Book Description
A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away.
Nicholas Lemann opens his extraordinary new book with a riveting account of the horrific events of Easter 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, where a white militia of Confederate veterans-turned-vigilantes attacked the black community there and massacred hundreds of people in a gruesome killing spree. This was the start of an insurgency that changed the course of American history: for the next few years white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and challenge President Grant’ssupport for the emergent structures of black political power. The remorseless strategy of well-financed “White Line” organizations was to create chaos and keep blacks from voting out of fear for their lives and livelihoods. Redemption is the first book to describe in uncompromising detail this organized racial violence, which reached its apogee in Mississippi in 1875.
Lemann bases his devastating account on a wealth of military records, congressional investigations, memoirs, press reports, and the invaluable papers of Adelbert Ames, the war hero from Maine who was Mississippi’s governor at the time. When Ames pleaded with Grant for federal troops who could thwart the white terrorists violently disrupting Republican political activities, Grant wavered, and the result was a bloody, corrupt election in which Mississippi was
“redeemed”—that is, returned to white control.
Redemption makes clear that this is what led to the death of Reconstruction—and of the rights encoded in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We are still living with the consequences.
Customer Reviews:
A Needed Corrective.......2007-04-11
Nicholas Lemann's book "Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War," focuses on mostly forgotten and often sanitized versions of specific incidents that marked the end of Reconstruction and the regaining by White Southerns of state and local government institutions leading to Jim Crow and Segregation that continued for another 90 years or so. The book, relatively brief, examines in detail several incidents, one in Lousiana, the others in Mississippi where local vigalante groups seized control from local black officials through intimidation and massacres. It is perhaps not coincidential that the worst offenses took place in Mississippi, and perhaps some sort of rough justice that in exchange Mississippi remained for decades afterwards on the lowest rung of the ladder among the states in nearly every social and economic ranking.
Much of the book is through the eyes of one Adelbert Ames, a Union general, senator and governor of Mississippi, as revealed in the copius correspondence with his wife, Blanche Butler, who most of the time remained at home in the North. Because of weariness of the part of the North, insufficient troops, deliberate foot-dragging by US officials sympathetic to the South, and indecisiveness on the part of President Grant, these events from 1874-76 were allowed to precede with little intervention and protection of Black citizens. In effect, the withdrawal of Northern troops in 1877, the result of a compromise that ended the electoral stalemate in the Hayes/Tilden presidential election of 1876, overturned a major achievement of the Civil War, namely full citizenship and voting privileges for former African slaves. The result was another dark stain on American history and our pretenses of a just and equitable society where everyone has the chance to be president.
Because of its brevity, the book suffers from a lack of context of how overall Reconstruction had proceeded in the South, it's weaknesses and its victories. The book also would have been improved through a map, particularly Mississippi and the various places where the rampages of the vigantes took place. Another improvement would have been photographs of the several colorful characters portrayed. But all in all, for a brief look at an important moment in American history, the book is highly recommended.
Last Battle?.......2007-03-14
The subtitle is a little bit of a cheat, for the Civil War was long over by the time the massacres of 1875 began, but after reading Nicholas Lemann's book on the failure of Reconstruction and the life of Civil War General Adelbert Ames, I can see why he decided to bend the truth and capture the huge Civil War market.
he shows how JFK was a patsy to the Southern Conservative myth of Reconstruction and how, in PROFILES IN COURAGE (1956) Kennedy included Lucius Lamar of Mississippi as an avatar of courage, when in actuality he was a liar and a bigot and was personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of Mississippi freedmen. What was JFK thinking? Well, as Lemann points out, this was not an anomaly in Kennedy's otherwise antiracist public profile. Indeed it was part and parcel of his curiously suspect voting record and public stand towards the race question. It was as though, in the polarized 1950s, he had to keep the Southern Democrats happy in order to win their support for the campaign he saw coming his way. PROFILES IN COURAGE dismisses Adelbert Ames, Lemann's (admittedly flawed) hero, as a mere carpetbagger, not worthy of living in Mississippi, a `foreigner' and an Abolitionist. The strange thing is that, he lived so long (at age 98, he was the oldest surviving Civil War officer) his daughter Blanche was on hand to shame Kennedy into agreeing to change future editions of PROFILES. Then her years of disappointment began, for even though Senator, and then President Kennedy, had agreed to re-research Reconstruction, he never did, and when she kept bugging him he enlisted the help of her grandson, "Paper Lion" George Plimpton, to call his honorable kinswoman off his back. Of course all of these people had incredible privilege and wealth.
A needed corrective to the Reconstruction story.......2007-02-24
Having lived in the South for the first 21 years of my life, I can attest to the staying power of the myths of Reconstruction and the succeeding era which I was taught to call Redemption.
The central motif of these myths is that of courageous, heroic whites finally standing up to a brutal Northern occupation, but turning to violence only when physically threatened.
Some prominent historians -- Eric Foner in particular -- have been forthright and comprehensive in setting out the true facts. In my readings, there have been two aspects still missing from such large-scale works. First of all, a visceral, detailed accounting of the intensity of white-on-black violence has been needed. Second, we have lacked a nuanced, detailed biography of Adelbert Ames, perhaps the best exemplar of the promise interracial cooperation held for the South.
In "Redemption", journalist Nicholas Lemann makes an attempt to remedy both these insufficiencies in a narrative aimed at the non-specialist reader. Instead of giving us a comprehensive study of how integrated southern state governments were driven from power, Lemann chooses instead to focus primarily on the single example of Mississippi, with some inclusion of parallel events in neighboring Louisiana. And the story of Reconstruction Mississippi cannot successfully be understood without considering the career of New Englander Adelbert Ames, a Union veteran who became first the state's senator and then governor during this period.
Lemann recounts instance upon instance of politically-inspired and deadly violence that steadily drove Republican voters, especially blacks, from the polls. While many leading white Democrats maintained deniability and claimed that such attacks were rare and always provoked by the other side, and while President Grant's commitment to federal protection decisively waned, Governor Ames cast off his naivete and tried to counter with what forces he could muster. But without timely federal intervention, this proved an impossible task. Ames was finally forced to face facts, and he resigned the governorship and left the state for good. The Solid South was born with violence as midwife.
Lemann's choices mean that he needs to do three things well. First, with respect to bringing home the intensity, pervasiveness, and comprehensive effects of the violence, Lemann is especially convincing, at least within Mississippi (and to a less significant extent Louisiana). Second, his incorporation of an Ames biography is in itself valuable and multi-faceted. But it doesn't serve as a full-fledged biography due to the author's chronological boundaries. We do learn of Ames' background and his significant relationships with others, most notably his wife and father-in-law; these are important in understanding Ames' behavior in Mississippi. But for Ames' life after Mississippi, Lemann takes only a cursory wrap-up approach.
