguished at Harvard Business School, but anyway you can tell it's supposed to be Bush.The best line is where someone says that the best thing about a Republican White House is that it's so crowded with competent, erudite people. LOL!!!!

All I can say is, Brownie you're doing a heck of a job. I mean Robinson.

My dad was a WWII submariner in the Pacific and spent thirty years in Naval Intel. I'm sorry he's gone...he'd laugh himself silly with this absurd book.

Audio Book review - It wasn't the worst book, but it was very long and droning. However, it was only 5 CDs long, and that is a rather quick read. Something about the narrator or maybe the lack of a gripping plot, made it feel much much longer. In the end it became oddly confusing and I kept trying to remember who all these characters are and what their relations were to one another. Only because it was so long and so full of holes and twists, it became almost boring and hard to pay attention to. However, I can see that Kellerman may be a good writer of other books, so I will give him a chance and pick up another audio boook. It was a good enough book that I kept listening to it. However, I kept listening hoping that something would happen and that all of this time would have a pay off. I was wrong.

I am a fan of Jonathan Kellerman's other books (3-5 stars, the lot), but this book would get 0 if it was an option. The underlying plot makes no sense - a club of do-gooders who somehow identifies a serial killer (it is never explained how), but instead of doing the obvious they guide our hero to solve it - whilst the killer is carrying on killing other victims! Almost needless to say, when our hero eventually does identify the killer, he decides to take matters into his own hands (a poorly motivated distrust of the police is to blame) and gets saved in a typical Kellerman last minute shoot-out (my only serious issue with the Alex Delaware series...) Turns out his mistrust of the cops was misplaced - they end up saving his life.

Altogether a poor read - slow paced and a plot that is utterly devoid of logic.

I was really enjoying my first read of a Kellerman novel about someone OTHER than Alex Delaware and his constant companion Detective Milo when, just as I got to the climax, I got a real shock: "Hey, I've READ this book before!" Sure enough, I distinctly remembered one small part of that scene and knew what would happen right after that. And nothing else. Not a single thing. And I'm still scratching my head about when I read it the first time. Still, it was quite a good read the second time, and that's a pretty good recommendation by itself . . . isn't it?

At any rate, this book was good enough to make me want to read more of Kellerman's non-Alex Delaware novels, such as "Butcher's Theater" and "Twisted" . . . if only to discover that I've read those books before, too.

This book is definitely a diversion from Kellerman's usual psych-thrillers. It has a slower pace, but is deeper and more intricate than many of his other novels.

The character development is most excellent. I was interested from the start and remained riveted until the end. The plot keeps you guessing and trying to figure out 'who dunnit', and just when you think you have it, Kellerman takes you down a different road.

I was thrilled with this book. It was unexpectedly good and very entertaining. For Christmas I gave it to two people who were also taken by it.

This was perhaps the absolute worse Jonathan Kellerman going!
I have read at least two-thirds of his novels most of which are quite pleasing and entertaining, some more wierd than others...
Not good at all! Really!
At any rate, I agree completely ( as does my wife), who feels as did a recent reviewer; it would be incredibly fantastic to find that this novel was not something from his distant past, that was now thrown in for a quick hit....
It was formal, unlike any other of his novels, truly BORING X 10, and we barely got through it on a relaxing summer vacation.
Both of us felt it was just terrible at best! Rent it on audio book at the library, that way you can stand the horribly slow plot culminating in a relatively exciting (much needed) ending....

I've been a big fan of Patrick Robinson's books -- until now. Adm. Morgan's my kind of officer and the writing was, up until now, quite good. Ghost Force, however, feels rushed and stilted. The writing, sentence structure, and general feel seem almost like a basic high school creative writing exercise gone awry. Even the military action, usually so well-crafted, feels wrong. As a former U.S. Army SF Medic, I know a little about combat action and this just doesn't come off as well as Robinson's other works. A good novel doesn't have to be hurriedly shaped around current events and most of us don't read this type of story for political edification but for a good old-fashioned, kick butt escape. Better luck with the next one, Mr. R.

*

I am so sick of the political undercurrents in Patrick Robinson's books that I have stopped reading them. Though the stories are good, Robinson diminishes them by labeling and pigeonholing and demeaning anybody he does not agree with politically - especially Democrats. I stopped reading Scimiter SL-2 because I got so sick of it. I'm sure HarperCollins would sell more books if they could get him to stop the bashing.

Comment by Jack (1 comments.) -- June 1, 2008 @ 7:58 pm

Patrick Robinson breaks so many basic rules of good writing that I've lost count. Roughly 90% of the book is telling what happens rather than showing. The dialogue is overly long, unrealistic and, in most cases, clearly written for the benefit of the reader. But what breaks this book more than any other single thing is the lack of any well-rounded, realistic, likable characters.

For example, Admiral Morgan is an attempt at the working class, "I know better than those stuffed shirts in Washington" type - like Bruce Willis' character in Armageddon. Except that Morgan is also a connoisseur of fine wines and is rich enough to travel to the Caribbean and France in the same month. In the end, he just comes across as arrogant.

Jimmy Ramshawe, as far as I can tell, spends his entire day reading newspapers, talking to himself, and calling other characters about plot information. The story would be no different if he did not exist.

