Books you recommend - nonfiction

[zionview]

My son got me "A Farmer For The World" by Oscar F. Spicer a couple years ago. It's a biography of a man and his family who grew their farm by working innovative practices into their operation that stayed within their philosophy of being stewards of the earth. My Dad knew the subject of the book, and was impressed by the scope of the projects they would take on. Their operation was big before the equipment industry caught up, and they built some awesome things in the farm shop. They built a self-propelled forage harvester on rubber tracks before tracks were commercially available. One of their building projects was big enough they erected a concrete plant on site. It's an interesting read.

 

[RichM752]

Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klien

The Shock Doctrine - Wikipedia

 

[cqaigy2]

I tried reading "Unbroken"; only got half way through it. Too much fluff and excess verbage, or maybe I was just bored at the time.

I did kinda speed read through some of it.

 

[dmccarty]

I am an avid reader of history and have been since I learned to read. In elementary school I can remember eating lunch while reading a book about the concentration camps. The book was full of pictures and grossing out other kids.

I only mention this because of the book I am going to recommend, Amazon.com: **** to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 eBook: Giangreco Giangreco: Books. The book is about the planning for the invasion of Japan.

The book has some eye opening information and is just flat out scary. The invasion would have been a blood bath that had never been seen in history. The slaughter of Allied, mostly US servicemen, Japanese service men, AND the Japanese civilian population would have been unreal. The author lists some assumptions that the Allies had about Japanese readiness that were completely wrong.

• We thought the Japanese were out of aircraft and aircraft fuel. They were not. They had months worth of fuel and planes available.
• We did not really know about the suicide boats and subs.
• The Japanese had figured out that wooden airplanes and mountains masked radar. The geographical position the Allied fleet would be put into was perfect to mask air raids.
• Very experienced combat divisions had been moved to Japan from Manchuria without the Allies noticing. The assumption was that the best Japanese divisions were in China and would stay there.
• Japanese defenses were well prepared and they knew exactly where we would land and when. This was not rocket science and it was pretty easy to figure out looking at the Allied methods, weather, and geography.
• ...

The death and destruction from suicide planes, subs and boats was going to be huge and that was before a boot touched ground.

This is not a big book but I had to put it down and stop reading for awhile. The enormity of the bloodshed that would have happened with an invasion was sobering and scary. The fission bombs on Japan saved millions of lives and allowed Japan to rebuild and recover much more quickly than if the Allies had invaded. Japan would have ceased to exist on at least two of the Home Islands. The dropping of the atomic bombs were done on cities that had not been bombed so that the affect of the new weapon could be judged. This is often mentioned. What is never mentioned is that both bombs where helping isolate and shape the battlefield for the first landing. And the poor b...ds that had to land or support the landing on the southern island of Kyushu where going to need all of the help they could get.

One of the many interesting pieces of information in the book was about blood supply. He documents the planning for blood drives which would be started before the invasion and continue during the landings to supply blood to the front. Given that the front was on the other side of the world the logistical effort to just move blood was huge. There were ships outfitted to hold nothing buy blood... There were not many, and if one ship was sunk, the number of deaths would be huge...

Ironically, Japan was starting to starve at the time of the surrender, and what stopped the starvation was the stockpiles of food that had been created for the invasion.

The Japanese thought they would loose 20 million people defeating the Allied invasion. What is not clear is if that was just civilians or civilians and soldiers. But that is the cost in blood the Japanese expected. And they did expect to win...

Anyway, this is a great book but I had to stop reading it for awhile before I finished.

The only other book I have had to stop reading, and one I have not finished, is about Mao. The Mao biography is pretty big, 3-4 inches thick, and I got about half way through before I stopped. Evil Genius is a phrase too often used. Mao was an Evil Genius. He makes ****** look like a stupid, choir boy. Mao ran circles around his Chinese opponents and played Stalin like a puppet, even though Stalin considered Mao the puppet. The guy really was an Evil Genius. He should have been killed physically, or more often politically, many times, but he always survived, and hundreds of millions of people died as a result.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

I read this book in middle school and it is a must read for understanding Pearl Harbor.

