Patrick Shrier

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Happy Thanksgiving

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Just want to wish everybody a 🙂 Happy Thanksgiving 🙂 I hope that everybody is as blessed as I am with a great family and multiple reasons for happiness.  While scarfing down the Turkey & fixings and watching all that football take a moment to pause and think of all the things you have o be thankful for.

US Secretary of State Announces “Peace in our Time.”

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Obama: Nuclear deal blocks Iran’s path to bomb In an ironic twist showing that the 60+ years since World War II have only fostered institutional amnesia the US and five other powers buckled and agreed to appease Iran in talks about its nuclear program.  Agreeing that sanctions will be eased in return for Iran behaving US Secretary of State John Kerry channeled former British Prime minister Neville Chamberlain by paraphrasing him and tweeting:

 I just wonder if he is going to wave a piece of paper around when he gets home too?

neville-chamberlainHas the world really forgotten that appeasing tyrannical regimes is a recipe for getting heartbroken and sore?  Why would any sane, rational person think for a minute that Iran would give up the nuclear program they have defended so fiercely over the past decade+ in return for access to less than $10 billion dollars of oil revenue?  My guess is that Iran already has enough fissile material for at least one but probably more bombs and thus it suits them to play nice right now in return for concessions.  Remember, Hitler agreed to only take the Sudetenland in September of 1938, because he was not quite ready for war.  But then he turned around and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in spring 1939 and kicked off World War II less than a year later.

Should I be worried about being recalled to active duty to go fight in the next world war?

Book Review: Smithsonian Civil War: Inside the National Collection edited by Neil Kagan & Stephen Hyslop

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Smithsonian Civil War: Inside the National Collection is an amazing look at the Civil War Era holdings of what many people call America’s Attic. The book itself is a large coffee-table glossy format and is 368 pages long with an object list and index.  Each section starts with an explanatory note about the objects chosen to illuminate the theme.  This is essentially a museum in a book. The sheer variety of items presented in this volume is amazing.  What makes it especially interesting … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany’s War in the East by Christian Hartmann

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany’s War in the East, 1941-1945 is one of those rare books about WWII written by a German historian and translated into English.  That is not to say that there are not plenty of books in German about WWII and examining its myriad aspects, there are, it is just that most are never translated into English.  There is generally a flood of new WWII histories every year and almost of all of them are written by English speakers.  That … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Medieval Fortress by J.E. & H.W. Kaufmann

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The Medieval Fortress: Castles, Forts, And Walled Cities Of The Middle Ages is a good study of the art and methods of fortifications and castles built in Eastern and Western Europe during the Middle Ages from the fall of Rome to the early modern period. The book is right around 300 pages long and includes many illustrations.  It also includes a glossary, which is very helpful to those that are not familiar with the technical terms for elements of castles and fortifications. It is separated into 5 chapters, the first deals with the elements of fortification, the next three are chronological about the development of castles and the final chapter covers … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam by James A. Warren

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam by James Warren is one of those books that does not fit neatly into a category.  It is part biography but even more it is strategic history.  It does neither very well but taken as a whole it tells a very interesting story and presents the events it describes in a unique and thought provoking manner.  To be fair, the author admits in the preface that getting hard information about what Giap actually did and … More after the Jump…

200th Anniversary of the Battle of the Nations re-enactment – 20 October, 2013

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The Battle of the Nations in and around Leipzig, Germany from 16-20 October, 1813, was the culminating battle of 1813 and the last major battle fought prior to the fighting in France in 1814 before Napoleon’s defeat, abdication, and exile to Elba.  It was the largest battle fought in Europe to that time with over 500,000 soldiers on both sides.  The city of Leipzig spent millions renovating the huge memorial to the battle and planned a week of commemorations coinciding with the 200th Anniversary of the battle. This past weekend I went to the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of the Nations re-enactment.  This was billed as the highlight of the … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Sky Behind Me by Byron Edgington

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] The Sky Behind Me: A Memoir of Flying & Life by Byron Edgington is the memoir of a helicopter pilot who began his flying career in the Army in Vietnam.  I must admit that I though I would only find the parts about the tour in Vietnam interesting.  I must further admit that I was completely wrong and am happy I was. The book itself is 296 pages long divided into 31 chapters.  About 1/3 of the book is dedicated to learning to … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

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Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell I picked this book up because I enjoy reading Dr. Sowell’s editorial and opinion pieces and thought if they are so good then the book must be good as well.  I was not disappointed.  I will admit that I was at best a lackluster math student in school, hence the reason my degrees are in History and not business.  I have a grasp of economics and economic principles but this book made many things clear to me that I thought I knew but come to find out only dimly understood. An appeal of this book is it’s clear examples … More after the Jump…

Bookbub: Has anyone tried it out?

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This post is Non-History but still relevant to the Blog.  I tend to do quite a bit of internet searching in the course of writing and just general news reading.  Because I do a lot of book reviews on her I tend to spend a lot of time on publisher webpages and bookselling websites. This post mainly concerns a new service I have recently become aware of.  Bookbub is a site that purports to only send you recommendations for books that you want to read at deep, deep discounts.  The site is a startup based out of Cambridge, MA and seems to be trying to be Groupon for books.  They must … More after the Jump…

Book Review: World War II: Cause and Effect by Bill Brady

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] World War Two: Cause and Effect by Bill Brady is not so much a narrative history as a topical anthology of the war.  It is a collection of papers Mr Brady has presented over the years collected and published in one volume.  According to the jacket Mr. Brady is a lifelong history buff and is a member and President of the South African Military History Society of Kwa Zulu Natal in Durban, South Africa. The book itself is 341 pages in length.  The … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Heroism in the Forest: The Jewish Partisans of Belarus

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Heroism in the Forest: The Jewish Partisans of Belarus is a book about one of the least told aspects World War II in the East, The Partisan fight against the Nazis.  Specifically, the struggle of Jewish partisans in Belarus who not only had to deal with the Nazi menace but often had as much to fear from non-Jewish Russians as they did from the Nazis. The partisan fighting in Russia is a little known aspect of WWII, and the part played by Russian Jews … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Men, Women & War by Martin van Creveld

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I picked up Men, Women & War: Do Women Belong in the Front Line? by Martin van Creveld at the library recently because it looked like a good book about a topic I have found interesting ever since I was a private back in the early 90’s when I first joined the military.  For this debate van Creveld’s book is about as topical as it gets.  He examines the historical examples of women in combat and makes a valiant attempt to separate the fact from the fiction.  The book is separated into three sections and includes extensive source notes and an index.  It was written in 2001 so does not … More after the Jump…

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