5 comments about The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea.

1. I do not know James Brady and hae no connection to him. I know him mostly from his good writing in Crain's New York Business. His Memoir of Korea was simply a great and compelling read. It was like being in front of a fire with a vintage port wine, a Cuban cigar and a friend who finally decides to tell you his story. That the friend is a master racounteur (sp?) helps and that James Brady has one hell of story to tell also helps. Thanks Mr. Brady. Here's to you and your buddies who sacrificed so much. May all your nights be warm.



2. In "The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea," author James Brady vividly describes what it was like to be a junior officer in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. Brady notes the irony of his decision to sign up for a Marine Corps officer training program: "I'd joined up to dodge the draft and ended up being sent to war." He gives many insights into the positions he held: platoon leader, company executive officer, and battalion intelligence officer. His narrative also illuminates the culture and organization of the U.S. Marine Corps.
   
   Brady's story is rich in details of life in the Korean war zone. He discusses food, clothing, recreation, relationships among the Marines, and encounters with Korean civilians. The text is also full of fascinating technical details about the tactics and hardware of war; I was particularly interested in his passages about the mortarman's deadly art and the usefulness of the Browning Automatic Rifle. Brady makes the story come to life with his evocative descriptions of sounds of different weapons, the sizzle of hot brass hitting the snow, and other realities of wartime. He doesn't shy away from discussing the real down-and-dirty details of his service. He vividly describes the personal hygiene aspect of front-line duty; I found a dry humor to his graphic discourse on one of the unpleasant side effects of not bathing for a long time.
   
   Brady's story includes vivid anecdotes about revelry at a British officers' mess, a visit to the relative luxury of a hospital ship, and more. He also recalls the punishingly cold weather, and includes some gripping accounts of combat. He presents the violence, death, and destruction of war without flinching. The text is enhanced by several black-and-white photos showing Brady, his fellow Marines, and the environment in which they lived and fought. The Korean conflict has been called a "forgotten war"; this makes Brady's thoughtful, well-written personal account even more valuable. It's both an important historical document and a powerful piece of literature.



3. I served in Korea with 3/7, USMC from Nov 1951 to Nov 1952.
   This was a vivid reminder of that cold inhospitable place. The authot invoked many memories and for a moment I felt the bone numbing cold even in my warm home.
   Although Brady was an officer and I an enlistem man we share the honor of being awarded the Title Unites States Marine.
   Every Marine will appreciate this book



4. I found this book to a fine novel of the Korean War.Written from the perspective of a young Marine Lt.It had grit and also some light moments.I recommend it.



5. The author recounts his time in Korea where he served as a Marine rifle platoon leader during the "Forgotten War". A very intriguing narrative about a war which claimed in 3 years almost as many American lives as the Vietnam war did in ten years.

5 comments about Korean War.

1. The US provided Chiang with many weapons to fight both Japanese and Communists. When Mao Zedong took mainland China he inherited a huge arsenal of american-made weapons (like Khomeini did from the ousted Shah in Iran in 1979). Go to search engines and put in in quotes Li-Fujen: Kuomintang Faces Doom (1949). This is for more on Chiang's defecting-to-Mao soldiers having american weapons.
   
   These american-made weapons definitely helped the Red Chinese cause. This book is definitely too flattering to Red China. And the US was 97% of the UN fighting force in Korea. Americans had 5,764,143 men in combat in Korea. The rest of the UN contributed a small 156,000. The US was way more efficient than Red China in this war case closed.



2. An excellent one-volume treatment of the 'forgotten war'. Hastings tells the story of the bitter battles at close range on impossible terrain in brutal weather. Some 42,000 US soldiers died in just three years' fighting. The US attack into North Korea brought the Chinese into the war and caused serious consideration to be given to the use of The Bomb. Hastings' use of interviews with some two hundred veterans, from both sides, including Chinese, gives his work its veracity. He also covers the political battles at home, including the big one between Truman and the deluded megalomaniac MacArthur.
   
   An excellent addition to your history bookshelf.



3. The Korean War took the world by surprise when, in the morning of June 25 1950, thousands of North Korean troops came crashing across the 38th parallel separating the two Koreas. The ensuing war would come to pit the American -led United Nations against North Korea and communist China . In this well researched work, Max Hastings looks not only at the conflict itself but also its origins and its often forgotten lessons. Hastings writes of a United States that was thoroughly unprepared for a war of this type, with near disasterous results. In the end, the consequences of the mistakes on both sides would prolong the conflict , cost millions of lives and left the Korean peninsula devastated. However the conclusion drawn from the book is one that the American effort in Korea, though flawed, was indeed very necessary and ultimately not in vain.



