No comments about A Seneca Indian in the Union Army: The Civil War Letters of Sergeant Isaac Newton Parker, 1861-1865 (Civil War Heritage, Vol 5).

3 comments about Allen Dulles.

1. This is a wonderful biography -- lots of drama and dirt, spycraft and sleaziness. Srodes paints a vivid picture of Dulles -- he gets into the pores of the man as well as the young CIA. A great read.



2. This is a phenomenal book about both Allen Dulles and the intelligence world. If you have any interest at all in the subject, then put your pennies on the counter for a great read. Clearly Srodes has an inside track with the intel community and the reader benefits.



3. This is a book that had to be written and needs to be read by those who seek to understand Allen Dulles in greater depth. The author does break new ground and add valuable new detail to the history of Allen Dulles, and his hard work in bringing us this book merits appreciation. Having said that, I confess to three disappointments: 1) the use of years to demarcate the chapters, rather than meaningful titles, is both boring and representative of the book's lack of presentational "zing"; 2) the book obsesses on Allen Dulles as the center of the earth and leaves out the context within which Dulles achieved his successes-casual references to how he operated two additional French networks, for example, without covering the arduous and detailed path that led to the creation and maintenance of those networks, leave one feeling as if Dulles simply waved a magic wand to create networks whole-bodied and in full force; and 3) the conclusion of the book, purportedly a review of what Allen Dulles would see and feel if he examined today's intelligence community, is generally on target but rather terse-nothing that one could take to an incoming President to energize him into revitalizing and enhancing our national intelligence community. There are some gems in this book that reflect the author's dedication and merit notice: Richard Helms reflecting on how America came much too close to losing World War II; Walt Rostow on calming the Kennedy's and preventing a rash counter-attack once the Bay of Pigs was known to be a disaster-this is the stuff of history, and I therefore heartily recommend this book as a valuable contribution to our understanding of Allen Dulles' place in history.

No comments about Warrior Against His Will: A German Sapper's Account of World War One.

3 comments about MUSTANG DESIGNER: Edgar Schmued and the P-51.

1. Mustang Designer: Edgar Schmued And The P-51 is the complete story behind the development and deployment of one of the most famous fighter aircraft of World War II. Beginning with the choosing of fighter designs in the formative years of 1935 to 1939 covering P-30 to P-50 craft, author Ray Wagner presents the birth of the Mustang in 1940 as designed by Ed Schmued and North American Aviation. The various incarnations and variations of the Mustang are followed up to and including the early jet age years of 1945 to 1952 and the Northrop Aviation launch of a new fighter. A highly recommended design and development history, Mustang Designer is enhanced for the aviation enthusiast and military buff with an appendix, notes, glossary, bibliography and index.



2. the history of conic sections at North American Aviation (NAA). NAA was using conics in '32, Schmued was (at the least) an enthusiastic supporter of conics, and his P-51 Mustang was the first aircraft to be completely defined by conics.

   Roy A. Liming worked with Schmued to mathematically analyze the Mustang's shapes, tangents and curvatures. Schmued wrote an introduction to Liming and Hartley's series of articles for Aero Digest explaining the use of conics. These articles (along with the success of the Mustang) showed that NAA was ahead of it's time during WWII.




3. 
   This is an excellent book, and serves as both a biography about Edgar Schmued and a history of the engineering work behind the P-51 and several other aircraft. Schmued led the design team that created the P-51. It does not cover all of the details behind the development of the P-51, leaving out the politics of how the USAAF finally adopted this half British aircraft. The best part of this book is that it is possible to see how closely the North American engineers worked with the test pilots and field reports; it was this tightly coupled engineering culture which responded quickly to every input, every flaw, that enabled the P-51 Mustang to reach perfection first and beat out its rivals.
   
   Another book "P-51 Mustang: Development of the Long Range Escort Fighter" covers the bigger picture of the USAAF's overall search for a better fighter plane. This book very much complements "Mustang Designer" and should be read to get the full flavor of what happened with the P-51's development. For example, "P-51 Mustang" talks about the role of Colonel Thomas Hitchcock in championing the P-51 with the Roosevelt administration at a time when some in the USAAF brass were trying to kill it (an upper crust polo player, he had direct connections to the Roosevelt administration), but fails to mention Hitchcock's ultimate fate. "Mustang Designer" mentions almost in passing that Hitchcock was killed while test flying a P-51D on April 18, 1944, but does not go into the details of how crucial he was to the adoption of the P-51 by the USAAF.
   
   One reviewer complained about the lack of information about Schmued's use of conical sections in designing the curves of the airplane. There is a half-page description of Schmued's use of conical sections on the P-51 - page 57, which does explain the principles, if not the details of what Schmued did.
   