Amazon.com: At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (978157345): Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon: Books

This is a really brilliant book about how US carrier air power was able to beat the Japanese. The books gets into how the tactics where developed and by whom. It covered some things in detail about tactics and such I had read about but which other books just mentioned.

The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway: John B. Lundstrom: 9781591144717: Amazon.com: Books

I think this book is one of the best one about Midway. I had a great history professor in college. I was not a history major but I think I took over 30 credit hours, mostly with this one professor who was teaching courses I was really interested. He was one of the few professors I had who I thought earned the title "professor." When he could he would bring in people who had lived through the course subject which was hugely interesting. The professor had interviewed Ensign Gay, the sole survivor of the Devastator torpedo squadron at Midway. Gay was shot down and "hid" under his seat cushion while floating in the middle of the Japanese fleet while it was being attacked. How he survived the shoot down, floating in the middle of the Japanese fleet, AND somehow was found after the battle is unreal. Gay could/would not come to our glass, for better or worse, my memory was that he was ill, so the professor played a taped interview with Gay. It was hair raising listening to his recounting of what happened to him and what he saw. :thumbsup:

Amazon.com: Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (9781574889246): Jonathan Parshall, Anthony Tully: Books

Back to Pearl Harbor, I think this is one of the best, if not the best, book on the battle.

Amazon.com: Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions eBook: Alan Zimm: Kindle Store

The author gets into the odds/chances of getting the hits on US ships that the Japanese managed to accomplish. They really got lucky. :shocked:

If I am remember the book correctly, the author gets into the planning of the battle from the Japanese side. Yamamoto, who planned and led the attack, expected too loose at least some, and maybe, all of his carriers. He figured that was a good trade, carriers for battleships, since he, as where many admirals of the time, still wedded to the idea of The One Big Nelsonian Gun Battle between battleships. The battleship balance of power was such, that a few sunk battleships would at least even the balance between the US and Japan, and if lucky enough, swing the balance in favor of the Japanese.

One of the striking issues to me, one I had read before but it never really clicked in its enormity, was the Japanese High Commands decision to attack and the attack's ramifications. I think most people have heard that Yamamoto, who had been a Naval Attache to the US and understood the vastness of US and the US industrial power, said that he would run wild across the Pacific for six months or so and afterwards who knows. Think about that statement for a bit. The High Command were betting that one, they would "win" at Pearl Harbor and two, the successful battle would force the US to NOT declare war but simply capitulate to that attack. The Japanese bet was that the US would allow another country to destroy our Pacific Fleet and attack the Philippine's, along with the US forces there, as well as our other allies in the Pacific, and not respond. Or, if we did respond, they would win. :confused3::shocked: It seems that Yamamoto knew the dangers but the High Command decided, what the heck, lets roll the dice...

Later,
Dan

 

[/pine]

These days...so called authors have books published that are labeled as non-fiction but in reality they are mostly conjecture based on a few provable facts or historical factoids...
IMO a good majority of books published as non-fiction are just the opposite...

It's widely realized that human witness accounts are the absolute worst source of actual facts when recounting events, incidents, occurrences etc., etc...just ask any trial lawyer etc...

Any number of people can witness an incident and you will get a wide variety of accounts of exactly what transpired...add a lengthy time frame to the equation and the accounts just get more varied...it's even worse if the accounting's are removed from the original witnesses and related by 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. parties...

What is really funny is when a (so called) author (o'reilly books come to mind) comes up with new information from the same historical archives that have been around for decades, centuries etc., etc...it's ridiculous at best IMO...and the worst part is a lot of readers take these (so called) non-fiction books as the absolute truth...

 

[PJSprog]

The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Soho
It's a collection of letters written by a Japanese Zen Master to a master swordsman, but the advice given is easily applicable to pretty much anyone.
Probably my favorite book ever written.