4. A good solid one volume account of the Korean war that gives the general reader a good insight into the war although I would prefer a work from an American perspective. Well worth the pricing on Amazon.



5. This book treats the war as military history, from the power struggle on the penninsula following the end of WWII to the final Armistice. The Korean War is a complicated conflict (you wouldn't know it from watching MASH though) which saw both sides surge north and south, with new belligerents getting involved in the war at different points and with a mix of WWII technology on the ground and Cold War technology in the skies. Max Hastings does an excellent job of putting the conflict together not just in terms of the "big picture" but also in the eyes of those who fought it.

5 comments about East of Chosin: Entrapment and Breakout in Korea, 1950 (Texas a & M University Military History Series).

1. A very engrossing account. Despite the level of detail on the geography, personnel and their units it holds your attention. Also provides comment on areas of uncertainty over what actually happened. One of the most successful books on warfare in putting you there - to the point where it was difficult to read ( in this case an indication of the author's success ). One really sensed the isolation of the units and the desperate situation in which they found themselves. Recommended.



2. I've read a lot of military history over the years, though I'm definitely not as well-read as some. This book and the others in Appleman's Korean War series really helped me understand small unit operations. They can be dry and a little tough going, but if you give them a chance you may discover a side of battle often overlooked. Making great use of original after action reports as well as interviews and the more common types of sources, Appleman reminds us that (unlike the movies) often ammunition and rations run out and what happens when they do. (Real men have to be sent to get more.) He shows us how and why troops are moved from one nondescript hill to another. (Almost never due to command brilliance.) And better than anyone else he shows us how great battles are built up from squad and platoon actions.

   You may lose track of which regiment "L Company" is a part of, but you will come to care what happened to L Company.




3. I've long been very familiar with the 1st Marine Division's history at the Chosin, but until I read Roy Appleman's book I didn't realize just how much I didn't know about the Army's side of the conflict. This tale of desperation and bravery should be required reading amongst all American service personnel and perhaps even in High Schools. Excellently written, this book holds your attention despite the huge amount of very detailed geographic and unit data presented.



4. Never served. I've read plenty of war stories telling of brave men though. This story of the Army's fight trying to get back from the east side of the Chosin Reservoir is the saddest story I've ever read.

   Bad plan. Frigid weather. Four straight days and nights under attack in the cold. No help available. Get back on your own, guys. Frostbite. All out of bandages, gasoline, ammunition. Then death in the cold cold night so close to getting back.

   I've read this book twice and it effected me even more the second time.

   skwirl60646@yahoo.com




5. Having read several books about the Chosin Campaign, I was pleased to finally get the story of what occurred on the East side of the reservoir. Mr. Appleman exaustingly found the details through official Army and Marine combat reports as well as listening to the survivors of this tragic event. The 31st RCT was doomed almost before they started and poor weather, traffic jams, raw Korean recruits, bad luck and command mistakes caused its demise. The Soldiers fought bravely and tenaciously but being out-numbered by as much as 10 to 1 was just too much to overcome.
   The author has given us a clear, detailed, hour by hour account
   of this heroic but heartbreaking episode in American military history.

5 comments about War Trash.

1. Ha Jin, War Trash: A Novel, New York: Pantheon Books, 2004.
   352 pages
   ISBN: 0-375-42276-5
   
   "War trash" refers to the human detritus of war, the throwaways, the men still living but accorded no honor, in spite of their performance as soldiers. This is the story of one among a number of these men, a Chinese soldier imprisoned in an American prisoner-of-war camp in Korea during the Korean War. His rare English language skills and the opportunities they afford him to interact with a wide range of inmates and officers as interpreter elevate him to a position unlikely for an otherwise ordinary soldier required to fight for the Communists in the Chinese infantry. Though not a Party member, he is nevertheless driven to return to the mainland at the close of the war in order to re-join his mother and fiancée. Personally apolitical, he is caught between dissent and conformity, faced with the choice of repatriating in Red China where he will not be welcomed by the Party, or joining the Nationalists in Taiwan with no opportunity of seeing his mother and fiancée again.
   