   "Mustang Designer" does clear up some urban legends about the P-51. It was the British who started the myth that the P-51 was designed by a German who had worked for Messerschmitt.
   
   Schmued was indeed a German-Austrian, with an Austrian citizenship until he immigrated to the U.S. by way of Brazil. He was sponsored to come to the United States through his excellent work for General Motors in Brazil (immigration rules were extremely strict at that time - he was one of 794 people with Austrian citizenships admitted in the 1929 quota) and went straight to work for Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America, which was an aircraft company that was owned by General Motors and based in New Jersey. He joined North American Aviation when it was reorganized as an aircraft manufacturer. Schmued never worked for Messerschmitt; he did work for Fokker, but, despite its name, this was a wholly American owned company that happened to have Dutchman Anthony Fokker as its head.
   
   The book goes on with details about the later problems with the F-82 (the USAF forced North American to use a two-stage supercharger Allison V-1710, which was an engineering flop, instead of the Packard-Merlin engine). Schmued also had a hand in the designs of the F-86 and F-100, but the exact details of what he did are not spelled out in this book. Schmued left North American in 1952, after Dutch Kindelberger became ill and started to devolve power to Lee Atwater, with whom Schmued disagreed intensely (the intensity of this disagreement is seen by the fact that Schmued was just three years shy of being fully invested in a pension from North American when he left - as a result, he received no pension from North American).
   
   This book does not talk about the post-Schmued, post-Kindelberger years at North American, but they were mostly filled with a series of aircraft designs that never made it into production. The F-100 would be the last fighter plane that North American would produce. Schmued would leave North American before the F-100 flew (he lost a final dispute over changes to the design of the F-100), and it is clear from the subsequent prolonged teething problems of the F-100 that North American sorely missed Schmued's troubleshooting genius.
   
   With Kindelberger and Schmued gone, the excellent engineering culture of North American seemed to wither under the mediocre stewardship of Lee Atwater. North American went into the space business, but this would culminate in the disastrous fire that killed the Apollo 1 astronauts in 1967. The negative backlash from that disaster (North American had built the command module that caught fire) ultimately forced North American to merge with Rockwell, which then buried this once famous name completely. (This later period of North American's history is not covered in this book).
   
   Schmued, on the other hand, would go on to work for Northrop, and would help revive the flagging engineering designs of that company by designing the F-5. Ironically, the person who would hire him was Oliver Echols, the general in the USAAF who had played a semi-antagonistic role against the P-51 during its early days (Echols's role against the P-51 is described in the book "P-51 Mustang").
   
   Also not mentioned in this book is the fact that Schmued's F-5 design would evolve into Northrop's YF-17, which then became the F-18, the Navy's current all-purpose and ONLY fighter plane (now that the F-14s have all been chopped up to keep Iran from obtaining parts for their remaining F-14s).
   
   Overall this is an extremely valuable book for understanding the history of the P-51, F-82, F-100, North American Aviation, the F-5, and the man behind all of those success stories, Edgar Schmued.
   
   Amazon has four listings for various other printings of this book:
   
   0517088207 Random House 1992 (hardcover)
   
   0517567938 Crown 1st edition 1990 (hardcover)
   
   B000KRITOC Orion Books 1990 (hardcover)
   
   B000QRPVEC Orion books 1991 (hardcover)
   
   All of these are out of print, and so this paperback reprint by Smithsonian Institute Press is the most readily available.

5 comments about Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War.

1. A great book about a true hero and other's worthy of the same label. A very easy and engaging read. I highly recommend this book.



2. Bob Greene has written a touching and emotion-filled book about two men who influenced the outcome of World War II; his own father and Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay. Greene's father served as an infantry soldier in Italy, while Tibbets was training his men in Wendover, Utah for a mission which would hopefully end the war.

   Tibbets and Robert Greene, Sr. lived in the same town in Ohio, but had never met. Bob jr. writes about how his father would speak of Tibbets and call him "the man who won the war". While Bob jr. was back in Ohio to be with his dying father, he drew on his memories of Tibbets. Finally, Bob went to meet Tibbets. What occured was the beginning of an unlikely friendship that spanned a generation and allowed Bob to discover things about his father and his father's generation that he never understood before.

   Bob found Tibbets to be a very honest and straight-forward man. There was no nonsense from him; everything was in plain terms. Tibbets talked frequently about his mission to Hiroshima on that fateful day in August, 1945. He said several times that he had no regrets for what he did and he always slept easy at night. Tibbets' stories enabled Bob to see that his father and many other men just like him also played large parts in winning the war. Tibbets never liked the phrase "the man who won the war". He was always quick to give credit to the soldiers as the real heroes, just like Robert sr.