Ghost Rider by Neil Peart
Drummer from the band Rush documented his motorcycle therapy from Canada to Belize and back in an attempt to deal with the sudden tragic losses of his wife and daughter.

 

[Einthewoods]

Band of brothers by Stephen Ambrose
Woodcraft and camping by Nessmuk

 

[EddieWalker]

I am an avid reader of history and have been since I learned to read. In elementary school I can remember eating lunch while reading a book about the concentration camps. The book was full of pictures and grossing out other kids.

I only mention this because of the book I am going to recommend, Amazon.com: **** to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 eBook: Giangreco Giangreco: Books. The book is about the planning for the invasion of Japan.

The book has some eye opening information and is just flat out scary. The invasion would have been a blood bath that had never been seen in history. The slaughter of Allied, mostly US servicemen, Japanese service men, AND the Japanese civilian population would have been unreal. The author lists some assumptions that the Allies had about Japanese readiness that were completely wrong.

• We thought the Japanese were out of aircraft and aircraft fuel. They were not. They had months worth of fuel and planes available.
• We did not really know about the suicide boats and subs.
• The Japanese had figured out that wooden airplanes and mountains masked radar. The geographical position the Allied fleet would be put into was perfect to mask air raids.
• Very experienced combat divisions had been moved to Japan from Manchuria without the Allies noticing. The assumption was that the best Japanese divisions were in China and would stay there.
• Japanese defenses were well prepared and they knew exactly where we would land and when. This was not rocket science and it was pretty easy to figure out looking at the Allied methods, weather, and geography.
• ...

The death and destruction from suicide planes, subs and boats was going to be huge and that was before a boot touched ground.

This is not a big book but I had to put it down and stop reading for awhile. The enormity of the bloodshed that would have happened with an invasion was sobering and scary. The fission bombs on Japan saved millions of lives and allowed Japan to rebuild and recover much more quickly than if the Allies had invaded. Japan would have ceased to exist on at least two of the Home Islands. The dropping of the atomic bombs were done on cities that had not been bombed so that the affect of the new weapon could be judged. This is often mentioned. What is never mentioned is that both bombs where helping isolate and shape the battlefield for the first landing. And the poor b...ds that had to land or support the landing on the southern island of Kyushu where going to need all of the help they could get.

One of the many interesting pieces of information in the book was about blood supply. He documents the planning for blood drives which would be started before the invasion and continue during the landings to supply blood to the front. Given that the front was on the other side of the world the logistical effort to just move blood was huge. There were ships outfitted to hold nothing buy blood... There were not many, and if one ship was sunk, the number of deaths would be huge...

Ironically, Japan was starting to starve at the time of the surrender, and what stopped the starvation was the stockpiles of food that had been created for the invasion.

The Japanese thought they would loose 20 million people defeating the Allied invasion. What is not clear is if that was just civilians or civilians and soldiers. But that is the cost in blood the Japanese expected. And they did expect to win...

Anyway, this is a great book but I had to stop reading it for awhile before I finished.

The only other book I have had to stop reading, and one I have not finished, is about Mao. The Mao biography is pretty big, 3-4 inches thick, and I got about half way through before I stopped. Evil Genius is a phrase too often used. Mao was an Evil Genius. He makes ****** look like a stupid, choir boy. Mao ran circles around his Chinese opponents and played Stalin like a puppet, even though Stalin considered Mao the puppet. The guy really was an Evil Genius. He should have been killed physically, or more often politically, many times, but he always survived, and hundreds of millions of people died as a result.

Later,
Dan

Dan, you just taught me a lot of stuff that I didn't know, and now I'm curious about reading this book. Thanks for the review, it was very good!!!!

 

[plowhog]

To Fly and Fight Memoirs of a Triple Ace be C.E. Bud Anderson.

I have a signed copy of the book. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein, are excellent books. Everyone knows their stories, but few have read the source material. We read these two as part of an english literature class.