   The language is a bit stiff, but this helps the book read more like a memoir than a novel. Though most characters are fictional, events and specific details are not. Meticulous research and attention to detail in the descriptions of incidents of horror on the battlefield, in the camp hospital, and in the camp compounds, and a deep understanding of the political twists and deceptions that create the narrator's dilemma, lend the narrative a level of realism not frequently found in a work of fiction.
   
   Ha Jin is a native of China, educated in the U.S. and currently an English professor at Boston University, and an author of several novels and books of poetry and short stories. War Trash won for its author the PEN/Faulkner Award; Ha Jin has also won the National Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award, the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. This is the first of his books I've read; I look forward to more.



2. Ha Jin deserves more than 3 stars. His "Waiting" is absolutely beautiful. But three stars is what I decide to give "War Trash", and that is because of the documentary type approach Jin adopts. Its not that the novel is not moving, it definitely is. But I feel novels like Sebastian Barry`s "A Long Long Way" are more emotionally powerful, and I think thats gots lots to do with the poetry of Barry`s story. Ha Jin`s novel reads like impeccably written history - which is wonderful for its own sake. But only at the very end do we get the type of "this can't be happening" feeling that hurts us in the gut (lots), and make fiction in war settings so powerful. I look forward very much to the next time Ha Jin gives us a treat of pure heart-felt fiction and less fictionalized history



3. After enjoying "Waiting", I read this one and was not disappointed. Ha Jin is simply an outstanding author. In this book, he not only offers beautiful prose, but also a very interesting story. It is well researched (it is fiction) story of a Chinese POW during the Korean war. Ha Jin offers readers a fresh new way of viewing war. There are no good guys or bad guys. I am amazed that Ha Jin can write so well in his second language. Very talented author. Highly recommended! You won't be disappointed.



4. War Trash not only entertains, but it teaches in a way that few books can. When reading the book, I felt trapped in the socialist-nationalist political tension that turned ordinary people into cruel, violent zealots.
   
   Throughout the book, the action gripped me and made me care about the protagonist and his family. In that sense, this book shined as a work of fiction. But more importantly, War Trash taught me a great deal about how people view the political "other", and specifically about how the Chinese nationalists and socialists viewed each other.



5. War Trash, a novel which is outwardly about the Korean War, is really a way for Ha Jin to explore the shortcomings of the two systems of government available for Chinese people: the Nationalist system in Taiwan, and the Communist on mainland China. As in Ha Jin's novel Waiting, political systems and their answers to human dilemmas are always lacking. When people seek to solve life's deep problems with political solutions, the results are always violent and inadequate. This novel has a documentary feel to it; the research into the era appears to be meticulous. All in all, War Trash is another major accomplishment for this writer, both clear and concise without lacking in depth.

5 comments about Under Fire: Corps 09 (Corps).

1. W.E.B. Griffin is not everyone's cup of tea, I enjoy him. This book like all of Griffin's books is a light fast good read. You know the characters and enjoy their further adventures.
   
   If you read this book you should pick up "The Secrets of Inchon" mentioned in the author's notes. It is a truly amazing piece of first person writing.



2. Don't miss reading it and "Retreat Hell". You can't miss the continuation of the story along with the excitement.



3. WARNING! The Books-On-Tape unabridged version is a 2 part set, consisting of 18 (eighteen) cassettes in 2 (two) plastic cases. If a vendor does not specify all 18 cassettes, inquire before purchasing. Also, this is not "book 2" of anything, rather it is Book 9 of the Corps Series.
   
   According to Amazon, reader reviews should not be used for such information, but Amazon ignores all corrections sent the way they specify for corrections.
   
   Oh yes, this is a terrific book, and the audio version is superb.



4. This is the first time I've been exposed to Griffin's Corps novels. I listened to this one on tape, and I found it totally gripping! The characters are warm and very believable. Some are larger than life (ie: Major McCoy), but that's required in a novel of this type. One strong character is needed to carry the story along. I loved the inside look at one of the major battles of the Korean War (the attack on Inchon), and I liked the glimpse that we got of some real people, like General Douglas MacCarthur and President Harry Truman. I think Griffin has a really good understanding of the American Armed forces and the way that things are done there, and he tells a whopping good tale! I actually had shivers when I heard James Laughton describe the battle to take the two Korean islands that were required before the landing at Inchon could occur. And that's another thing - James Laughton does a wonderful job of reading this very exciting book. I truly enjoyed it, and am going to read or listen to other books in this series.



