WaGuns Book Reviews

[MadPick]

I mentioned "The Dog Stars" by Peter Heller in another thread so I thought I'd pop over here and do a review.

No...not the actor who played Robocop (and Buckaroo Banzai...). That's Peter Weller.

Damn . . . you're in my head. That's scary.

[hkcavalier]

I've been able to read a lot of books here...another one I finished recently was former SecDef and retired USMC General James Mattis's book, Call Sign Chaos.

I would break it into two major parts: his time in unit leadership up through the division/task force level, and then when he transitioned to bigtime staff roles, CENTCOM commander, and of course SecDef. He doesn't say much about his time as SecDef; my belief is that there's not much that's both interesting and permitted to disclose to the public.

The first half is much more enjoyable. His philosophy on leadership, how to treat your people, and how to both be in the moment with them --- show you care and actually give a shit --- and also lead and drive forward is absolutely one to reverse engineer, copy, and adopt.

The second half is more about his frustrations with superiors, both military and civilian. He has very few nice things to say about Gen. Franks, GWB, Panetta, Obama, etc.

I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in military history, leadership, and philosophy. He doesn't get nearly into Stoicism as, say, Admiral Stockdale does in his memoirs, but it's there. Mattis's recommended reading list is pretty intimidating and I'm sorry to say I've read very little of it to this point in my life, something I'm looking to remedy.

As most of you probably know, he's a WA native from Richland.

[jukk0u]

Half way through "When Broken Glass Begins to Float"

A Woman's recounting of her experiences in war torn Cambodia and suffering at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

[Pablo]

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

1918 Flu............about 90 pages in and so far only about medical history in the USA. Setting up the telling. But if you don't know about that, or anything about how med schools and science driven medicine came to be in the USA, he covers it quite well. I see the flu beginning soon.............some may want to get to the intercourse sooner. Will follow up after 555+ pages.

[jukk0u]

Reading the second book in the "Breaking Gods" story, by D.J. Molles.

He's really coming into his own as an author.

[Sparky D]

Currently on book 4 of Jeff Shaara's World War II series.

The books in order are:

Book 1: The Rising Tide (North African and Sicily Campaigns)
Book 2: The Steel Wave (Normandy Invasion)
Book 3: No Less Than Victory (Battle of the Bulge and end of war in Europe)
Book 4: The Final Storm (Pacific battle for Okinawa)


I really like his writing style.
The people in the stories are real. The events are factual.
Dialog is assumed and based on journals, diaries, memoirs, and declassified reports.
You feel like you are right next to these people.

At the end of each book (so far), there's an Epilogue that tells what happened to the people after the events in the books.

I also am planning on reading his book "To Wake The Giant" about the Pearl Harbor attack.

He also has a 3 book series on The Civil War and one book on the Korean War.

I definitely plan to read the Korean War book, since most of what I know about that war came from watching M.A.S.H.

https://jeffshaara.com/p/books

[jukk0u]

DJ Molles' "The Black Rifle War".

Geezer gets arrested buying more than the quota of ammo. He and his family get trounced by the media and court of public opinion. Feeling compelled to do something to fight back the geezer inadvertently blows up an anti-gun protest which ushers in a new President's Executive Gun Ban. Thing circle the drain and crisis erupts.

Timely subject matter.

[jukk0u]

So I posted above about my book coming out...

[hkcavalier]

So I posted above about my book coming out...

That post was regarding the first book. The sequel, barring something tragic, will be out the week of the 25th. I'm slogging through some final edits but it's 95% in shape and ready for release.

[beckdw]

Awesome, looking forward to reading it!

[Pablo]

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom - details on that nasty place

[hkcavalier]

I had to read Stephen King's On Writing for school. So, I get that not everyone on WaGuns wants to be a fiction writer. But if you are at all interested, King is blunt about what it takes and the long odds you face. He had been a starving writer for several years before getting paid the big bux for Carrie.

[jukk0u]

I was reminded today (by a post on the author's own blog) about a book I read some time ago called "Gaiastan" by Troy Grice, which presciently, it would seem, anticipated much of the lunacy that has played out on our national/global stage. Vaccines, vaccine passports... and some of the stuff tossed about in the tin-foil-hat thread

The gentleman has several other engaging books (on Amazon, conveniently - if you don't mind trading with the Devil Bezos) that I highly recommend.

[hkcavalier]

I was reminded today (by a post on the author's own blog) about a book I read some time ago called "Gaiastan" by Troy Grice, which presciently, it would seem, anticipated much of the lunacy that has played out on our national/global stage. Vaccines, vaccine passports... and some of the stuff tossed about in the tin-foil-hat thread

The gentleman has several other engaging books (on Amazon, conveniently - if you don't mind trading with the Devil Bezos) that I highly recommend.

No one offers an on-screen and hardcopy printing system like Amazon. In the old days, I'd have to pay for a run of my books and hope they sold (at a small profit, but I'd have to sell 90% of them just to break even). Now, Amazon does a run of one copy and delivers it in a couple days for a pretty reasonable price. This was unimaginable just a few years ago.

It's one thing to pull your dollars away from Bezos for household items, food, electronics, etc because there are many, many alternatives. They have the little guy book market all locked up. There's some other places to e-publish but I'm not aware of anyone doing the same sort of POD service.

[jukk0u]

HK, I've read a lot of books offered from Prepper press and some from Book Funnel. Are these the same kind of services that you reference as available from Amazon? And would they be competitive?