Finally, we should expect Lemann to do a convincing job of integrating these two intersecting narratives. In this he is largely successful. But there are moments when his attention to the details of Ames' life, while welcome to this reader, may yet seem only remotely relevant to the larger story of the Redemption era.
In 1933 Adelbert Ames became the last Civil War officer to die. The myths of Redemption have lived on long after, and Lemann's book is a significant contribution to puncturing those myths and establishing the truth.
Mississippi Burning.......2007-02-09
This is a story on how government failed, how the civil rights of freed slaves and blacks became a political playground of hate and deceit and how victory on the battlefield was lost to thugs & cowards. It clearly shows how history can be manipulated by the criminals who ushered in a sordid era of Jim Crow laws while others looked away.
Author Nicholas Lemann does a magnificent job in detailing the death of Reconstruction through white terrorism in Mississippi in the 1870s, which emboldened the white racists throughout the south to institute what became known as the "Mississippi Plan" of intimidation and murder to seize power in every government institution and to kick blacks back into servitude.
The heroes are the victims - the blacks and some white Republicans - who boldly stood alone while the mobs seized control in a revolution of aversion, and then afterwards wrote the articles and books, whose key lies are still being taught as factual history today.
You will be angered as Lemann explains as a reporter how Reconstruction was lost. But then look around, and realize that the subtitle, The Last Battle of the Civil War, may be incorrect. Unless this country confronts the harsh realities of the past, the last battle of the Civil War has yet to be fought, or won.
America's Own Terrorists.......2007-02-04
In this short historical account, Nicholas Lemann tells the disturbing story of how ex-confederates in Mississippi brought about the end of Reconstruction in 1875 through an orchestrated campaign of savagery and deception.
The "Mississippi Plan" employed an ugly and brutal pattern: when freed slaves attempted to exercise their political rights--by convening political rallies, becoming candidates for office or simply trying to vote--southern whites responded with hellish violence, not merely fighting the freed slaves, but coldly murdering them in front of friends or family or, worse, hunting them down if they fled.
To justify their heinous conduct, the whites invented an emotionally laden cover story that, to this very day, resonates among the American public. In their view, the violence was necessary to forestall imminent "Negro uprisings," prevent rape and pillage by brutish and bestial blacks, and redeem the honor of the south from the depredation of northern carpetbaggers who seized control of the political system by duping or bribing the newly freed slaves.
The key to the Mississippi Plan was the public relations tactic of presenting the organized slaughter of blacks as random local incidents, a tactic that discouraged President Grant from sending federal troops to secure the rights of the newly enfranchised citizens. Absent this safeguard, the intimidation worked, and the Democrats won control of key offices, despite significant Republican majorities among registered or potential voters. With the outcome of the presidential election of 1876 in dispute, the nation embraced the "Compromise of 1877" in which the Democrats agreed to let Rutherford Hayes become president and the Republicans agreed to the removal of the remaining federal troops from the South. Reconstruction was over.
Much of this tale is told through the eyes of Adelbert Ames, a Northerner and celebrated Union Army general who was elected Governor of Mississippi by the multitude of new black voters. Sometimes the book reads like a biography of Ames. Only at the end does Lemann step back from the detailed account and provide the larger picture of how the "Mississippi Plan" became the blueprint for the entire Southern strategy to end Reconstruction and how the nation shamefully abandoned its commitment to true citizenship for blacks.
As I read "Redemption," a profound sense of disgust and outrage rose within me. So horrific, repulsive, and needless was the conduct of the Southern Democrats that, at times, I felt Lemann must have been omitting facts that would have balanced the story. But this is precisely Lemann's point: when Southerners today celebrate the honor and courage of Dixie, they are endorsing a fiction that was invented in 1875. There was no honor, only terror of helpless black victims.
Book Description
In May of 1940, the armies of Nazi Germany were marching through France. In the face of this devastating advance, one of World War II's greatest acts of heroism would be a retreat: the evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk.
In Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man, we are given an unprecedented vision of these harrowing days. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore has created a bold and powerful account of the small group of men who fended off the German army so that hundreds of thousands of their comrades could exit this doomed land. These brave troops, members of the British Expeditionary Forces and the French army, held a series of strong points inland, allowing the rest of the battered battalions to escape to the coast. Those that remained were ordered to fight to the last man.
Much has been written about the efforts of the Royal Navy in shuttling soldiers to safety, but here we are given an unparalleled look inside this massive operation and the invaluable role played by the BEF. Without the ferocity and bravery of the officers and ordinary soldiers on the ground, the German army would likely have encircled nearly half a million Allied soldiers. The loss of these battalions, Sebag-Montefiore argues, could have dramatically changed the direction of the war,and enabled Hitler to invade a weakened Britain.
This is military history at its best: a judicious analysis of the movement of the war, and a vivid feel of what it was like to be on the front line. Sebag-Montefiore brings these men—the forgotten heroes of Dunkirk—to life, and it is their valiant exploits and devotion to their brethren that form the heart of this important book.
Customer Reviews:
2 stars for compiling the information.......2007-08-24
Sebag-Montefiore's book is a tedious chronology of the events leading up through (and a bit beyond) the evacuation of the BEF from the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940. I would have thought that a press like Harvard would be more discerning, but apparently not.
History is the critical assessment and analysis of past events. It seeks to explain why things happened. This book is not history, but merely chronology. This too can be useful, if one needs a reference source to look up dates, names, places, and things. But reading a list of events that runs 500 pages is a long slog.
It does not help that Sebag-Montefiore's writing style is frustrating. There is no continuity whatsoever to the story. This is probably the result of not having a theme or point he is trying to make. Literally, the reader can skip entire pages of every chapter and not miss important developments or assessments. Any explanation of events that would provide some context are buried in the end notes, some of which are several paragraphs long. Explanations of locations and setting are dismissed with a brief command to the reader to look at the maps. The maps themselves are excellent, but no map can ever stand in for text.
