No comments about Four Brothers in Blue: Or Sunshine and Shadows of the War of the Rebellion, a Story of the Great Civil War from Bull Run to Appomattox.

1 comments about Blondie: A Biography of Lieutenant-Colonel H G Hasler Dso, Obe, Croix De Guerre, Royal Marines.

1. 'Blondie' will appeal to WWII buffs and also to sailors. Hasler was the original "cockleshell hero". The first half is a difficult read owing to many, many military acronyms. After the war (about midway through) the book picks up speed and becomes quite a bit more enjoyable. The horrible reality of war really comes through, and this is over all a good read. Blondie was a consummate professional who loved adventure. His life is a story worth telling. Floyd Bryant, 9-Mar-99

No comments about Reflections on Lee: A Historian's Assessment.

No comments about The School of War.

No comments about This War So Horrible: The Civil War Diary of Hiram Smith Williams, 40th Alabama Confederate Pioneer.

No comments about Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer (Bluejacket Books).

No comments about Drummer Boy Willie McGee, Civil War Hero and Fraud.

No comments about BOMB ALLEY: Aboard HMS Antrim at war.

3 comments about Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary Of Edward O. Guerrant.

1. Excellent diary with lots of good information. Editors did a poor job as town names such as Jonesburg Tennessee should be Jonesbough, and a couple others that never existed or are badly mis-spelled. It is sad these errors had to get into the book. Otherwise an excellent read.



2. Though not devoid of some human interest value, this is not an especially useful source for the historian. Guerrant saw little action, and writes scantily about what he did see. I can't imagine that most of his sojourns in West Virginia and Kentucky will be of interest to most scholars; there is an account of the Battle of Saltville, but that's about it. Eloquent, not to say melodramatic, jeremiads on the weather make up a good deal of the text.

   On the other hand, Guerrant was the kind of diarist who thinks that posterity may read his diary someday, and he writes with verve and emotion -- multiple exclamation points, parenthetical clever remarks, and so on. After hundreds of pages -- for a Civil War diary this is exceedingly long -- that gets old, but he undeniably has his moments.




3. This amounts to nearly 700 pages of transcribed diaries from an officer who saw very little action except in Southwest Virginia, East Tennessee and two campaigns in Kentucky. I echo the previous review by saying that this book is more for a specialist in those campaigns rather than for the general reader of the Civil War. What is as interesting is Guerrant's retelling of all the rumors he hears about the conduct of the war. He keeps hope alive that the Confederacy is winning until he learns of the surrender of Lee's army, in fact does not believe any northern sources and tries to accept every southern source. He also wears religious blinders, feeling that the South will win because God is on it's side. As a good Christian he is fignting for freedom and Southern rights (whatever they are, he doesn't say), but is not troubled by fellow Confederates murdering Black soldiers over a two day period after the first battle of Saltville. His enemies are Yankee Vandals and Niggers, not human beings and certainly not people like himself.

   I am troubled about the quality of the editing. William C. Davis gets top billing, but there are so many errors in the footnotes, plus trivia footnoted and important information left unfootnoted, that I wonder how much of this Davis really read. Much of the editing is frankly done by an amateur and is not corrected. This is not what I expect from LSU Press for my fifty bucks. In the chapter notes for early 1863 the editor says Guerrant was looking forward to seeing his friends and family because he had not been home in a year. Yet, he had returned as part of the Confederate invasion in the fall of 1862 and did see friends and some family (he had failed to see his father.) Makes me wonder who really read the material. How about Grant's victory at Missionnary Ridge allowing the Federals to occupy Chattanooga? I thought that they were there already. Several footnotes refer to Federal soldiers as Yankees (I guess the 21st century still needs to catch up in some areas: this on a day when several "Yankee" soldiers have died in Iraq.) Given the competence of the editors and the price I say caveat emptor.

3 comments about The Book of Rudy: The Wit and Wisdom of Rudy Boesch.

1. As a staff member of NavSpecWarGroup back in '73, I ran across Rudy many times while he was at SEAL 2. He is EXACTLY like his book. A good guy and a good example for the young guys of today's SEAL Teams to follow. If young men today want an example to follow, they would be on the mark if they used him instead of a sports figure or movie actor.

   Steve Waterman, author of JUST A SAILOR




2. I picked up "The Book of Rudy: The Wit and Wisdom of Rudy Boesch" and immediately cringed. Here is a man who achieved a certain notoriety for being the most authentic member of the original "Survivor" show. Yes, there was the beloved curmudgeon aspect to how he was presented, but I thought it was his authenticity, the fact that you took the man at face value because you just were not going to find anything else underneath, that made him appealing. Ask Rudy Boesch what he thinks and you will get what he thinks. Take it or leave it. But when I saw this book I thought it was going to be one of those collections of quotations and aphorisms, which would strip the man down to mere words.

   However, I was surprised to discover this was ot the case. What we have here is Rudy Boesch answering questions about basically every controversial topic that interviewers Jeff and Deborah Herman could come up with, from abortion to gun control and from Vietnam to George Bush, Jr. Some of the answers are brief, to the point, and probably surprising to anyone expecting standard conservative rhetoric (e.g., Rudy thinks abortion should be up to the woman). Others are more involved, evidencing that the man does not spout off about everything at the drop of the hat. He only talks in detail about things he has thought about it depth.

   There is obviously some sort of agreement regarding the publication of books that Rudy Boesch signed when he did "Survivor," because the show is never mentioned, just the idea that we have seen Rudy of TV. A chapter on "Survival" is conspicuously barren of anything regarding living on an island in the South China Sea for a month. However, Rudy is here to talk about bigger and better things than some television show. I would have liked to have read more about Rudy's live in the SEALS, but you know the man is not going to talk about that, right? This one is quite simple: if you enjoyed listening to Rudy's abrasive comments on "Survivor," you will find more of the same but with considerably more depth and heart than what we say edited for television.




3. Interviewer Jeff Herman asks Rudy Boesch scores and scores of questions, some of them tired and pre-planned, others tying things together. And Rudy answers them all as anyone who's heard him speak would expect him to - straight-forward, based on a long life of experience, with a great deal of simplicity, and without much consistency (especially on topics political and sociological).
   
   But Herman's presentation is grandly stilted, presenting himself as more refined than Rudy (as if we couldn't already imagine that he probably was) and "clarifying" Rudy's answers even when they don't need it.
   
   It's unlikely, for example, that Herman used "et al." (Latin for others; in the phrase "Washington, Jefferson, et al.", on p.135) in a question, but he prints that in the book, instead of printing the question as he probably asked it ("...and others"). Conversely, when Rudy mentions "The Mole", Herman sees fit (on p.40) to add in "[TV show]" even though the answer is clearly about TV shows, and even though the question includes the phrase "reality shows on TV".
   
   Herman's comfortable asking the Vietnam-related question (on p.67) "Did the North have good soldiers?", but apparently needs to clarify Rudy's answer with a bracket: "They [the Vietcong] were worthy opponents." But if "the North" suffices as a reference to the political entity of northern Vietnam, then "They" suffices as a reference to "good soldiers". Herman's editing makes it look like Rudy is ambiguous or insufficient. He isn't.
   
   He even gets some basic concepts wrong, such as (on the first page) saying Rudy is "well into his seventh decade". (Rudy's in his seventies, and so well into his *eighth* decade.)
   
   Despite Herman's slant and ego, Survivor fanatics will enjoy spending a bit more time with Rudy. You won't be enlightened, and you won't learn much. (You probably already know that he was one of the first SEALs, and there's scant detail about that.) But it was a good quick read I kept in the bathroom and finished in three days over the course of short breaks.