The Russians, Argentineans, and other bad guys are sad clichés. You can almost hear the maniacal laughter as they discuss their poorly-conceived plan to get more oil from the Falklands. (You want to take British territory and US oil fields illegally and by force, and you think America *won't* get involved? Way to think ahead, guys.)

Finally, Rick Hunter, Doug Jarvis, and the twenty-some other Special Forces guys remind me of the dwarves from The Hobbit in that there's a lot of them and I can't tell one from the other. They are generic soldiers, though surprisingly unprofessional for Special Forces ("Jesus Christ, guys! These are the airplanes we've come to destroy. Can you believe it? I hope everything comes out okay in the end!").

The closest this book ever comes to a realistic character is when Vanislav, the Russian submarine captain who secretly torpedoes Britain's only aircraft carrier, sees what he has done and regrets it. Unfortunately nothing ever comes of this, and the captain is killed by the good guys without a second thought.

The resulting story is predictable, uninteresting, and often annoying. This is the first Robinson book I've ever read, so it's possible that his other books are actually well-written, but I don't think I'll have the patience to find out.

In the Author's note it says "I decided to accept no direct advice or instruction from anyone",and it shows.
The military tactics are flawed with what feels like lazy writing, not the standard of the earlier books.
Will someone explain why Falklanders would collaborate with Argentinians, the Royal Navy sail to certain defeat and the Prime Minister be such a complete waste of time (ok that bit was funny, but...).
Will someone tell Patrick Robinson that a Super Cobra is NOT a troop carrying helicopter - a mistake he seems to make repeatedly in all his recent novels.
The strength of a techno-thriller is that it should be based in reality, this isn't and the basic errors stood out.

Whilst I appreciate this has more than a little justifiable poke at the state of the UK's armed forces, and that Patrick Robinson writes US SEAL & submarine fan books, a little more balanced reality would be nice.

Not sure I'll buy his next book based on this one.

I read a review prior to purchasing this book. I've read many Robinson books so I was very surprised at the vitriolic review which was very nasty and personal. After reading the book, and it was a real thriller, I can only guess that the nasty review I had read was from someone who abhored the obviously passionate conservatism of the writer. His respect for Maggie Thathcher and disgust for the liberal labor gov't. in England was hardly veiled. Nor should it be. This book is one you won't easily put down. Much, much better than the Clancy Psuedos of late. I give it a double thumbs up!!!

I love the newsies! I had to see the movie then and i wound up buying it i only borrowed the book but i am buying it now!!!!!

Newsies was a great book! It had a great story and great characters! It's a book I would read again and again. It's based on actual events and is so real. I felt like I was a newsie fighting with them.

OK, for all of you Newsies fans, which I am among, the movie is soooo much better! The book is much too simple. The movie had gorgeous actors and the book just can't show that. The movie was a lot better! I loved the movie, but the book just wasn't good. It's was OK, I guess, but even saying that is pushing it.

If your a totally Newsies fan then i would reccomened the book because it definitly is a good book but if you are looking for something that is like the movie then this is not it. Some of the characters are more developed in the book then in the movie and they leave out certain things. But if you are just looking for a good read i would definetly suggest this book.

I would recommend this only to the biggest Newsies fans, which happen to be any Internet Newsies fan I think...it's more like the original script than the finished product(Spot was originally written as a freckle faced, toad-y little guy). Of course, it *is* a junior novelization, so it's very childish and should take the average Newsies fan less than a day to skim through and read. I'm 19, and I do kind of enjoy reading through it every once and awhile. It has all the major plot points and scenes in it, and a few extras. One interesting thing is that the cover they chose is a blooper photo. Kid Blink's eye-patch in the photo is just above his eye, and both of his eyes are visible. Heck, it's worth it just to see that! Bottom line, any self-respecting Newsies fanatic should have a copy of this little gem *somewhere* in their home.

This is a wonderful topic. The Japanese built powerful warships - but with a different and fascinating perspective and appearance than the Western Powers. Unfortunately this book is a pamphlet: 75 or so pages, many pictures (good) but the accompanying description is merely a few paragraphs per ship - only a little more than a reader of the Pacific theatre would already know. Size of the book is also a detriment - thin; larger (height/ width) than a usual hardbound, much smaller than an illustrated book. Disappointingly, every time I see this book, the word "cheap" comes to mind. Sorry, go back and do a more comprehensive work on this and present it in a manner to be proud of.

This book is OK for what it is--a brief overview of Japanese aircraft carriers in World War II. What it isn't is a design history for Japanese carriers. It's too brief for that. The pictures are all right, but as in other Osprey books there just aren't enough to satisfy anyone who's really interested in the topic. Don't expect too much, and you'll be satisfied.

There isn't much here, but what is is pretty good. It would have been improved with some discussion of Japanese techniques of plane handling.

This is a very thin book. with only a couple pictures of each carrier. The Illustrations were good, but no diagrams and not much visuals of any hangar decks. This is great for kids, but not anyone looking for modeling resources.

If you know little or nothing about the Imperial Japanese Navy's Aircraft Carriers during the period 1921-45, as was the case with me, this is an excellent place to start. All twenty-one of them are covered from their genesis including specifications through their participation in battles, modifications and ultimate demise. The information is concise, easy to assimilate and fascinating. You are even told what the name of each carrier meant in Japanese.