In the end, the book reads as a vehicle for the author to quote the source material he found. What we're left with is 500 pages of diary entries and anecdotes with no obvious point to be made. The true contribution of the Sebag-Montefiore is indeed to have collected this material. Now all we need is another author to use it and write a better book.
needs work.......2007-06-14
For my purposes, there are two types of books, those I want to read again and those I don't. Sebag-Montefiore's I won't read again. While the subject is interesting, the battle maps ample and detailed, and the notes copious, the author has no feel for telling a story or making multiple stories hang together. He can't describe settings, scenes, and characters, or plot the action. He can't write interesting sentences. It seems as if he used the maps and notes to remedy the deficiencies of his writing style. Rather than describe a setting, he says, "Look at the map." Rather than organize the story, he says, "See the notes." He's collated a mass of new primary sources--a worm's eye view of the war--but doesn't himself work very hard at making the material come alive. About the only time the author perks up and gets a pulse is when he describes some minor English aristocrat's cavalier approach to combat--and cavalier seems to be the approach to his job the author favors.
10,000 anecdotes don't equal history.......2007-06-01
This book tells how hard British troops often fought in the battles for the approaches and perimeter of Dunkirk. However, once the author has finished with the anecdotes, he gives NO ANALYSIS of the story.
If the Belgians and Dutch had given the British time to reach the "true" Dyle River line, could the British and French have stopped the Germans (not just the few troops sent through Belgium, but the whole German Army as anticipated)? An important question, and from the anecdotes the author has selected, I think the answers are probably NO and NO--the Germans were just too good. But I would really like to read the author's analysis on this issue.
And why couldn't 400,000 of the best British and French troops hold on to one strip of land (Dunkirk)? Were they totally out of ammunition and unable to resist? Since defense is supposed to be more powerful than offense, they should have been able to fight off the Germans for weeks, not days. Why? Again, no analysis.
Forgive me, readers, but I don't like the Martin Gilbert approach that "history is a million facts listed one after the other". I may disagree with the author, but I would like to know what he thinks!!!!
challenging but rewarding.......2007-05-19
The amount of research done to produce the book is staggering indeed. It seems as if every British unit has been displayed, most in favorible, even heroic, terms, but a few do show up in disgrace. The French Army, from its chain of command to its troops actually facing the Germans, receives far fewer compliments. The author has placed his maps at the back of the book, requiring the reader to flip back and forth which sometimes results in a loss of place in the vast array of pages. It would have helped to have sketch maps throughout the text, especially for readers not that familiar with the geography of the battle zone. Some other terms were confusing to an American reader. The "carrier" referred to often was finally discovered to be a brother to the Bren Gun Carrier, just not ready-equipped with the Bren Gun. The Boys Anti-Tank Rifle is also a weapon with which Americans are not easily familar, especially for fending off heavily armored tanks. Among the watercraft, the "Drifter" is still a mystery, even in its common role in carrying troops out to larger vessels. Another mystery was the "Fairey Battle" fighter-bomber about which American readers would have heard very little since it was already obsolete when it was inserted into the fighting. This is not a book to undertake lightly. It details a number of the massacres done by German troops not only of surrounded and even surrendered soldiers, but also villagers uninvolved in the fighting. Overall, however, the picture painted by the author draws on extensive research of both old and newly discovered sources, It contributes much to a fuller picture of how close the Dunkirk Evacuation was to a complete disaster, and how many risked their lives to salvage enough of the Allied Forces to ultimately face-down Hitler and the Whermacht.
Capturing the Horror of Battle.......2007-05-13
By piecing together war diaries, personal recollections and regimental after- action reports, Mr. Sebag-Monitfiore manages to capture the personal horror that was man to man combat in the Second World War. Although the story of Dunkirk has been told several times, this effort adds a lot of personal detail that is incredibly informative.
Book Description
On the morning of June 25, 1876, soldiers of the elite U.S. Seventh Cavalry led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer attacked a large Indian encampment on the banks of the Little Bighorn River. By day's end, Custer and more than two hundred of his men lay dead. It was a shocking defeat--or magnificent victory, depending on your point of view--and more than a century later it is still the object of controversy, debate, and fascination.
What really happened on that fateful day? Now, thanks to the work of Herman J. Viola, Curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, we are much closer to answering that question. Dr. Viola, a leader in the preservation of Native American culture and history, has collected here dozens of dramatic, never-before-published accounts by Indians who participated in the battle--accounts that have been handed down to the present day, often secretly and accompanied by oaths of silence, from one generation to the next. These remarkable eyewitness recollections provide a direct link to that day's events; together they constitute an unprecedented oral history of the battle from the Native American point of view and the most comprehensive eyewitness description of Little Bighorn we have ever had.
Here are the dramatic stories of the Cheyenne and Lakota warriors who rode into battle against Custer, the yellow-haired Son of the Morning Star, an adversary whose valor they admired--but who became a mortal enemy after breaking his peace-pipe oath, a scene described vividly in these pages. Here in their own words are the stories of the Crow scouts, allies of Custer, who advised against attacking Sitting Bull's village on the Little Bighorn. Here are tales of valor told by the Arikara scouts who fought side by side with Custer's men against the Lakota and Cheyenne; although the Great Father in Washington rewarded their heroism with silence, it is celebrated to this day in tribal stories and songs that come to us from beyond the grave with hair-raising immediacy and power.
Lavishly illustrated with more than two hundred maps, photographs, reproductions, and drawings, this remarkable book also includes:
An account of the battle, including startling descriptions of Custer's conduct, collected from the Crow scouts by the famed photographer Edward S. Curtis in 1908. Curtis never published this report--President Theodore Roosevelt advised him not to--and it remained a secret until his ninety-year-old son recently gave the material to the Smithsonian.
New archaeological evidence from the battlefield that casts fresh light on the Seventh Cavalry's movements, along with discoveries from the site of Sitting Bull's village--including the complete skeleton of a cavalry horse with its rider's well-
preserved saddlebags and personal items.
A series of illustrations made soon after the battle by Red Horse, a remarkable tableau that is reproduced here in its entirety for the first time.
Three letters written by Lieutenant William Van Wyck Reily just days before he died at Little Bighorn that provide key and potentially controversial insights into the conduct of the cavalry under Custer's command.
In short, this landmark book takes us much closer to knowing what really happened on that June day in 1876 when Custer died and a legend was born.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting, but. . ........2007-01-18
I wished I had known (should have read the reviews!) that this is a coffee table attempt to deal with an extremely complicated subject. The pretty pictures and artwork were fine, but the book claims to have important historical information from the Crow scouts. When I read (reread and reread) the accounts, I was no closer to understanding what happened. Indeed, one descendant of the Crow scouts admitted that the versions of the events told to him by the scouts were not the same.