   Perhaps my favorite part of the book is the several chapters which deal with the trip to Branson, Missouri. Bob, Tibbets, Tom Ferebee (bombardier), and "Dutch" Van Kirk (navigator) took a trip to Branson over Memorial Day weekend and they were treated like conquering heroes by the public. But what impressed me was the candor and openness that these men spoke with. I learned a lot about the Hiroshima mission that I never knew before.

   I found this book a little slow at the beginning, but it definitely picks up over the second half. Read this book and learn about the generation of men who won the war.




3. This is a good work. As one disgruntled reviewer pointed out, this is not a history book, but rather a memoir and tribute from a son to his father and to one of the many heros of WWII. Having been raised by a father from that era, it is quite apparent to me that my relationship with my father was my no means isolated, but somewhat the norm. This work struck pretty close to home. Having spent over twenty years in the military myself, I can understand some of their thoughts, but even that cannot bridge the entire gap. Those guys looked at life differently than my generation. The author has approached the subject with great sensitivity and through his conversations with these men, I feel, has been able to understand not only them, but himself. I highly recommend this one to any father and any son. Well done Mr Greene.



4. Great book, I have grown to really like Bob Greene. I have bought many of his books and and reading them as fast as I can. This book brings the people who fought WWII for us and why they did it and makes them real. I am learning to really appreciate their sacrifices.



5. This was absolutely a wonderful read. The author, through the time he spent with his dying father AND the time he spent with Paul Tibbets, brings to the reader two remarkable stories in one. It is a great book historically, and , I think, enables some of us to understand our own WWII fathers better. In any case, you will love this one!

2 comments about China Marine.

1. I just finished this book...once I picked it up I couldnt put it down. I really dont think there is enough written out there about this subject and what these guys went thru there.



2. E. B. Sledge's "With the Old Breed" is by common consent one of the finest -- if not the finest -- account of the life of a combat infantryman in World War II. At Pelieu and Okinawa, Sledge was one of only 10 men in his Marine company of 240 to escape being wounded or killed. "China Marine" is the follow-up to "With the Old Breed," a lesser work but one that tells of what happened to Sledge after the war.
   
   With Sledge's experience, one would have thought that he would have been among the first among the military to be demobilized after the end of the war with Japan -- but no, he and his colleagues were sent to China to disarm the Japanese soldiers there and to maintain order in several northern Chinese cities. This is Sledge's account of the six months he spent in China. His view is that of a Private First Class -- but an educated and sophisticated PFC, the son of a medical doctor from Mobile, Alabama, and an outstanding writer. He delighted in Peking, fresh food, a clean bunk, light duties, and friendship with the sophisticated Soong family -- but the danger from attack by communist armies was always there.
   
   Sledge goes on to tell of the trauma of his discharge from the Marines and homecoming to Mobile and, very briefly, his long years of struggle with what we call today Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's a brief book, only 160 pages, and am interesting, beautifully written, account of the decompression of a combat soldier and his return home.
   
   Sledge died in 2001 but he was often quoted in Ken Burn's recent PBS series on World War II. Sledge is a true American hero.
   
   Smallchief

2 comments about The Southern Journey of a Civil War Marine: The Illustrated Note-Book of Henry O. Gusley (Clifton and Shirley Caldwell Texas Heritage Series).

1. As other reviews have pointed out, there are loads of Civil War diaries. What makes this unique is because it is by a Marine. The Marine forces were very small compared to the Army and Navy forces of both combatants. This was particularly interesting to me as some of his travels brought him along the Texas Gulf Coast, not very far from where I live. It is obvious from his writings that Marine duty with the Navy blockades in the South could be very boring at times. I enjoyed the book.



2. This is an excellent resource for learning about the life and duties of Marines during the Civil War. There are only a few existing personal accounts of Marines during that period. Gusley details a lot about daily shipboard life and the actions that he was involved in. Coupled with the drawings of the one of the doctors on board his ship, it makes for a good read for the history buff or the Civil War Marine or Navy re-enactor. As a former Marine and re-enactor, I highly recommend this book.

No comments about Lt. Ted Meredith, Usnr, Pt Boat Officer: Stories from 50 Years Ago.

No comments about A Norfolk Soldier in the first Sikh War -a private soldier tells the story of his part in the battles for the conquest of India.

1 comments about The Class of '42: Marines in Ww II.

1. Tucker Giblin is one of the very few enlisted Marines to write about very personal experiences in combat. Honest, direct, not politically correct and is so well written as to evoke comparisons with Saving Private Ryan. The Class of 1942: Marines in WW II is carefully documented and is a basic reference for 1st Marine Division combat operations on Guadalcanal; Cape Gloucester, New Britain and Bloody Pelelieu. If one wants to read a first hand account of actual combat in the jungles of the Pacific Island, read Tucker's book