If there is a gripe about this book it is the pictures. Pictures are important since most of us who would buy this book have never seen these ships. While there is little hope of gleaning much detail from a five inch long picture of an eight hundred foot long ship 90% of these pictures are really useless, way too much contrast. Nothing is worse than someone telling you to look at something in the picture when there is no hope of ever seeing it. There are half a dozen pictures in the book that are correctly printed the rest are all darkness and shadows.

I believe the publisher could have taken the time to make sure these pictures were computer enhanced and printed correctly especially since they are so small and it just wasn't done.

But I do believe the book is a fascinating introduction to these ships and a worthy if quick read. I give it five stars for packing so much interesting content in 48 pages and a three overall because of the lack of care taken in printing the pictures. Nevertheless it was worth the price of admission and with the caveat above I can recommend it to others.

I had only one question I wanted answered by this book -- why do mosquitos bite some people (such as me!) and not others. It was never addressed.

TO read the book is very good to let the commoment people know something about mosquito and the protection methods.

Perhaps I was merely spoiled by the book I read right before reading this one (Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif), but I found this book thoroughly mediocre both in content and style. The author constantly shifts between 3rd person narrator/teacher, man-on-the-scene, and editorializer, without spending sufficient time as any one of them. In fact, I was often disappointed by the brevity with which each of the book's subtopics was explored. It weighs in at a sparse ~225 pages, large print.

Unless you have a particular interest in mosquitoes, I instead recommend Microbe Hunters, a classic (1926?) book on some of the important scientists and discoveries in the early history of microbiology.

Certainly, this book is not for the professional entomologist, but I am not an entomologist and found the book to be a relatively effective history of the mosquito, malaria and other diseases, and human understanding of this insect. Like other reviewers, I did think there was a bit much repetition, but the reading is easy, and it's certainly possible to skip over a paragraph here or there until new territory is reached.

There is brief treatment of the life cycle of the mosquito before the book settles into its primary topic, disease and its transmission. Discussions of DDT, West Nile virus, and methods of (attempted) mosquito eradication were, to me, informative, and I do believe I know significantly more now than I did before reading this book.

I wanted to like this book, and the first chapter, I admit, was . . . well, infectious! But after chapter 2, the writing (col)lapsed into repetition, general assertions,vague hand-waving, and lack of descriptive, telling details, both scientific or anecdotal. The tone and diction are inconsistent, now scholarly, detached language, now cautionary common slang. Unbelievably,one of the key terms -- "disease vector" -- is never even defined!! This book reads like a C+ term paper hastily pulled from the internet, which is especially puzzling and disappointing considering the impressive authorial credentials (one is a leading researcher on mosquito-borne diseases!). What's more, Hyperion appears to have released what appears to be the same book under ***two different titles***: "A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe" and "The Story of Man's Deadliest Foe" (and shouldn't that be "Humanity's" or "Our" deadliest foe??), except that this "Story of ..." title doesn't have photos. Don't waste your time on this one.

I agree with another reviewer who stated that Mr. Smith gave Admirals Halsey and Kinkaid a pass for their rather bold and somewhat reckless advance during the Battle of Santa Cruz. The US lost the Hornet as a result, and nearly lost the Enterprise as well. This at a time that the US could hardly lose these most valuable strategic assets. Halsey/Kinkaid had their task force positioned poorly to receive support from land-based assistance and recon assets because it was too far forward. During the Battle of Leyte Gulf (not covered in the book being reviewed), Halsey will make a similar bold and/or reckless mistake by taking his Third Fleet north after a target of neglible worth (the impotent Japanese Carrier decoys) while leaving the Seventh Fleet exposed to surface attack from Kurita's battleships/cruisers. Halsey rashly neglected to leave his formidable battle line to cover the San Bernadino Strait, which resulted in the pummelling of the "Taffy" task groups off Samar.

Further, Mr. Smith gives Admiral Spruance a pass for his inertia and negligent lack of robust followup to the 1020 SBD attacks on June 4th at Midway. The best research to date finds that Spruance/Browning counted three Japanese carriers disabled and/or sunk, and concluded they bagged all four depite the pleas of aviators such as Richard Best who asserted that there was another undamaged Japanese carrier still operating (see Lundstrom, "Black Shoe Carrier Admiral" pp 270-273). This costly assumption permitted surviving Hiryu to operate unmolested and launch two counterstrikes on TF-17, resulting in the disabling of the Yorktown. It wasn't until the second Japanese counterstrike that Spruance was jolted out of his inertia, and an SBD piloted by Samuel Adams fortunately spotted Hiryu much by chance at about the time of the second Japanese counterstrike. It was only then that Hiryu was attacked and disabled, to sink by scuttling the next day. This scandalous lack of judgement and followup eventually lead to I-168 torpedoing the Yorktown two days later.

This book ought to have been a significant contribution to the analysis of the War in the Pacific. Unfortunately, it is instead a step backwards. There are so many inaccuracies, unsupportable biases and wierd causalities proposed by the author that it strips all credibility away from what ought to have been the strength of the book, a senior naval officer's assessment of the effectiveness of various US commanders in carrier battles. Add to it some really muddled thinking and imprecise writing and you have a book that is damaging to the study of naval history of the period.