The book's strength is in its modern work at the site. The articles about what items were found at both sites with metal detectors (a whole horse!) was fascinating and worth the purchase price. For instance, that bullets with the same rifling were found all over the Custer battle site is fascinating. I hope more metal detector search can be done.
The best book I've ever read!!.......2004-05-01
This book is so ground-breaking and thorough and clever that I'll read it again as soon as I get time. The narratives and recollections of native Americans combined with the most up-to-date scholarship make this book a small masterpiece. Our view of the battle was so slanted and biased, generally without intention, because of an overemphasis on the records of European participants, etc. This book gives another view, and thus B-A-L-A-N-C-E.!!
A major work........2001-05-28
In general I'm not really big on modern history (my notion of "modern" being everything after 1200 BC!), but Viola's book "Little Bighorn Remembered," featured as it was as the "untold Indian story of Custer's last stand," intrigued me. I have to admit to having had to take a second run at it before I really got into the subject. It isn't that the work is poorly written; it isn't. I think that the up front and in your face brutality of the 19th Century US government in dealing with the Native American population was just hard to deal with for me. It`s not that I am myself Native American; I just have a strong sense of fairness and fairness had no part in it. When I finally did settle into the material, however, it read rapidly. In fact it probably classifies highly with some of those I-couldn't-put-it-down novels over which people burn the midnight oil. (In my case I should have been getting a quick nap between patients while I was on-call for the OR on a night shift).
The first two chapters of the book concern the antecedents leading up to the Indian confrontation with Custer and the 7th Cavalry. These included Custer's own pre-dawn attack on a sleeping Cheyenne village under the leadership of Chief Black Kettle on the Washita River in 1868 and an earlier similar attack on Plains Tribes camping at Sand Creek in 1864. In both instances dozens of men, women, and children were hunted down and shot and their bodies butchered. In the 1868 attack even the Cheyenne pony herd, some 900 animals, was also killed, severely crippling the people's ability to pursue their traditional lifestyle. The narrative of these two chapters is filled with unfulfilled promises and broken treaties with Native Americans in the furtherance of US territorial expansion during the 19th Century. Certainly anyone familiar with the attitudes of Europeans toward technologically less advanced populations world wide in areas they wished to exploit will recognize the pattern.
The remainder of the book is divided into chapters each dealing with various perspectives on the battle of the Little Bighorn. Here is where the book rises above others on the subject, for Viola makes use of very diverse sources in his effort to thoroughly and fairly cover the subject .
Included are the oral histories passed on by the Indian participants, stories from the Cheyenne and the Dakota on one side and from the Crow and Arikara scouts with Custer on the other. Probably the most interesting part of this material is the fact that not all Plains Indians felt the same about the coming of the army into the area. In fact the imperialism of the US government was actually superimposed upon on-going events among traditional enemies within the community of local people. The long standing enmity of certain groups actually facilitated the ultimate defeat of the Plains Indians. Even allies weren't necessarily of one mind and still are not. A popular saying among the modern Cheyenne is that "The Sioux got the glory, the Crows got the land, but the Cheyennes did the fighting(p. 27)."
Also among the narratives are notes left by Edward S. Curtis who undertook the mission of creating a photographic preservation of Native American Indian lifestyles before they disappeared. During the pursuit of this work Curtis took the opportunity of covering the battle site in the company of three of Custer's Crow scouts. From information about events provided by these individuals he came to the conclusion that the battle had not proceeded as recorded thirty years previously. His intent to publish his conclusions in his project was discouraged by President Theodore Roosevelt, primarily because the latter was concerned that pro-Custer factions would ruin Curtis. The information was preserved and given over to the National Museum of American History by his son Harold just prior to Harold's death at the age of 95 in 1988.
Among the "documents" preserving the Battle at Little Bighorn are the Indian drawings of the event of which Viola includes illustrations of many. Though simple line drawings they give every bit as clear an image of the violence and carnage of the battle field as do the photo images of the Civil War. Included are drawings by the Dakota, Red Horse, and some etched drawings by an unknown artists on flattened metal from trade kettles. Also presented, many for the first time, are some of the victory memorabilia collected from the battlefield and preserved by family members of the Indian participants through the generations.
A fire across the battlefield in 1983 made an archaeological examination of the site possible and almost imperative. Application of modern techniques to the charting, recovery and analysis of the material remains on the site by professionals and trained volunteers in the decade between 1985 and 1995 have allowed a reinterpretation of what occurred and an external verification of the stories of various participants. (For a more in-depth account of which see my review of "They Died With Custer : Soldiers' Bones from the Battle of the Little Bighorn.")
Among the most amazing reports of the battle and its events is that of the contribution of suicide to the death toll. Apparently the notion of torture at the hands of Indian combatants, fostered in part by the tradition of post mortem mutilation of enemy bodies (to prevent their full enjoyment of the afterlife) produced a "save the last bullet for yourself" mentality that led to a far higher mortality than might have occurred. One Indian witness reported having seen a man "murder" a compatriot and than shoot himself. Apparently he was not the only individual to have seen this puzzling behavior either.
Probably the most arresting facets of Viola's book, and certainly the ones I found most enjoyable, were the many rotogravure/tintype portraits of the various American Indian personalities involved in the drama of the Plains. The faces are filled with dignity, composure, and intelligence. It leaves the viewer with a sense of compassion and loss. One wonders what the country might have been like had the two worlds learned to coexist more peacefully and to learn from one another.
Crow accounts are valuable.......2000-03-04
I found this book to be fascinating pictorially and in its presentation of Indian viewpoints of Little Bighorn.
Some other reviewers have criticized Herman Viola's inclusion of the accounts of Custer's Crow scouts, as if Viola is somehow doing a disservice to scholarship. However, I don't think he is necessarily presenting these accounts as gospel. Viola acknowledges the inconsistencies between witnesses' stories, but he gives the Crow a chance to speak for themselves, which seems like a good thing to me.
Perhaps by publishing these little-known testimonies, Viola will encourage other Indian sources to share their knowledge of Little Bighorn while that knowledge still exists.
A Pretty book but flawed.......2000-02-19
Read without knowledge of the other Indian based accounts available; this is an interesting book. There are other books available also which are based on Indian accounts and seem more coherent. This book is pretty and interesting but adds very little to a serious student of the event. Some of the vignettes are interesting when compared with other indian accounts and blended with them. The story of Custer sitting around at Weir point while Reno's battalion was being routed is not well placed in time or detail. In short, the book is a quick and easy read. It is an interesting contrast to the "old" accounts of the Little Big Horn saga. In light of other recent works on the subject; it is a lightweight.
