Donald Hill

Author Focused on the Main Theme

Revisado: 08-13-24

No fluff here! The author didn't spend early chapters on when and how the Berlin Wall was constructed. Rather, Mary Elise Sarotte focus on her thesis of the title of the book. I like that when authors get right to the subject expressed in the title/sub title of the book.

Caveat, I am a reader listener. So, I read along with I can and listen when I can't. That said, the narration skills of Elizabeth Rogers are superb! She did a fantastic job.

I started the book three days ago and found it hard to put down. There are some photos and diagrams embedded into the pages of the book that I found helpful to help visualize key events. I found her telling of the march that took place on the Leipzig City Ring Road enlightening, of which a map is provided in that chapter.

I have read a log of books on the Cold War and the division and reunification of Germany. In my opinion, this book is a five star read.

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Quite the tale!

Revisado: 09-03-20

this was a good story. I didn't have any knowledge of the people mentioned in the story. great performance too!

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Excellent Read! I learned a lot!

Revisado: 03-11-20

I was a bit concerned that the author would be biased one way or the other, regarding mass video surveillance. However, it was a topic that interested me and wanted to know more about it. I finished the book in three days. The author does have some photos and various notes in the printed copy, which were helpful. I prefer both the hard copy and the audio book.

I wish to state that the author (Arthur Holland Michel) did an EXCELLENT job! This is a highly charged topic. He provides a balanced view of the subject. He concludes with some great suggestions on state and national policy. I could only hope that many law makers would take the time to read the book. However, they probably won't.

The story is thoroughly researched. Michel is a great writer. The narrator (L.J. Ganser) is very talented. His voice is so familiar. It seems like I have heard him before. He did a great job as well.

I read and listen to a lot of books. I often don't take the time to write a review. Simply said, I had to for this one. This is a must read for those that are interested in how mass surveillance WILL affect our lives. It can be good and it can be bad. But it is up to law makers to stay ahead of the technology and pass thoughtful and thorough legislation to insure that it becomes a good tool and not used in an adversarial way toward citizens.

What a fine job, Arthur, Keep writing, and I will buy your next book. I like how you think. and I like how you research and tell a good story, This is one that needed to be told!

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Open and Honest!

Revisado: 10-26-19

I began listing to Elton John as a teenager and have always appreciated his style. I have read one book about Elton John about 25 years ago. I was enthusiastic to an “authorized autobiography”, even though I am a bit confused by the subtitle (meaning, not sure how one could have an unauthorized AUTObiography).
It was a good read, I finished it within a few days. Very entertaining! Quite graphic and detailed, but I felt that Elton was being COMPLETELY honest about his life. Anyone desiring to read a good autobiography should realize that honesty is an important attribute. And I must thank him for telling the story of his life, willing to share all with his fans. I don’t feel he sugar-coated anything. I can really appreciate him sharing his character flaws, his story about addiction and recovery. He certainly made me appreciate my “boring life”! I certainly do not envy him for what he has gone through, but a fascinating life, and a very talented musician!

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A fresh look at a well known story!

Revisado: 10-26-19

The author is a great storyteller! The challenge with writing a historical book of this kind is that the story is well known. I have read at least two books on the subject, but I am one who is always fascinated by the details. When good authors tackle a well-known topic, they usually have a lot to add. I was hoping that this story would be told in a way that I would learn some more details I hadn’t known before. I wasn’t disappointed! I also appreciated the way he wrote the epilogue. It coincided nicely with a documentary involving the expeditions led by David L. Mearns.
I am a student of history, especially the era involving World War II. I feel Konstam brought a real freshness to this well told tale. I also like Nigel Patterson’s performance of the audio book. He did a great job as well.
I do not recall reading any books by Angus Konstam before. After looking him up on the Internet, I discovered that he has written many books. In my opinion, this book was a great introduction to the author. Next, I will have to read his book: Jutland 1916.

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Concise History of the Cold War

Revisado: 10-03-19

I found this book an excellent recap on the cold war. I have a deep respect for these authors. I have read quite a bit on the cold war. I was wondering if I would really learn anything I didn't already know about the cold war. Even though the book covered a brief history, the post analysis of the events were revealing. What I appreciated most about the book was detailing how each US President dealt with the cold war and analyzed whether their policies provided success or failure.

Highly recommended for all to read!

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Gross Negligence!