There are lots of things that the author says that are just plain wrong. For example, He states that 21 ships were sunk at Pearl Harbor (correct answer: 8). Later he asserts that in the opening months of the war the Japanese had "sunk or disabled nine battleships," where the correct count is 7 (5 at Pearl Harbor, plus the battleship Prince of Wales and the Battlecruiser Repulse). He states that "Hong Kong and Thailand would be overrun as a prelude for moves against Burma and Malaya." In fact, Malaya was the opening attack in the war, and Thailand would not be "overrun," but its government would side with Japan. He states that the Japanese added drop tanks to Zeros for use against "the Dutch and British oil holdings in Southeast Asia." No, they were developed in order to allow Zeros to escort bombers from Taiwan to the Philippines, and thus freeing two carriers for the Pearl Harbor attack (see Okumiya and Horikoshi, ZERO!). In discussing the surface battles around Guadalcanal, he states that the battlecruiser "Hiei was so well armored that she was impervious to broadside gun fire" Presuming that by "broadside gun fire" Smith means gunfire against the ships belt armor, in fact, Hiei was only armored to battlecruiser standards, meaning an 8-inch belt thinned to 3 inches at the ends. The 8-inch/55 guns on the San Francisco class heavy cruisers could penetrate 8 inches of armor at 13,000 yards or less; the battle where Hiei was lost to cruiser gunfire was fought at ranges well under 10,000 yards. Smith also implies that Hiei's steering machinery compartment was part of the ship's vulnerable "topside compartments and superstructure," as he asserts that the rest of the ship was "impervious," leading one to wonder if this is just a case of imprecise writing, or if Smith is unaware that Hiei's steering machinery was located below the waterline.

Then there is my favorite: "... the first reserve officers who saw service in the war entered the Naval War College with the class of 1942." Incredible.

There are many more examples of this ilk. In addition to getting facts wrong, it is painfully obvious that the author does not know or understand naval combat in WW II in the Pacific - there are too many "throw-away" comments that attest to this lack of understanding. For example, Smith asserts that battleships were not moved to the Pacific after Pearl Harbor because "most were required in the Atlantic Theater." In the Atlantic, the Germans had Tirpitz operational and two battlecruisers damaged at Brest. The British had 3 battleships in the home fleet, one at Gibraltar, and one in workups in the Caribbean for a total of 5 battleships in theater, plus two more in home yards being repaired. The British felt sufficiently secure in their battleship numbers in the Atlantic theater that they had dispatched 5 battleships to the Far East. While the British would cartainly appreciate any reinforcements, there was no "requirement" to keep US battleships in the Atlantic, much less the 5 that were there in January 1942. The real reason was fuel: tankers were in such a shortage that the US could not deploy and support their existing Pacific Fleet battleships to Pearl Harbor, much less accommodate transfers of LantFleet battleships. Smith obviously has not read the current literature on US battleship employment during the war, and the reasons why the battle squadron remained on the US West Coast. In fact, in several places in the book Smith is totally oblivious to the logistics constraints of the Pacific Theater, which contributes to the lack of credibility of many of his arguments.

Smith's idea of causality is often strained. For example, he states that "as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ... only fourteen destroyers, seven heavy cruisers and one light cruiser were available to support the American Carrier groups [at Midway]." Let's examine that bizarre idea. On 1 May 1941 US forces totaled 13 heavy cruisers, 11 light cruisers and 80 destroyers in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor deducted 2 light cruisers and 2 destroyers, or under 4% of the total number of ships. One has to suspect that there were reasons other than the attack at Pearl Harbor for a shortage of ships to support the carriers at Midway. Smith's assertion that the shortage was due to "Pearl Harbor" is not credible.

So, Smith's book suffers from poor fact checking and poor understanding of causality. He also contradicts himself in several places, making for some very confusing reading. For example, the number of fighters the Japanese were to land on Midway was given in one place as 22 and in another as 33, and the carrier Shoho either carried 18 or 31 aircraft. His analyses are similarly muddled: when looking at the Coral Sea campaign, he first says that the US attack on Tulagi was *good* as it was necessary to eliminate a Japanese reconnaissance base, and later he says it was *bad* because the US forces revealed their position and might be "trapped." Trapped? By what? Where did that come from? Good or bad? Both?

All of this is prelude to the biggest problem with this book: the assertion that the evil battleship admirals of the "Gun Club" unfairly (yes, "unfairly" is the word Smith uses) held back the development of the aircraft carrier as an independent strike platform. Here Smith parrots the arguments and biases of O'Connell's truely monumental disaster, "Sacred Vessels." "Sacred Vessels'" arguments have been exploded by a number of critics; it is sad that Smith did not consult them before echoing O'Connell in his dissertation. But even then, most of the arguments that he puts forward about the path of aircraft carrier development between the wars is destroyed by Hone, Friedman and Mandeles book "American and British Aircraft Carrier Development 1919-1941," which is in Smith's bibliography, but which he apparently did not read, or perhaps just did not decide to discuss their arguments in his work. How did that get past the committee?