Book Description
“This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.”
With these words, Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland addressed the crew of the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts on the morning of October 25, 1944, off the Philippine Island of Samar. On the horizon loomed the mightiest ships of the Japanese navy, a massive fleet that represented the last hope of a staggering empire. All that stood between it and Douglas MacArthur’s vulnerable invasion force were the Roberts and the other small ships of a tiny American flotilla poised to charge into history.
In the tradition of the #1 New York Times bestseller
Flags of Our Fathers, James D. Hornfischer paints an unprecedented portrait of the Battle of Samar, a naval engagement unlike any other in U.S. history—and captures with unforgettable intensity the men, the strategies, and the sacrifices that turned certain defeat into a legendary victory.
Customer Reviews:
An extraordinary well done history.......2007-09-27
It is often said that teaching and learning in high school is a mile wide and an inch deep. All I ever heard and read in high school about WWII and the naval battles against the Japanese Navy in the Pacific is that the United States won the war! This book capably presents the truth that it was never quite a certainty as the battles unfolded. It is a wonderful thing to have a talented writer and researcher as Hornfischer dedicate his extraordinary talent in presenting this excellent well written definitive history of the US and Japanese naval battles near the Phillipines in October of 1944. This book is very highly recommended as an excellent and thought provoking history as well as a true testimonial to the bravery of U.S Navy personnel in battle.
Learned A Lot That Is New.......2007-09-16
I'm about two-thirds of the way through the book. Even at this point, I've learned a lot that I hadn't really appreciated before.
First of all, sometime back I read a book about the naval battle of Guadalcanal. In that battle, it seems as if all the Japanese had to do to sink one of our ships was to get just one hit on it. By the time of the Battle Off Samar, American ship building must have radically improved. Even the American ships that went down were hit literally dozens of times before finally succumbing to the inevitable. And lots of other American ships were hit but kept fighting and were still fighting at the end of the war.
Another realization was the awful damage 16-inch naval guns do to the human body when they hit a ship and explode. The mental picture I used to have of WW II naval warfare was antiseptic. Yes, guys died -- but I saw it as ever so much cleaner than the awfulness of land warfare. The author of the book has descriptions of what the results were. Naval guns were far bigger than anything in land warfare. The biggest shell for field artillery was about the size of a football. In the Navy, the plentiful six- and eight-inch guns had shells as big as a five footballs. And the 16" (or 18" for two of the Japanese Navy's "super" battleships") were as big as a garbage can and weighed as much as a Volkswagen. When they exploded, huge chunks of the sides of ships would be opened up like a tuna can even though it was inch-thick steel. The effect on the human body was even more devastating. Guys were literally ripped apart and sometimes whole compartments of guys were ripped apart so badly that one guy couldn't be identified from another. It was, literally, like an explosion in a meat locker. Never again will I think that naval warfare was antiseptic. (This is also something of a warning that if you read the book you're going to get all those descriptions too. If you don't think you can stomach it, then you'll either have to skip over those sections or skip the book.)
The book also follows the survivors of the ships that went down as they bobbed in the water waiting for rescue. Their time in the water was made more troubling by the fact that they were constantly being circled by sharks. It was their "good fortune" to be covered with bunker oil from the sunken ships that apparently acted both as a shark repellent and a sun block. But, unlike every other book I've read or movie I've seen, the whole story of a naval battle isn't over when the shooting stops. And, it isn't easy to spot guys in the water with a whole ocean to look at. It was also interesting how, despite the desperate situation they were all in, they all worked to help the wounded among them first. (Unlike the movie warriors who are all fight, the tenderness displayed to the worse off among them is remarkable.)
This is a great book for anyone wanting to know what World War II naval warfare was really like.
Also, there are a lot of maps that help to follow ship movements.
Great book, but..........2007-09-14
I enjoyed the book and the heroism of the sailors and airmen who fought the battle has seldom been equaled. However, the whole reason they were in this terrible position to begin with was poor decision making and poor communication from the higher levels, esp Halsey. I found that after a while that fact made the book a bit depressing for me. It seems obvious that such a powerful Japanese fleet should have been given more respect (watched closely, etc.) since Halsey knew it was in the area.
Gene's review of Tin Can Sailors.......2007-09-13
A very good narrative with human interest about an important naval engagement of the WWII. How the US Navy reacted to an almost impossible situation that seemed hopeless. Read his other book about the sailors of the USS Houston who sank and survived to help build the highway in the jungle which included the Bridge over the River Quai. He is a very good author!
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.......2007-09-13
Having served on 3 destroyers (Tin Cans) 1952-1965, two of the Fletchers, this book brought back many memories, both good and bad, of those years of service and sailing on those ships. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found it difficlut to put down. There are so many heroic stories to be told that have not been revealed, and so many more that will never be told, but I thank this author for telling this one.
Kenneth E. Irons
Book Description
A highly acclaimed, well-written, and flawlessly researched history of the battle that doomed the French Empire and led America into Vietnam.
In December 1953 the French army occupying Vietnam challenged the elusive Vietnamese army to engage in a decisive battle. When French paratroopers landed in the jungle on the border between Vietnam and Laos, the Vietnamese quickly isolated the French force and confronted them at their jungle base in a small place called Dien Bien Phu. The hunters-the French army-had become the hunted, desperately defending their out-gunned base. The siege in the jungle wore on as defeat loomed for the French. Eventually the French were depleted, demoralized, and destroyed. As they withdrew, the country was ominously divided at U.S. insistence, creating the short-lived Republic of South Vietnam for which 55,000 Americans would die in the next twenty years.
