Charles Ashbacher Reviews

  Review of The Forty-Minute War , by Janet and Chris Morris, ISBN 0671559869 Three out of five stars Absurd initial premise and bad ending   This book begins with an absurd premise, not the event, but the context. A group of committed terrorists manage to acquire a nuclear weapon and a plane. The manage to fly it from Saudi Arabia to Washington D. C. where they detonate it. Distraught over the knowledge that his wife and family have been killed, the American President orders a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. They retaliate and it is all over in 40 minutes. After ordering the strike, the American President takes a gun and kills himself.   There are two reasons why this premise is absurd, one major and the other minor. The major one is that the intelligence services of the United States were aware of the nuclear weapon and had an elite anti-terrorist team on the ground ready to take out the terrorists. However, the team was given a stand-down order. Whil...

  Review of Britain’s Secret War: The Indonesian Confrontation 1962-1966 , by Will Fowler ISBN 184603048x Four out of five stars Short explanation of a small border war   After World War II ended and the Japanese troops were all evacuated from their residences in areas they took from European powers, there was an overwhelming movement towards independence. Since the colonial powers had drawn the borders without regard to ethnicity and the leaders of the newly independent countries sought more land to rule, many small wars broke out between newly or soon to be independent countries.   Indonesia was a Dutch colonial possession and Malaysia and Borneo were British. Although the Dutch tried to reassert their authority after the end of World War II, they had no success and Indonesia became an independent country in late 1949. Malaysia did no achieve independence until 1957 and in 1963 a federation consisting of Malaysia, Sarawak and Borneo was formed. This event trig...

  Review of When the Colts Belonged to Baltimore: A Father and a Son, a Team and a Time, by William Gildea, ISBN 0801853796 Five out of five stars Autobiography of a boy/man and a biography of a team   The author grew up in Baltimore in the 1950’s, when the Baltimore Colts of the NFL went from being a very poor team into a champion. While the Colts had many great players, the main reason for their rise to a powerful team was due to one man, Johnny Unitas. The rise of the Colts also coincided with the rise of the NFL from what was a secondary professional sport into a national pastime watched by millions.   Unlike most other sports, it is possible to cite one game as the inflection point. It was the championship game of 1958, the first game to go into sudden-death overtime and is still considered by many to be the greatest game of all time. The teams were the New York Giants and the Colts, quarterbacked by Unitas. Many say that the guts he demonstrated when maki...

  Review of Lightning Strike: The Secret Mission to Kill Admiral Yamamoto and Avenge Pearl Harbor , by Donald A. Davis, ISBN 0312309074 Five out of five stars Fascinating account of a daring mission   Throughout the Japanese military in the lead up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there was no man more knowledgeable about the United States than Admiral Isoroka Yamamoto. He spent a great deal of time in the United States as a military attaché and was well aware of the tremendous industrial potential of the United States. He was also a student of history and knew that when aroused, the American men would fight and die for their country.   Yamamoto was also far-sighted in that he understood that the day of the mighty battleship was over. The most powerful military forces on the seas were now the aircraft carriers, the battleship without air cover was almost helpless against an attack from the air. Yamamoto also knew that Japan could not defeat the United Sta...

  Review of Across the River and Into the Trees , by Ernest Hemingway Four out of five stars Hemingway and characters post-war   Published in 1950, five years after World War II in Europe ended, this novel is set in that timeframe. The main character is a former soldier that fought on the Allied side in Italy. He currently resides in an area where his unit engaged in combat against the Germans and their Italian Fascist allies. He sometimes reminisces over the action, wondering about men dying while fighting over such geographic features. The main character is universally referred to as “my Colonel,” as some of the other characters are also former soldiers that served under him. All of them have physical and mental scars from their war experiences, it is a story of dealing with life after such a transformative experience.   The story opens with an early morning duck hunt in very cold weather. The Colonel is in a boat that is traversing through recently frozen ice...

  Review of The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You!, by Harry Harrison, ISBN 0553253956 Four out of five stars Another formulaic story about Slippery Jim   Slippery Jim diGriz is an extraordinary thief and con man operating in an advanced society where interstellar travel is common along with the ability to travel in time. He was given his alias of the “Stainless Steel Rat” for his criminal operations in a modern, highly technical society. In this story, he is ably assisted by his wife Angelina and his twin sons James and Bolivar as he tries to save the human population from being defeated by a reptilian species.   In a somewhat silly plot device, diGriz dons a suit that allows him to pass as one of the reptiles so that he can infiltrate their society in hopes of serving as a mole and rescue humans that they have captured. There is also involvement of the gray men, a society of humans that are utterly emotionless in their dealings with each other and other species. ...

  Review of Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History with Documents , by Woody Holton, ISBN 9780312413590 Five out of five stars One fact makes the book worth reading.   The supposed ideals articulated in the American Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Of course, when the word “men” is used in this context, it meant white men. At the time, most blacks in the United States were enslaved and that small percentage that were free were given limited opportunities.   This book is worth reading for one basic reason, it makes clear one major fact that is almost totally overlooked in discussions about the root causes of the American uprising against the British crown. That fact is introduced in the Declaration of Independence itself, in the clause that...