Smith asserts that the US Navy was in the grips of the Gun Club to keep the aircraft carrier as an auxiliary to the battleship. "Mainstream thinking within the Navy's top leadership held that naval aviation was an adjunct to battle fleet operations rather than an integral part of its offensive lethality. The Japanese attack established beyond doubt that this philosophy was seriously in error." He goes on to say that "... the most forward -looking elements of technology and doctrine were conspicuously absent from naval education of the interwar period." He complains about "the study of gun platform battles bereft of radar (not available until 1936) ..."

There are lots of things wrong with these statements. First, on a purely factual note, radar was not available in 1936. The first experimental set went on the destroyer Leary in April of 1937, and the first production radars (the CXAM) began installation mid-1940. It would be rather hard for the NWC to teach about radar's "forward-looking elements of technology" when the characteristics and performance of the technology was yet to be established at sea.

"This bias in the senior Navy hierarchy was reflected in the War College course of study." He criticizes the curriculum for concentrating on the "study of gun platform battles". In WW II in the Pacific, there were 5 carrier v. carrier battles; over that same time Vincent O'Hara has documented 40 gun engagements.

He complains that in 1925 the Navy "lacked a concrete plan for employing its air assets in operations with fleet units." In 1925! Langley was not commissioned until late 1924, and the Sara and Lexington not available to participate in fleet training until 1929. It would take experimentation and practice to determine how many aircraft could operate off a carrier, in what size groups, and with what lethality and loss and accident rates. Smith's argument that the lack of a "concrete plan" in 1925 exhibits a bias against carrier aviation shows that he does not understand the process of innovation in the inter-war navy, a process that depended very heavily upon a very sensible policy of testing and experimenting before committing the Navy to any long-range plan. Any navy "concrete plan" developed in 1925 would have had to depend greatly upon the British examples, who were at that time the leading operators of carrier aircraft at sea. A plan based on the British example would have resulted in a very different carrier force than the one that was available to the American Navy in 1941.

The American carrier development relied on experimentation and trial and error. As a result of this experimentation, US carrier aviation developed very differently than that of the British. Had we followed the British example, US carriers would have been restricted to about half the number of aircraft that they eventually carried, and would be capable of strikes out to only about 125 nm rather than over twice that distance. Strikes would have been in penny packets rather than full-deckloads of 70 aircraft or more. Smith's argument not only does not hold water, it betrays a fundamental weakness in his understanding of the Navy's process of development and progress in the carrier air arm, and the role of the NWC in this process.

Smith ignores the evidence of this progress. For example, there was the famous strike by carrier aircraft against the Panama Canal in the 1929 fleet exercises, and the surprise attack against Hawaii in the 1932 exercises. Smith sniffs at the level of damage assessed by the umpires and uses this as "evidence" of bias against carrier aviation, an attempt to "cheat" and structure the final results in terms amenable to the prejudices of the battleship clique. While picking this nit, he ignores the huge mote, the very fact that these strikes were even conducted! If there was a systematic bias against carriers as independent strike platforms these missions would have never had been carried out at all - the stogy old battleship admirals who commanded the exercises would have instead tethered their carriers to the battle line.

The point is that Smith's thesis is not the result of evidence. He has a bias that he wants to prove, and he picks out selected things that he thinks supports his thesis. But his biases are supported by very little evidence, and what evidence he does offer can easily be turned into counterarguments against him. In the end, it is down to his opinion that battleship admirals (whoever they might be) "unfairly inhibited carrier air potential." And this opinion has been totally exploded even before Smith published this book. As mentioned earlier, in "American and British Aircraft Carrier Development 1919-1941," Hone, Friedman and Mandeles carefully examined the evolution of carrier operations in the interwar years, and came to conclusions diametrically opposed to those entertained by Smith - there was no clique of Battleship Admirals "unfairly" holding carrier aviation back, but rather an innovative process of "test a little, build a little" that was supported by the navy hierarchy and led to the effective and efficient US carriers going into WW II. Significantly, Smith lists this book in his bibliography, but he does not address any of the points made by Hone et al, a rather interesting omission.

After Pearl Harbor Smith asserts that "The Gun Club proponents were forced to change their thinking drastically and embrace the carrier as the sole surviving centerpiece of offensive naval lethality." This does not hold water, either. On 1 December 1941 the United States had 14 operational battleships, 3 undergoing yard periods, and 3 more to be commissioned in the first half of 1942 - a total of 20 battleships. At Pearl Harbor 5 of these battleships were sunk, leaving 15 battleships against 11 Japanese battleships. At the same time, the Americans had 7 operational carriers. Certainly 15 battleships could constitute some centerpiece of offensive naval lethality, unless Smith is proposing that Pearl Harbor stripped the capability from all battleships, a proposition that would be deemed preposterous by anyone participating in the Guadalcanal campaign. So, the "Gun Club" had forces available. If they would have dominated the Navy as Smith asserts, they could still have initiated a battleship movement against Japan, but the logistics support was not there. Instead, they transitioned rather seamlessly into using carriers as independent striking platforms, something that they had always recognized and planned to do in War Plan Orange. Smith's interpretation of events is warped by the prejudices of his initial unjustified biases.

There are some good things in this book. Some of the analyses of the battles and discussions of "grading the admirals" contains good points. But the problem is that the good points are interlarded with inaccuracies, errors, and insufficient analysis. He throws many opinions out as facts. For example, he gives Admiral McCain "poor grades" as a land-based reconnaissance commander without any analysis of the numbers of aircraft, availability rates, the search patterns used, communications, or anything. No analysis is done. He just assumes that, since the result was not all he would have wanted it to be, the that Admiral deserves a "C" grade. Based on what he presented, I would not be so bold.

