January 3, 2022
Gulf War veteran Lt. Col. Sidney Atwater pays tribute to his beloved Marine Corps in this comprehensive, reverential oral history, which draws on history books, contemporaneous reporting, generals’ speeches, and Marines’ own words.
While acknowledging he isn’t a professional historian, Atwater does a fair job summarizing America’s major military engagements from a Marine perspective, and […]
March 15, 2021
The Middle East has long been of vital concern to U.S. policymakers, as shown by Harry Keatts Chenault Jr.’s carefully considered treatise, which centers on two presidents, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, who served during their terms.
Chenault focuses on two major flashpoints in the […]
October 5, 2020
This enormous (81/2 X 11, 458-page) book recounts in exhaustive detail the design, testing, manufacturing and ultimate combat usage of one of the most successful jet fighters ever developed, the F-16 Fighting Falcon. It is simultaneously a highly technical manual and a remarkable memoir.
After serving as an Army officer during the Korean War, where […]
August 27, 2018
Much of what we know about war is told from the battlefield, with combat at the heart of the story. In 2D Surgical Hospital: An Khe to Chu Lai South Vietnam, Lorna Griess offers another perspective: that of a nurse tasked with healing the direct consequences of the fighting.
Griess worked in a […]
December 11, 2017
Retired USMC Gunnery Sergeant L. Christian Bussler’s No Tougher Duty, No Greater Honor is a powerful memoir of his three tours of duty in Iraq during the ongoing war against terror.
Bussler undertook Marine reserve training immediately upon high school graduation. In his late 20s, the “weekend warrior” volunteered for three Iraqi tours beginning with […]
August 29, 2016
In The New Zealand Cross, an oversized, coffee-table-style book, Dr. Brian L. Kieran presents a comprehensive history of the New Zealand Cross, an award for heroism unique to that former British colony.
Part 1 covers how the Cross originated, spurred primarily because colonial troops were ineligible for the Victoria Cross for valor.
February 22, 2016
Bernard F. Flynn’s Bargain Basement War Heroes combines his WWII military service reminiscences with his personal advocacy for the U.S. Merchant Marine, and even throws in some Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.
Two years after his 1940 graduation from high school in Boston, Flynn entered the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y. His […]
November 23, 2015
Trying to preserve her father-in-law’s World War II recollections, Karen Loy has gathered what information she can and published it in Ernest Loy: My World War II Experience.
It’s a wonderful idea from a family perspective and a testament to her respect for Ernest Loy, who survived the Battle of the Bulge in the war’s […]
May 18, 2015
With this second volume of historical analysis, Will Slatyer, an Australian broker and commodities consultant, has attempted nothing less than a sweeping two-volume history of the world. Like his first (also reviewed by BlueInk), this volume centers on the Cyclic Theory of history, best known by the often-repeated claim that “history repeats itself.”
This volume […]
December 2, 2013
A valuable contribution to the history of WWII, this in-depth memoir chronicles the air war over Japan. More than a narrative of one man’s harrowing experiences during his 28 bombing missions on a B29 Superfortress, it contains a wealth of essential information about the military operation that decimated Japan’s war arsenal and defenses.
Staff Sergeant […]