5. This book came in excellant condition and I would recommend
   the seller. Book came right away. Would like to Thank the
   Seller for getting it out so quickly.

5 comments about The Captains: Brotherhood of War 02 (Brotherhood of War).

1. I finaly read "The Captains", the second "Brotherhood of War" book, and it is so far my favorite. The Korean War has started up and Cpt. Craig Lowell is called back to active duty as a tank commander. Through several misadventures, he eventually winds up a major at the age of 25 (realisticly impossable in today's Army). Meanwhile Capt. Felter is advancing nicely in his chosen feild, working as the Army's liaison to the CIA. Capt. MacMillian is being shoveled around as a great war hero, and no one wants him to get hurt, so this is very irritating to a war hungrey solider. This book is pretty solid, I read it in a brisk two nights. I love how eerything seemed to flow efforlessly, and the characterization is pretty dead on, especially brat Lowell. You may read about him and wonder how the Army tolerates people like him. Take my word for it, they just do. Being in war makes officials over look childish behavoir. If there is only one problem, it is that the succesion of rank is too improbable. I would have loved to have gone from Private First Class to a Major in six years. Oh well. Otherwise it has great action, from early tank defensives, to the Task Force Lowell, to the black ops mission at the end that puts Felter in mortal danger. I loved it.



2. I have read the entire series more than once, and it gets better every time I read it. Mr. Griffin definately has the gift for describing the military community. I gave 20 years to my country, and I can't wait for him to talk about the Air Force.



3. I love the whole Brotherhood of War series, but the Captains is my favorite. Griffin is the king of ground pounder fiction! If you skip the rest of the series, read this one!



4. The Captains is certainly one of the best books in any of the series Griffin has written. I served in armored cavalry and in MI and Griffin knows the army and its array of characters. He is a master of character development, dialogue and military humor. There is none of the obsequious boot-licking of the military present in Clancy's novels. Unlike Clancy, who has his lips firmly entrenched on the military's derriere, Griffin pulls no punches. I can't give Griffin a better salute than to say, GARRYOWEN, SIR!



5. My son lives in Italy and wanted this. Thanks for the speedy delivery of it so I could send it to him.

No comments about Soviet MiG-15 Aces of the Korean War (Aircraft of the Aces).

5 comments about Retreat, Hell! (Corps).

1. iT WAS AN ORDER FOR MY HUSBAND AND THE LAST BOOK IN THE SERIES THAT HE HAD NOT READ AND COULDN'T
   FIND SO IT WAS GREAT.



2. While I am enjoying Griffin's new 'Presidential' series, I just re-read his 'The Corps' series from beginning to end, and I really think that there is room for a couple of more books there. _Retreat, Hell!_ ended with the birth of the McCoy's son and the Chinese have just entered the Korean War. What happened to his characters next? What about Vietnam and the CIA in the 1950s? The 1960s?



3. The Corps series is the first series that I have read of W.E.B. Griffin, but it certainly won't be the last. Griffin is a marvellous writer who mixes actual people in with his fictional people. His stories are epics and the plots are larger than life as war so often is. This book is set around the beginning of the Korean War in the latter part of 1950. Most of the action takes place behind the lines in North Korea. Major Ken (Killer) McCoy takes a lead role in this one as he mounts a series of behind-the-lines surveillance teams. Their main job is to monitor the Chinese border to determine whether of not the Red Chinese are going to enter the war. We have a lot of the original characters from World War II such as General Fleming Pickering, Colonel Ed Banning, Major Malcom Pickering and Master Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman, as well as some new names and people. The book is so realistic that it took my breath away. I am very sorry to reach the end of this stupendous series. I will next tackle The Badge of Honor series. If I get half as much enjoyment out of that as I did with this one, I will be happy.



4. Mr.Griffin did the superb job creating the characters who are very likable and well put idiots/villains for couter effect.
   
   I always enjoyed the good war novels, especially stories based on the WWII.
   
   However, rarely there are any books with stories so gripping that make me want to follow through continuing saga of any kind though, this series proved to be an exception. It is definitely well worth reading the entire series.
   
   The only flaw in the otherwise perfect series is the discrepancy in naming Lt. Hon Song Do who is Korean and, to my knowledge there is no surname Hon anywhere in the history books or documentary of any kind in Korea. It should have been named Hong instead.
   
   I should know that well since I am a Korean born and always have been an avid reader of many different books, either in Korean or English.
   