Customer Reviews:
The very best history of DBP ever written.......2007-09-24
T. E. Lawrence wrote that amateurs do something because they love to, and professionals because they must. We can thank the muses that Martin Windrow is a self-described amateur, because this work bears all the hallmarks of serious and loving craftsmanship. He places both the war, and the battle in context, he casts a glaring light upon some of its myths, and he gives serious attention to the technical aspects of the battle that the great majority of military professionals would otherwise miss, such as the state of Viet Minh artillery tactics and doctrine. Were Fall still alive and writing, Windrow would still have outclassed him. Anything and everything you want or need to know about the battle for Dien Bien Phu is here. The very best military history I've read in English in a very long time. Bravo!
simply excellent.......2007-08-21
the book just kind of grabbed me, twice.
first when i saw it on the library shelf, i read "hell in a very small place" many years ago and have a continuing interest in vietnam and america's involvement there.
the second time is when i started reading it, it reads like an excellent detective story, i sat and sat and finished it at one sitting, not a small feat considering it is over 700 pages long. This style is the first very notable characteristic.
not only is the writing excellent, but the author is one of those people who you can imagine talking to. he appears to a military historian from his amazon authors page. writing since the 1970's with an accent on french and the foreign legion. But this book looks like a long term research project and literally a work of love. the detail and interest he displays puts it in a class almost by itself. the only other military history that i've been this impressed by is the boer war by pakenham. The research and simply put love that went into this book is evident thoughout and is a second notable item.
there is something else that makes it outstanding, several places he shows some very unique and well thought out ideas. they are just snatches of his worldview: some pages about the wounds caused by military bullets, a couple of places where he talks about the relationships between politicians and military leaders, and his discussion about how men fight for their buddies next to them, not geopolitical big things. There are just a few of these rather tantilizing glimpses, enough to make me look for more of his books. This disclosure of the man behind the work and his ideas developed from a lifetime of study in history is remarkable and the 3rd item i wish to point out.
I'd not a fan of military histories, nor an i particularly interested in the genre. But i do like his writing. I find the careful analysis of what happened, what lead up to it, how people responded fascinating and as yesterday proved, somewhat addictive. There is an overwhelming number of names, who went where and fought whom, etc, those datum that make up military history, but it is not so bad that it bores or obscures the ideas. He is a very careful documenter of the facts, desirous of completeness and setting the historical record straight. All elements which appear strongly in the book.
There is another thing remarkable about the book and it's author, a desire to look at the facts and the events and truly learn from them. To see this part of our world, a somewhat dark one, filled with the dead and lost, and remember them not just for their sacrifices but what these things have to teach us about ourselves and the societies we find ourselves in. and the first place to find the meaning of events is to get them right, to be factual and see what happened and propose why. something that this book does in a uniquely interesting and useful way.
i sure wish the militaries of the world had more thoughtful people like this author, either in their general staffs or in their officer universities. perhaps a significant dose of reality and history is what more of our military leaders need before embarking on disastrous campaigns.
5 stars for effort, but 2 stars for readability.......2007-07-25
I must say that the author did an excellent job if he intended this book to be a record of the day to day action on all theaters of engagement between the French and the Viet Minh.
Because of the excessive level of detail, the book is very diffcult to read and appreciate. It is a mind numbing experience.
Read this only if you wish to know in detail the horrible sufferings that that combatants on either side faced in a senseless war. Otherwise you will be better off with just a summary.
The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam.......2007-02-05
This is a superb and well constructed book and is by far one of the best accounts of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu that has been written. The author gives the reader a great insight to the formation of the Viet Minh and their rise to become a formidable fighting force whose journey to power led to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.
The book is well balanced and very readable. It gives a well presented account of the battle and how it unfolded and also shows how, although the French were defeated, at some stages of the fighting, victory could have gone either way with the staggering battle casualties suffered by the Viet Minh.
He also deals with the communist purges in the north after the French had been defeated and the division of the country into North and South Vietnam.
This fine book would not be out of place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the military campaigns of Vietnam.
A Maginificant Account of an Epic Battle.......2006-12-19
A gripping account of how, in 1953-54, the Vietminh laid seige to the French forces in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. The book is mesmerising in its honest detail, and confident in its vision and truth. Over 20 detailed maps bring vividly to life every stage of the battle; the reader gets an excellent sense of the topography and tactics of the antagonists.
Windrow explains everything: how many packets of rice a Vietminh soldier carried; the complicated science of gunnery; the difficulties of air-borne aid operations; life in the trenches; the trajectory of bullets inside the body; the chilling variety of ways soldiers can die from artillery and mortar fire. This - together with his deft character sketches - creates an epic drama of an epic battle. The French forces had the advantage of aircraft and entrenched positions, but once these were neutralised by General Giap's AA guns and overwhelming numbers, the French became the underdogs. That they were able to hold out as long as they did is truly remarkable, and they are rightly honoured in French military history.
Book Description
The Great War has ended-but there's no peace for battle-hardened Hal Kailas. In his bleak, ravaged homeland, even his marriage to Lady Khiri no longer brings solace. And Hal's worst fears are coming to pass as the dragonmasters-and the magnificent beasts they once flew-are cast off like relics of a misbegotten age. Old enemies have savagely returned. With his loyal comrades, Hal must turn back this terrible scourge that threatens man and beast alike in one last, ultimate battle- whose outcome is far from certain.
Customer Reviews:
great Military strategy.......2007-08-27
the military strategy was outstanding and throwing dragons into the mix made it more interesting.
Average customer rating:
- Excellent account . . .
- Hitler's Last Bastion
- Hitler's Last Bastion by Franz Kurowski
- Not a bad book. Translation - poor.
- A Big Disappointment
|
Hitler's Last Bastion: The Final Battles for the Reich 1944-1945
Franz Kurowski
Manufacturer: Schiffer Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Germany
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Strategy
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Eastern Front
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Western Front
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Bridgehead Kurland: The Six Epic Battles of Heeresgruppe Kurland
ASIN: 0764305484 |
Book Description
The final stage of the Second World War, with the enemy across the Reich's borders, saw final desperate battles for numerous "fortified places" and blocking positions. Hitler ordered the defense of these fortified places such as Kšnigsberg and Breslau, Wesel and Kolberg, Danzig, Posen and many others. In these isolated bastions the war-weary German units offered desperate resistance, offered for good purpose. This stubborn holding-on to the last round saved hundreds of thousands of women and children, made possible the evacuation of hospitals and the transport out of surrounded Wehrmacht female auxiliaries. The fates of German soldiers were realized in bunkers and caves, in tunnels and fields of rubble. In the HŸrtgenwald as in the Reichswald, during the crossing of the Rhine between Wesel and Emmerich, in the Remagen bridgehead, on the hill at Keppeln, in the Ruhr pocket, as well as in the east of the Reich in the East Prussian pocket, in Pomerania, in Silesia and in the Reich capital. Shocking scenes of apocalyptic battle were played out wherever Hitler's last bastions held out against the onrushing enemy, whether at the frontiers of the Reich or inside Germany itself., over 110 b/w photographs, charts, maps, 6" x 9"
Customer Reviews:
Excellent account . . ........2005-01-25
Excellent book. Easy to read account of the final months of the Third Reich and the desperate battles fought to stave off defeat.
The unfolding events described are interspersed with personal accounts by the combatants and civilians, which adds additional and welcome detail to the book.