The bottom line is that I cannot recommend this book to anyone other than serious students of the Pacific War, people who are already so familiar with the war that they can filter out the large amount of manure in this book and uncover the ponies beneath.

Dr. Alan D. Zimm (CDR USN ret).

As an amateur military historian, my reading is done for self-interest and leisure. Having said that, I found this book to be an outstanding historical study of the commanders and their decisions in the five crucial aircraft carrier battles of WW II: Coral Sea, Midway, the Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz, and the Philippine Sea.

The author (Dr. Douglas Smith) is on the faculty at The Naval War College of Newport, RI and he has impeccable academic credentials. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Naval Postgraduate School, The Naval War College, and holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University. Yet even with the author's impressive credentials, this is not another stodgy, hard-to-read book on obscure events of WW II. It is well-written and even entertaining at times, especially when the author / professor issues each commander a grade on the command decisions made during the heat of the five key battles.

I found the book to be a nice balance between the unknown (fresh material researched from the archives of The Naval War College) and the well-known (the biggest naval battles in the largest naval campaign the world has ever seen). I learned a great deal of new information on already well-studied events.

This book shines new light on the command decisions made by the U.S. Navy's top leadership, men like "Bull" Halsey, Chester Nimitz, Raymond Spruance, and Frank Jack Fletcher. It proves that more than luck or good intelligence brought success to the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theatre of WW II. The outcome of the five Pacific carrier battles can be attributed to the merit of the decisions made by the naval commanders: their aggressiveness, decisiveness, and wisdom.

Published by The Naval Institute Press, you find meticulous documentation from original sources. That is helpful for scholars. But for the amateurs like myself, it never bogs down into tedious reading.

I'm so glad I own this book!

Anybody who has ever done an MBA or even had the most basic management or science training at some point in their lives at some point will have heard somebody given a short talk about what makes good charts and diagrame for, say, a PowerPoint presentation. It's not rocket science - charts and diagrams should be used to illustrate important points clearly and to aid the reader better understand key points that may be difficult by text alone.

When this book arrived, I at first flipped through it and naturally my eyes caught the graphs first. In fact, the very first word my eyes happened to read in the entire book were a place where "Ozawa's" name was misspelled as "Ozaw." Hmm.. that was a bit odd I thought, so I looked at some of the other charts and figures. It was a cavalcade of banality and charts done so badly, I was actually thinking that I had gotten a misprinted book.

Virtually every diagram is bad. here are a few chosen at random:
A chart showing ship movement around savo island is shown at such small size that absoutely no useful detail is presented. A chart of midway is so cluttered (and then inexplicably nearly duplicated a few pages later) to be likewise useless. A large figure is used to illustrate the historically meaningless concept of "Japan's Absolute National Defense line". There is at least one chart where scales and labels seems to have been forgone completely.

Virtually every chart/graph provided is bad. here are a few chosen at random: There are assorted absolutely pointless graphs (each taking up half a page!) that show things like 'speed of US aircraft.' with exactly 3 blindingly obvious or pedantic data points on them. There's a bar graph that claims to show Japanese vs American something or other where the American data, as far as I can tell, is simply missing. There's a third of a page graphic devoted to showing what the japanese carrier names meant ("Akagi = red castle") while other much more important informtation is forgone.

It's not just bad, the charts and graphics in this book look like somebody created them on a bet to see if a publisher would let something so ridiculous slide.

Ok, but charts and graphs are charts and graphs, and the book is the book, right? I mean, I was off to a bad start, but maybe this was sort of an exception?

Well, yes and no. Yes, the charts and graphs are the low point of the book and there is some good that can be gotten out of it.

But boy, Smith (the author) makes you work for it! I can't tell if his writing style is meant to be academic or it's just incompetence. Overlong sentences with many completely irrelevant parentheticals, changes of voice, pointless footnotes, random italics, bizarre footnotes.. the list goes on and on. Imagine a bad william shatner impersonator's staccato dictation for 300 pages and you get the idea.

But is there a payoff? I mean, the guy had a fine navy career and has taught for the naval war college.. surely if you put up with all this nonsense there is some payoff, right?

Carrier Battles (a generic title for a likewise forgettable book) has been touted as profiling four WW2 Pacific American decisionmakers to help us understand the decisions they made. It's actually pretty much just a very generic retelling of selected portions of Pacific War carrier battles. Good analysis is few and far between. There is some good insight about what was going on, strategy and doctrinewise, in the US Naval Academy before the war, but virtually every other part of this book betrays the obvious fact that the author has at best a dedicated amateur's familiarity with the subject.

Howlers abound. We are told with a straight face that Japan had (meaninful, not just fanciful) territorial expansion plans that extended into the Carribean. I'm sorry. That's just comedy. Smith has basically bought hook line and sinker some ridiculous overblowing of some obscure Japanese document that proposed the Japanese governorship for, say, Honduras or Washington State and has somehow come to treat that document's daydreaming as relevant to actual war strategy. Forget swinging and missing - that shows that Smith didn't only get lost on the way to the ballpark, but it's not clear if he even knows what the ballpark is.