   Though seemingly minor mishaps in naming other korean characters as well as places in other parts of the books though, it's rather discomfitting to see such uncharacteristic oversight in an author of Mr. Griffin's status.
   
   Over all, this is definitely one of the best war stories I have ever read and am very much looking forward to the continuing stories of the "Killer" McCoy and gravity defying stories of "Pick" Pickering, etc....
   
   Just for a thought, my husband thinks I am definitely too crazy to read such a thing and even crazier to write random thoughts of this knid...



5. W. E. B. Griffin is a master at combining historic facts and fully fleshed out fictional characters.

5 comments about The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea.

1. This is an interesting true story BUT it is quite light on details. The actual book is just 192 pages long so it glosses over a lot of details. (e.g., what do the numbers of mats have to do with the size of a room?) In addition, the writing style is largely Jenkins' stream of thought -- kind of difficult to keep an interest. Finally, it easily has the longest preface (34 pages) that I've ever seen in a non-textbook. This whole story could be reduced to a five page article in Time or Newsweek.



2. The Reluctant Communist is the harrowing tale of Charles Robert Jenkins' life in North Korea following his desertion from the US Army in 1965. The story is bookended with an exposition of his life before desertion and his ultimate escape in 2003 and new life in Japan.
   
   On the book's cover, we see Jenkins staring out from the cover of the Reluctant Communist with a near-expressionless face that belies the gripping tale he tells inside. It's part biography, part confession, part travelogue, part political history, part prodigal son, and ALL thriller. The work brings to vivid life the struggle of the individual against a profoundly evil socialist state.
   
   Jenkins teamed with Jim Frederick of Time to write the book. The co-author manages to keep himself in the background for most of the story, limiting himself to the Foreword and to organizing Jenkins' tale into a coherent whole. To his credit, Frederick's discipline helps to retain the plain talk of Jenkins and lend the story an authentic voice, while still moving the story forward at a nice clip.
   
   Frederick, hailing from Time Magazine, stumbles once when he inserts gratuitous references to America's racist past in the passages leading up to the desertion. But, thankfully, this PC irrelevancy isn't enough to veer the story over the cliff, and is redeemed by everything that follows.
   
   The book could have benefited from a few maps, photos, and/or sketches to personalize the story. Without doubt, there is atill an untold but related story of Japanese abductees. One hopes Frederick will tackle that next, since he glosses over this here. But, these are quibbles in an otherwise gripping yarn. Do not miss this book!



3. There is two sides to a coin with this book. On one side is the the story of author who turned out to be pretty pathetic individual in nature. He is a man who not only disgraced himself but his nation and uniform he wore. So fearful was he of being a soldier that he drank and ran to the enemy of his nation. His outlooks on his decision to go AWOL to the North Koreans borderline on a criminal stupidity. I would say that he deserves every minute of North Korean hospitality he had to endured.
   
   Then there is the other side of the coin, an interesting look at the life and times inside of North Korea, one of the most despotic nations on the planet, rule by someone even more pathetic then the author. I found this part of the book to be utterly interesting and worth reading. Anyone thinking about repeating the author's ill-advise decision to flee to North Korea should be deter by what is written here. However, even as I was reading it, I can't help but feel that I am being whitewashed here. That the author isn't writing everything truthful and he is definitely holding things back.
   
   The author is living in Japan now with his Japanese wife, a forgiving nation thanks to his wife who was kidnapped by the North Korean government. The US military let him go easy although he got 30 days and dishonorable discharge. No doubt, they must have concluded that he suffered enough under the North Korean tutelage.



4. For the other side of the story, see "Crossing the Line," an award-winning BBC documentary.



5. I picked up the book out of curiosity and now am glad that I read it. Before reading the book, I thought of him as a strange man who defected to North Korea of all places, lived the good life as the token trophy, and now decided that he had had enough. I now feel more sympathy for his plight as he's revealed as a man whose momentary stupidity consigned him to forty years in hell. I was touched by his courtship of his wife, who was even more grievously wronged (at least he walked in with his two feet), and am glad to know that they are doing well in their new lives in Japan. A fascinating personal glimpse into the most isolated, brainwashed place in the world.

5 comments about The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War.

1. A great review of the history leading up to the war and the failure of MacAurthur's Headquarters which permitted such early success by the North Koreans and latter by the Chinese. It is too bad Truman did not relieve MacAurthur sooner, many thousands of lives could have been saved.
   Roger L. Hatton
   Col., USAF, Ret.