The book also recounts, in very readable fashion, the efforts by the German military to assist civilian populations in escaping the onrushing Soviet onslaught. These accounts alone made the book a worthwhile addition to my library.
The book details troop activities at various organizational levels, from Corps and Division level down to Battalion level and smaller. It would have been very helpful for there to have been more detailed maps to assist the reader in following the described actions. Other than that slight shortcoming, the book will find a welcome place in my library.
Hitler's Last Bastion.......2004-02-07
It is a good book, which gives us a global vision of the operations without going into too many details. Easy to read. I recommend it
Hitler's Last Bastion by Franz Kurowski.......2000-04-03
This book is definately worth the cost, if you want to learn of the final battles of Hitler's third reich, get this book. I am an avid reader of books dealing with the German military in WWII and this is one of my favorites. Very informative.
Not a bad book. Translation - poor........2000-03-05
The problem with this book and many others published by Schiffer is not the books themselves but their translations from German into English. It is, to say the least, poor. I advise you to avoid Schiffer books translated by Joseph Welsh, as this one.
A Big Disappointment.......1999-12-01
Having read Kurowski's "Infanterie Aces" and "Panzer Aces", I was expecting this book to be action-packed and filled with first-hand personal accounts of fighting from the German side. I was severely disappointed as this is not the Kurowski I know. It was overall not a readable book even for the lack of battle action. I would not recommend this book to anyone. But I do highly recommend Kurowski's other books that I have mentioned.
Book Description
In the fight for South Africa, who will be the first to fall? The year is 1881, and General George Pomeroy-Colley, commander of the British forces in Natal, is planning to halt a rebellion. He's convinced the Transvaal Boers—mere farmers—can pose no serious threat, but before he can advance into unknown terrain, he needs reliable information. He calls on former army captain Simon Fonthill. A veteran of the Zulu and Sekukuni campaigns, Fonthill knows the Boers should not be underestimated. After narrowly surviving a scouting mission into hostile territory, Fonthill and his servant, "352" Jenkins, are given an urgent diplomatic assignment where further danger awaits them. But the greatest test is yet to come. As the Queen's men and the sharp-shooting Boers converge on Majuba Hill, Fonthill and Jenkins are the first into the fray. If they are to break the enemy, Colley's men must hold the summit at all costs….
Customer Reviews:
I cudda been a contender.......2007-07-05
This book had some good characters except for the wild west character, whom I found to be a little far fetched. The Hero was far too soft and kind to his enemies to have been a captain in Her Majesties forces and his batman partner a little confused about directions to be a scout. The historical battle settings and descriptions were very good.
Book Description
The Battle of Leyte Gulf -- four major actions -- was the greatest sea battle in history. The Surigao Strait action is considered the Navy's greatest single triumph, a model of timeing, coordination and execution. This is a unique, behind-the-guns view; a gripping eye-witness account riding the battle line at Surigao int he last Crossing of the 'T'.
Customer Reviews:
FANTASTIC YOU-ARE-THERE READ.......2007-07-13
A great WWII eyewitness book. The author served onboard the USS Maryland, one of the battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor, then raised and repaired to rejoin the war with her crew burning for revenge. Sauer tells what it was like to serve during the height of the war and the amazing single-minded training it took to prepare for the moment when it was do-or-die: What it took to load and shoot the Big Guns, firing trajectories, how you "turn" an enormous convoy of huge ships... The absolutely best chapter takes you front row center at the battle of Surigao Strait in October of '44 -- U.S. battleships, destroyers, cruisers, and torpedo boats against the biggest guns of the Japanese navy. A catastrophic defeat for Japan, which retaliated with ferocious kamikaze attacks. Truly riveting stuff. Lots of pictures and other visuals including a diagram of the battle and the last crossing of the "T". I only wish there were more books like this! Obviously highly recommended.
Disappointing Book.......2007-01-09
The title is misleading, there is a chapter that very briefly narrates what went on onboard the Maryland during the battle, but there is little else. While the discussion of the life on board the Maryland is interesting, there is little in the way of substance.
battle of Surigao Strait.......2006-11-10
Wonderful book. God I love our Veterans and our Military. Must reading for WW2 buff
straight-foward.......2005-11-18
written by a non-literary type, the book is in a straight-foward manner with no diversions, not even for the dead. It is the history of the WW11 battleship "Maryland". One of the ancient ships raised from the mud of Pearl. For a flavor of WW11 sea battles it serves a purpose. It is as advertised, "An eyewitness account".
Worth more then just one read.......2003-01-09
I've read this book from front to back numerous times and each time I pick more and more visual out of its pages. Howard spent a great deal of time gathering and putting all of this together. Thank you Howard for your effort!
Book Description
The dramatic arc of Saigo Takamori's life, from his humble origins as a lowly samurai, to national leadership, to his death as a rebel leader, has captivated generations of Japanese readers and now Americans as well - his life is the inspiration for a major Hollywood film, The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. In this vibrant new biography, Mark Ravina, professor of history and Director of East Asian Studies at Emory University, explores the facts behind Hollywood storytelling and Japanese legends, and explains the passion and poignancy of Saigo's life. Known both for his scholarly research and his appearances on The History Channel, Ravina recreates the world in which Saigo lived and died, the last days of the samurai.
The Last Samurai traces Saigo's life from his early days as a tax clerk in far southwestern Japan, through his rise to national prominence as a fierce imperial loyalist. Saigo was twice exiled for his political activities -- sent to Japan's remote southwestern islands where he fully expected to die. But exile only increased his reputation for loyalty, and in 1864 he was brought back to the capital to help his lord fight for the restoration of the emperor. In 1868, Saigo commanded his lord's forces in the battles which toppled the shogunate and he became and leader in the emperor Meiji's new government. But Saigo found only anguish in national leadership. He understood the need for a modern conscript army but longed for the days of the traditional warrior.
Saigo hoped to die in service to the emperor. In 1873, he sought appointment as envoy to Korea, where he planned to demand that the Korean king show deference to the Japanese emperor, drawing his sword, if necessary, top defend imperial honor. Denied this chance to show his courage and loyalty, he retreated to his homeland and spent his last years as a schoolteacher, training samurai boys in frugality, honesty, and courage. In 1876, when the government stripped samurai of their swords, Saigo's followers rose in rebellion and Saigo became their reluctant leader. His insurrection became the bloodiest war Japan had seen in centuries, killing over 12,000 men on both sides and nearly bankrupting the new imperial government. The imperial government denounced Saigo as a rebel and a traitor, but their propaganda could not overcome his fame and in 1889, twelve years after his death, the government relented, pardoned Saigo of all crimes, and posthumously restored him to imperial court rank.