To understand why certain actors made certain decisions (again, I am referring here to the subtitle of the book 'command decision in harm's way'), one really has to get into the nitty gritty of operations. Parshall and Tully's excellent "shattered sword" cast new light on Nagumo's actions by analyzing the elevator cycle time of IJN CV's. Isom's book attempted to the same (it did it badly, but at least he tried) by, among other things, analyzing radio technology. Not Smith though - the operational stuff which should be at the core of this book simply doesn't exist. Rather, you get page after page of very generic description of battles and play by play of ship movements and orders given. Insight is almost completely lacking.

Reading back, it appears that I've really beaten this book up. Unfortunately, it really and truly deserves it. While I'm not trying to intentionally be mean, subconsciously I guess this is my sort of revenge for trying in good faith to get through this dreck (and, yes, I did read it all) hoping to find pearls of insight or wisdom that ultimately just weren't coming. Heck, as a sometimes businessperson I would have even not minded near complete lack of good wartime detail had it read like an average management case study (like HBS case studies or what have you). Unfortunately this book just fails at all levels. This book was apparently written as some sort of textbook for I guess Naval War College distance learners or maybe Annapolis undergraduates - it compares not unfavorably to "the book that your professor made you read because it was his book and nobody else was probably going to read it and for the purpose of taching a 3-credit course on tuesday and wesdnesday afternoons it was good enough." It should never have made the mainstream press. Avoid.

This is a very analytical and somewhat scholastic view of the US decision making at the five key carrier battles of the Pacific War. The focus is on the US military and especially the US commanders, what they experienced at the time of each battle, their perspectives, the decisions that they made and why they made them and the results of their decisions. After this, each decision maker is rated on 8 criteria and given a grade from F to A+. I'm sure that the grades and the reasoning can be questioned especially for the Battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. The author appears to have a positive bias towards Admiral Frank Fletcher which isn't shared by other writers. Also, he seems to give Halsey and Kincaid a pass on what happened in Santa Cruz. However, the perspectives of Coral Sea and Midway are good, and for those two battles alone, this book is worth the buy. However, this is for a reader of the Pacific War who has already read a basis history on these events.

This book was extremely informative, interesting and entertaining; however, it's only 204 pages long and I found 8 typographical errors. Wow. Who drops the ball in a situation like this? Is our society forgiving of errors, ignorant of grammatical rules (some of the errors could have been categorized as such), or simply skimming material?

I still liked the book.

Rats reproduce prolifically - it's possible for a three-year-old rat to have given birth to 43 litters, up to 516 little ones. The adaptation that has helped rats the most has been their ability to live with humans - in fact, they seek us out. They can barely see beyond four feet (though visually detect motion up to 50 feet), and are close to color-blind. They can detect and differentiate smells as well as the best of dogs, can detect sounds about 2.5X better than humans, detect different tastes as small as 0.5 ppm (equivalent to about 2 grains of salt in a pound of peanut butter).

When a rat senses something isn't right with a food source, it will urinate on it - making poisoning more difficult. They stay close to walls, can leap four feet from a standing position and climb brick walls or lead pipes. Rats are also excellent swimmers and can squeeze through holes only 3/4" in diameter. About 10-100% of pet rats and 50-100% of wild ones carry rat-bite fever virus - fatal 13% of the time to humans. Rats also have a taste for electrical insulation - it is estimated that 25% of non-arson fires are caused by rats.

Plague is that rat's most famous "contribution." An estimated 75 million humans have died in as many as 100 different plagues. (My suspicion is that since each began with widespread rat deaths, multi-years' interval was required to rebuild the population and associated flea carriers.) The Great Fire of London (1665) brought the first steps towards controlling plague. After the fire rated for four days and destroyed 13,200-some homes, one reaction as to ban highly combustible thatch roofs within the city. Since thatched roofs are also an ideal habitat for black rats (they sleep in burrows in the thatching during the day, and rain urine and feces down upon the home's inhabitants), this substantially reduced their environment. Rebuilding also included wider streets and a modern sewage system. Plague frequency and intensity in London began dropping as these changes were implemented.

In the late 1890s a Swiss medical student named Yersin realized that plague was connected to rats while in Asia investigating the plague there at the time. He noticed the connection between large rat die-offs prior to humans getting the plague (we are the fleas' second-choice), and that those tasked with sweeping out dead rats were the first to become infected. This led to deliberate steps to reduce rat infestations, and later, steps to control fleas (easier than killing rats).

The last major plague outbreak was in Chile and Argentina in 1945; we now average about 2,000 plague deaths/year. BUT, rats are developing resistance to the poisons used against them, so . . .

"Rats" was interesting and an easy read; my only criticism is that its data were sometimes inconsistent.

Intelligent, adaptable, prolific, omnivorous, destructive: in Jerry Langton's book, this description applies not only to people, but to the common brown and black rats that share our habitat. Langton, a Canadian freelance writer, provides a stroll through rat history and lore, from "Ben" to bubonic plague, and a close-up and personal encounter in the sewers.

A major topic of the author is why these rodents are so difficult to get rid of, and why most of us want to (no Rat Fancier, he). His basic conclusion is that rats are so well adapted to the human-created environment (our garbage, our graneries, our cities, farms, and sewers) that it is very likely they will be with us always, in spite of all our poisons and traps.

