Archives for reviews - Page 32

Iraq Wars

Book Review – Zero Six Bravo by Damien Lewis

Zero Six Bravo: 60 Special Forces. 100,000 Enemy. The Explosive True Story by Damien Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars I make a point of reading first hand accounts of special forces operations. I started with world war two tales of the SAS and have worked up to the present time. Since the Bravo Two Zero fiasco I don't expect much from tales of recent events. This particular book tells the tale of a Special Boat Service mission in Iraq in 2003. It suffers a bit from excessive hypebole, presumably to garner sales. However it is actually very readable, and although much of the outcome is telepgrahed in advance the way it's done is through a good hook to keep you reading to find out the detail of how/what happens. Well before all the debates in Parliament in 2003…
Continue Reading
reviews

Book Review – War Stories edited by Andrew Liptak

War Stories: New Military Science Fiction by Jaym Gates My rating: 5 of 5 stars I really loved this fantastic collection of short stories. They are well laid out with a set of general themes, covering a wide range of perspectives and points of view. What first attracted me to this was that there was a short story by Linda Nagata set in the same universe as her The Red: First Light novel. (See my review here) I'd enjoyed that so much that I was keen to read more, hence funding the kickstarter. Having read it I think I'll need to go look up some more of those authors and add them to my reading list. Not one of the stories in the collection seemed like it didn't belong there, and all of them had something novel and engaging about…
Continue Reading
reviews

Guardians of the Galaxy

I took Alexander to see this the other evening. It wasn't my idea, he'd gone to see How to Train Your Dragon 2 with his mum but while they were in the queue to get tickets it sold out. Guardians was a consolation prize and I made sure to book the tickets online before I told him we were going. I've not read the comic book that this is based on, and I had no prior knowledge of any of the characters or the plot. That said I am a fan of science fiction and I read some British comic books (mainly from the 2000AD school). It starts with a prologue, Star Lord as a 9 or 10 year old boy in 1988 listening to his Walkman while waiting outside the hospital room where his mum is dying. A poignant…
Continue Reading

Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /var/www/html/themself/wp-content/themes/mesocolumn/lib/functions/theme-functions.php on line 502

Reaction

Breaking Bad (season 1) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) How un-American is Breaking Bad, yo! Sorry, couldn't resist it. If you haven't seen it yet then you need to go watch it. I'm catching up on it via Netflix and so far I've made it through series 2. Unlike most US TV shows it has short series (five series muster 67 episodes in total). There are a number of other ways, all of them good, that make it stand out: * the protagonist is bad; * it is the dark underbelly; * it shows US society as fundamentally broken; * viewers need intelligence to get it; * you need to actively watch it; * loads of geek humour & science. A Good Man Gone Bad Dr Walter White is a way overqualified chemistry teacher in an Albuquerque High School. In the opening…
Continue Reading
design

Book Review – Bullets and Brains by Leo Murray

Brains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins Wars by Leo Murray My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an excellent and very readable book which tries to put some hard numbers on a variety of psychological tactics that can be used to persuade your own troops to fight and the enemy to give up. This is an excellent work on what happens in combat and why. It is very readable, structured into bite sized chunks on the key phenomena and then some joining up when it has all been explained. Each chapter opens with an account from a real soldier who experienced that psychological effect in combat. This is then analysed and explained, pulling in other examples as required to show that it isn't an isolated incident but a general effect. Those examples range from the Napoleonic Wars right up…
Continue Reading
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers: