Erik Durschmied

This is a sad attempt to create a factoid book of military ironies. Mr. Durschmied has survived a good deal of time in dangerous places, but, alas, he's not a striking stylist, nor do I find the bulk of his book very interesting. While he has brought to my attention the "battle" of Karansebes, an Austrian Military panic in 1788 that created 10,000 casualties with out any Turkish input, another fourteen disasters follow well trodden paths and have no new information for the student. His writing does come alive for the last three chapters; the fall of the Berlin wall, the tet offensive, and his description of the first Gulf War repay the effort. Otherwise, I was bored. I note with alarm that the book has had two reprints since my 1999 copy. The readers would have been better served by reading "From The Jaws of Victory", or "The March of Folly"… (mais)

I read very little of this, and hadn't read enough about it to realize that it would be entirely about military history. After reading other complaints about maps and facts, it doesn't seem worth plowing through.

Here is my pet peeve that inspires me to review a book that I mostly haven't read. I was particularly irritated by his chapter on the Trojan Horse. That is a myth, and analyzing it as history is a lost cause. I decided not to read Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly because that was one of the foci of her analysis. The main problem is the supernatural element of Laocoön and his sons being strangled by sea serpents because he attempts to stop the Trojans from pulling the Horse into the city. (Durschmied omits this, although he includes other mythic elements.) This naturally terrifies the Trojans so much that they immediately drag the horse inside. The myth is thus problematic as an example of human folly or misjudgment, although perhaps a good argument for atheism.

In a sense, the prologue, about the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan is not terribly appropriate either. While it mattered very much to the citizens of the particular cities which one the atom bomb was dropped on, it didn't really make much of a difference in history. I don't think that dropping it on say, Kokura instead of Nagasaki had any effect on the outcome of the war.… (mais)