This is a short and interesting book, that will introduce the general reader to an animal to which most of us have an instinctive aversion, without really knowing much about them.

This book is incredibly anti-rat and not even 100% accurate. For example, Langton says that pet black rats are incredibly rare. What? Just go to PetCo and look at the pet rats. There are tons of black ones. I myself have owned two black pet rats. This is only one example of his gross inaccuracies. Also, I found his description of pet rat owners to be ridiculous and offensive. I never use the word "extremely" to describe my pet rats. Nor do I possess tattoos. Likewise, I am not particularly anti-establishment. I'm just a student working on my Ph.D. who thought the rats at the pet store were cute. As another reviewer said, I don't understand why someone who doesn't like rats would write an entire book about them. The negativity got old very quickly. It seems that rat lovers might be particularly likely to buy this book, so why did the Langton decide to be so insulting? I definitely would not recommend this book.

If Langton hates rats so much, why did he write a book about them? I was hoping for an entertaining but in-depth study of a specific group of wild rats from someone who has a scientific interest in the species. That must be a different book. This one provides startling rat facts, a dullish history of rats, a few anecdotes, and lots of mockery for people who have any sort of positive attitude about these animals. I guess that's fun if you share the author's point of view, but this isn't a very satisfying book if you're just plain interested in learning about rats and how they live.

This book will satisfy most carrier aviation buffs if only for the picutres that fill its pages. Overall, it doesn't go into great detail or too much about the belowdecks supporting uints that allow flight operations to exist. What it does offer is a retrospective of carrier operations from before World War II, a decent amount on World War II operations, and then the Cold War carriers that continue serving on until today. There is some information on the British and French carriers, but it is very limited.

Overall, this book is introductory, and best serves as illustrating a challenging world in a coffee-table book format.

This book has a lot of great pictures, but there is no excuse for sloppy errors like this one:

On p22, it states the USS Lexington (CV2) underwent an extensive upgrade in 1943-1944. On p23, it correctly states that CV2 went down in the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. They later correctly state that the Essex class carrier scheduled to be named Cabot was renamed Lexington (CV16), commissioned in 1943. The writer must have seen a picture of CV16 from 1944, seen that it looked different than CV2 and written that it was upgraded.

Bad job. Go ahead and get the book if you want the pictures, but find another title as a companion to get accurate history.

If anyone who loves aircrafts carriers gets the chance to buy this book, go for it! It's worth every penny. Great photos and text make this book a treasure to any naval enthusiasts library.

Nineteen photographs included in the 48 pages are clear & interesting. Large type and presentation aimed at 4th to 7th grade level readers. Not of general appeal as information about each class of carrier too limited & generalized. ERROR. Page 32 it states that Kitty Hawk class removed from service in 1996, however, #35 million just spent on rennovating the USS Kitty Hawk & it is definitely in service, stationed in Japan & last week depoyed to Baltic area.

I am saddened by this book. The author is consumed with hatred and Unforgiveness. She could have done so much better. Socrates once wrote: "Whoever practices forgiveness will see how high he can climb towards the peaks of life. We only learn to forgive,remembering but leaving behind suffering, hate and rancour. We can forget that archeological memory that permanently lives in the past and we can live each day intensely, opening hence the doors to a joyful tomorrow full of plenitude." Miriam is destroying her life by living in the past. I feel sorry for her. Reading this book is a waste of time. I would not recommend it.

I have read this book and find it in total contradication to what the Bruderhof Communities represents. Please be informed that information in this book is not only inaccurate, but is also an outright lie.

Miriam Arnold, who grew up on the "inside", tells her story without fear. She is one fiesty woman. Miriam Arnold shares with us her life amongst the "Arnoldleut" ("Arnold People") or Bruderhof, as they prefer to be called. The whole Bruderhof story is not a pretty picture, even when they tell it in their books. Sooner or later they will likely reunite again with the mainstream Hutterite Movement. At that time it will be necessary to uncover everything. Miriam presents issues that will likely be "looked at" very closely by the Hutterite leadership of the day. Whether her story is totally accurate or not, I can't really say, but I do know her viewpoint (and that of hundreds like her) will get a good "hearing" at that time. The Great Change will come. The Truth will win out. Miriam Arnold is no "outsider". She lived the "life". The Bruderhof/Arnoldleut group (or leadership?) will have to give a fuller account at the NEXT reuniting with the Hutterites. I can guarantee that. This in no way reflects upon the many sincere people who are among them, but there are two sides to every story, it seems. Hmmmm!

Miriam Arnold Holmes tells in great honesty about her childhood as a member of the Bruderhof. She relates her adjustment to the world outside, the difficulties she had in facing her problems. I can identify with much of what she writes as I too grew up in the bruderhof. I appreciate all she expressed in her book. It took guts to tell all she did. Very touching how she tells of her family relationships and the struggle to remain faithful to the vows she took. The bruderhof did not receive this book well as there were too many skeletons brought out of the closet by Ms Holmes. If only the bruderhof made this and other books, by former members, available to their membership, they could learn so much that would be of help to them in their daily life. This book is a valuable tool in learning the affects of a closed society on one individual.