In
THE LAST SAMURAI, Saigo is as compelling a character as Robert E. Lee was to Americans-a great and noble warrior who followed the dictates of honor and loyalty, even though it meant civil war in a country to which he'd devoted his life. Saigo's life is a fascinating look into Japanese feudal society and a history of a country as it struggled between its long traditions and the dictates of a modern future.
Customer Reviews:
The Life Behind the Legend.......2007-06-05
For those of you who like your reviews short and to the point: this book is just plain wonderful. I used it as an assigned text in a class I taught about modern Japan and will use it again. It is an academic book in that it addresses serious issues, but it is also exceptionally well-written. Those two qualities are usually mutual exclusive of one another. Ravina starts with an arresting sentence: "Where was Saigo Takamori's head?" and the story stays engaging throughout.
Ravina's purpose is to tell the story about the real man behind the Tom Cruise movie of the same name. Readers will discover that there are significant differences between what the film depicted and what really happened. Ravina might tell his story well, but also has an important one. While the Ken Watanabe's Matsumoto was a traditionalist opposed to change, the real Saigo Takamori was one of the Japanese equavilent of George Washington. He helped bring down the Shogun and was a founding father of modern Japan. He was also a learned, thoughtful man who studied the Confucian classics.
One of Ravina's strengths is showing that the many enemies of the Tokugawa family had an easier time agreeing to bring to bring them down than on what should replace their central authority. Saigo had fought against the shogun because they were the hereditary enemies of Satsuma, his daimyo or feudal province and/or lord. He was not prepared to create a modern, central state that abolished Satsuma altogether. Less than happy about the events that were taking place, he quite the new government. A few years later led a revolt against his former comrades. In an important point, Ravina shows that Saigo did a poor job of articulating a message about why he was rebelling, so people with a lot of different agendas who were unhappy at what was happening to Japan for any number of reasons. He literally was a rebel without a cause and has remained an enduring, modern folk hero in modern Japan.
Virtue to the End.......2007-01-06
Saigo Takamori is rightly remembered, despite being a traitor in some people's views. His life was one of ebbs and flows, being at the centre of power in Japan and also at the very fringes in internal exile. Knowing that a character from Cruise's movie was loosely, (very loosely, as it turns out), based on him, I had to read the book about the real man.
"The Last Samurai", (the book from here), is arranged quite well in broad phases of Saigo's life, from childhood to his final battle and campaign. The book focuses a lot on what drove and influenced Saigo, from the Confucian classics he absorbed through Oyomei learning and also Mito thinking. All of these influences profoundly affected Saigo, along with some important events in his life. I was interested in his emphasis on a lord-vassal relationship that took on a very personal nature for him, and was something that he craved.
The book is well referenced and has a good number of endnotes given for various sources and some details additional to the main text. Ravina has clearly written the book as an academic text that is still accessible to the lay reader. Not only that, Ravina manages to keep the interest and grip the reader to the very end.
I liked this book very much, both for the subject matter, but also for the way in which Ravina presents his subject. He keeps Saigo in context with the history around him, and also makes plenty of references to the wider issues that Saigo was involved in and why. This is a great book about a great man.
For me an interesting read.......2006-12-24
After seeing "The Last Samurai;" I was curious to read a little about what really happened with Saigo Takamori.
I was not surprised to see that the movie took the characters in different directions. In the movie Saigo was a defender of tradition and tried to fight against the Westernizing of Japan with the theme of the clash between the old ways of Samurai Swords against the modern ways of the Gun.
Saigo was more of a "rags to riches" story. He went from being the son of a clerk to one of the most powerful men in Japan. He was also instrumental in the dismantling of the Shogunite which ended Japanese feudalism and opened the doors to the 19th Century.
Guided by the principles of Confusism, he garnered such respect that the simple act of refusing to be involved in the Meijin goverment was viewed as a threat by the goverment.
His rebellion got volunteers simply because of a failed plot to assassinate him.
Saigo was a very complex man and the very fact that a great deal of myths were created about him and his rebellion makes the task of studying him almost impossible.
To Ravina's credit he mentions myth and lore several times rather then presenting them as fact.
Overall the book could be labeled rather dry for details rather then being guided through a story.
I would label it a worthwhile addition to a library about the Samurai.
Good Insight into the True life of a Samurai.......2006-11-25
While a true fan of the Samurai movies may enjoy reading about the life and times of the last Samurai, those looking for a "real life" account of the Characters found in the "last Samurai movie" will be sorely disappointed. The first chapter starts out alright, but gets pretty dry with a great number of names, places, dates, and facts, all of which also read pretty foreign to the average reader. Its not too unlike trying to read the old testament, book of numbers or book of kings. However, a fan of politics will certainly appreciate it. The life of Saigo Takamori was one of a civil servent - imagine reading about the life and times of your postal carrier. However, it improves if you get throught the first 2 chapters.
Agenst all odds.......2006-03-08
The plot involved a man who is a sword fighter. His name is Saigo Takamori which is a Japanese name. He would fight his opponents with a wooden boken or Japanese practice sword when they would have a real sword. He would bring his dog to his battles. There is a statue of him in Japan. I liked this book because it was filled with action. Saigo would go matrix sometimes. The thing I did not like was it was too long. I recommend it to people who like to read for long periods of time because it felt like you were hooked. You had to see what was next.
Books:
- Rites of Passage at $100,000 to $1 Million+: Your Insider's Lifetime Guide to Executive Job-Changing and Faster Career Progress in the 21st Century
- Shameless Shortcuts: 1,027 Tips and Techniques That Help You Save Time, Save Money, and Save Work Every Day!
- Ship of Fools
- Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States (Asian American History and Culture)
- Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1)
- Sunne in Splendour
- Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia [Three Volumes]
- The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969
- The American Accent Guide, Second Edition: A Complete and Comprehensive Course on the Pronunciation and Speaking Style of American English for Individuals of All Language Backgrounds / book and 8 CDs
- The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Pursuit of Happyness
- Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art
- Handbook of Computational Economics, Volume 2: Agent-Based Computational Economics
- Mycorrhiza Manual
- Museum of Lost Wonder
- The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent 4-CD: Part II: Finding the Path to Joy Through Energy Balance
- Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science
- The Right Nation : Conservative Power in America
- Harnessing Creativity to Improve the Bottom Line
- Managing Core Public Services
There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 (Vintage)
The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West
Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