2. I found the opening chapter of this book, which depicts the US soldiers blindly stumbling into well-prepared Chinese ambushes, to be utterly engrossing. Unfortunately, Halberstam couldn't keep it up through the book.
   
   As a nice survey of the first few years of the Korean War and its underlying causes, this is a good book, but while Halberstam does a good job going into the political causes, with long chapters detailing the motives of MacArthur, Truman, Stalin, and Mao, I was disappointed that he didn't spend more time with the soldiers who were on the ground. Their stories were far more compelling, but Halberstam doesn't spend nearly enough time with them.
   
   In addition, he glosses over the last few years of the war and the public's growing disaffection with it.
   
   As a starting point for learning more about Korea, this works pretty well, but I thought the lack of clear focus was a disappointment.



3. In terms of books written about it, the Korean War was the black hole of American historiography, compared to the large output on WW2 and Vietnam; a nasty 'little' forgotten war. With Halberstam's last book before he died in a car accident, the gap is a little smaller.
   Most wars can be seen as a series of mistakes. The Korean War offers itself perfectly for that approach. We know who 'started' it, that was clearly North Korea's invasion of the South in June 50.
   But who 'caused' it? If monocausal explanations are worth anything, then Dean Acheson surely is the prime candidate with his monumental gaffe of forgetting to include Korea in a speech defining America's interest zone in Asia. That was clearly the signal to the uneasy triad of Kim, Mao and Stalin, that an adventure might work. Which was mistake number two. They had not counted on incompetence in the US government.
   Next: the breathtaking inefficiency of MacArthur's intelligence, his view of the world defined as truth, which ignored on a level of criminal negligence the reports that something was building up North of the demarcation line. (Comparable to intelligence failures before 9/11 and the lies before the Iraq invasion? This is what happens when intelligence is a tool for a pre-defined view!)
   Kim's stupidity in ignoring the warnings about the Inchon landing. Lucky for the good guys.
   The focus on conquering Seoul rather than blocking the retreat to the North for the invaders. Costly! Again PR value over strategy!
   The silly amphibious landing in Wonsan, when the Marines could have gotten there easily and faster on land from Pusan. (And Bob Hope had to perform to a nearly empty audience, as the Marines were stuck in their ships when the harbour was mined.)
   Not wanting to repeat the whole book here (which is 650 pages of bad weather and anti-MacArthurism, not to forget the brillant brief bio sketches of the main protagonists, that we are used to expect from Halberstam), let's jump into the phase when the war seemed to be won: next mistake, underestimating the enemy, caused by the same basic flaw: intelligence to prove what we know already.
   The failure to anticipate the Chinese invasion was a massive misjudgement, equally hard to understand as the man's previous failure to expect the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Of course in between he had made the impossible become true and carried out the Incheon landing, which erased the memory of previous errors.
   That in turn was the basis for the US government's next big error: not to remove MacArthur from his command in time. The man seemed untouchable. A very costly overestimation of his value. Of course how would a weak accidental president be expected to trust his own judgement more than that of a war hero?
   The pity is that mistakes are never learnt from. That is of course mainly because we can usually not agree on the what and the who in first place.
   Or sometimes, when they are learnt from, then in the sense of the generals who fight the previous wars: unaware of the law of life which says that once you know the answers, the questions get changed.
   Skimming through the book later, it occurs to me that I ought to have mentioned the special story of the 'loss' of China, which was politically a very relevant background noise of the Korea War. Of course the tragedy of China's civil war was that there was no competent leadership on the nationalist side, and that furthermore the anti Truman forces in the US had decided to be so totally taken in by that fraud CKS and his Missimo. While Mao had his starry eyed Edgar Snow for propaganda, CKS commanded the loyalty of Henry Luce and his press empire. Luce turned out to be a mighty force for befuddlement of American brains. In comparison, Snow was not much more than a court jester.



4. Well written, entertaining. This book gives a great overview of the Korean war. What went wrong and what went right. Why it all started and an in-depth look at MacArthur.



5. I was twelve when the war started. It was not taught in my high school, it was not taught when I was studying for the Navy, it was never taught. Truely the "Forgotten War", but David Halberstam brought it to life after fifty some years and I was in awe of the personalities. What a wonderful gift! What a sad fact that he is no longer with us to bring us more history.