Revisado: 05-31-18

I was intrigued by the first part of this book. The first insight was about Japan’s back door policy with the U.S. This is in regard to Theodore Roosevelt’s Nobel Prize for negotiating a peace settlement between Japan and Russia, with Japan being the puppet master and the Nobel Academy knowing nothing about Japan’s secret role in getting T. Roosevelt involved in the negotiation process of the Russo-Japanese peace settlement after the breakout of war in 1904.
Another intriguing insight from the book was the story of Henry Luce, the founder of Time Magazine. The most interesting part of this was the facts the author laid out with stories printed in Time Magazine that were fabricated during the 30’s and 40’s. We can now attest to the fact that “Time” never changes. They continue to pass opinion off as fact.
However, even with those two neatly told stories does not add up to Mr. Bradley’s crumbling thesis of this book. This is why I cannot in good conscience provide a decent rating for this book. The conclusions are absurd! I am not a history professor. But I am an avid reader. I listened to or read over 120 books in the past two-and-a-half years. At least one-fourth of them have to do with the World War II era. So in my lifetime, I can say that I have read at least 100 books connected to this era of history, so I am not ill-informed.
The thesis deals with three things that strike me as gross negligence in writing on a subject of this sort.
1. Bradley claims that the USA would never have had to go to war with Japan if Franklin D. Roosevelt’s underlings would not have stabbed him in the back and stopped selling oil to the Japanese. He seems to posture that all we had to do is feed the Japanese war machine with oil to take over much of Asia and all would have been fine. Seriously, I am not making this up! There was practically no mention of the Japanese “Rape of Nanking”, in 1937. What about the horrific deeds the Japanese did to the populations in Asia during the expansion of territory during the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
2. Chiang Kai-shek bad guy; Mao Zedong good guy… what? I am not making this up! This is the cornerstone of Bradley thesis of the book. He speaks of how Mao was such a great leader and how horrible Chiang was. Look, I realize that Chiang wasn’t a great leader. But he had the backing of the China lobby. The USA is the only reason why he got any backing at all. Bradley claims that FDR totally supported both Chiang and Madam Chiang. It is a fact that Roosevelt became so enraged with some of the things that Madam Chiang said to the press that he wanted her out of the White House ASAP and sent back to China. Oh, that little fact was NEVER mentioned. Bradley picks his “facts” carefully, leaving out the ones that don’t fit the narrative.
I don’t even have time to get into the wrongdoings of Mao. The only people that see Mao as a great savior of the Chinese people is ardent communists. Then Bradley brings one of the most controversial person’s that worked in the State Department at the time, John Stewart Service. Well, the plot thickens. Of course, Mr. Bradley seemed to leave out some details of John Service’s treasonous behavior. This has been totally fact-checked with books written about the Venona decrypts (The NSA project to decrypt the messages of the Soviets during the cold war). It is a known fact that Service wasn’t just a communist sympathizer, he was a known Soviet agent. Well, none of that was ever mentioned in the book. See, the way Bradley tells the story, Service, son of a diplomat that grew up in China, was so impressed by Mao. It didn’t matter that Service didn’t follow orders by the State Department, Stewart was just trying to correct a fatal flaw in US policy, etc. It sickens me to even go on about this.
3. Here is the icing on the cake! FDR performed the disgraceful act of creating an illegal Chinese Air Force, backed by the USA, known as the Flying Tigers. OK, I have read a lot on this subject. With one swoop of the pen, we get how terrible it was for the Flying Tigers to have existed, with them helping to halt the otherwise unchecked advance of Japanese troops in China.
Mr. Bradley asks a question: If his father knew about the China lobby, which created the China Mirage, what would he have thought about this situation. After all, his father (may God rest his soul) was one of the flag raisers on Iwo Jima. This account was vividly brought to life in Bradley’s book “Flags of Our Fathers”. I feel I can speculate on how his father would have responded to the thesis of this book. I am sorry to say that Mr. Bradley has lost his way as a historian, after publishing “Flags of Our Fathers”.
This book was EXTREMELY disappointing! My apologies to all service members (which includes me) that have fought and defended this great country. Keep browsing, you can do better.

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Never Judge and Book by its cover!

Revisado: 11-21-17

You have heard it said many time before, "never judge a book by its cover". When selecting this book, that is exactly what I did. I have been very interested in subjects such as the Cold War.

I have always been interested in learning as much as I can about the the development of nuclear research and the building of atomic weapons. I have also been very interested in the the developments both the US and the Soviet Union space programs. Well, this is NOT that book. There is an honorable mention with regard to Stalin's scientists with regard to the two topics mentioned above, but not much at all.

Simon Ings managed to write a book that covered Soviet genetics, more than anything. He describes how Trofim Lysenko completely denied fact, such as the existence of genes. Lysenko was a complete crackpot when it comes to genetics. This turned out to be a dangerous situation because millions starved in the Soviet Union due to crop failures based on Lysenko's belief that he somehow created better crops that could withstand some of the worst weather.

Ings explains when Stalin and Khrushchev loved what Lysenko's work was all about. The fact that there is nothing genetic about plants, they just need a good environment. That really supports the communist platform. Ings covers Pavlov and his experiments in great detail about social behavior.

Pure and simple. Even though the book has a lot of details, if you have little interest in genetics and biology, don't buy the book because it may put you to sleep. The book is mostly about the many missteps maid by these scientists during the Stalin era.

But somehow, the author sort of pays these scientists a backhanded complement by stating in the end of the book: "There was, I believe, something piteously unavoidable, something admirably human, about the way the Soviet Union faced a world of scarcity and poverty, and tried to light up its land with the fitful glow of science. For all the terrors, follies and crimes of that time, I believe this has also been a story of courage, imagination and even genius". Huh!

Thumbs down!!

D. Hill
Valparaiso, IN.

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A lenghy treatise on the Cold War

Revisado: 11-21-17

Odd Arne Westad, is a "Norwegian historian, specializing in the Cold War" (according to an on-line source), was born the same year I was (1960). I was intrigued with reading/listening to this lengthy dissertation on the subject of the Cold War. Admittedly, I have not found a great number of global histories in this subject.

This book contains 635 pages (hardcover edition) of reading, plus many references, almost 23 hours of listening. There was so much to digest that I would probably pick up so much more by reading an listening to it again.

However, I am no novice about this subject. Here is a short list of the shortcomings and disagreements that I have with the authors telling of this very important period of our history:

1. There is hardly a mention of the Venona decrypts, which is VERY important in revealing a lot of mysteries surrounding Soviet espionage during the Cold War.

2. There is no mention of plausible deniability policies that were instituted by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. The fact that both former presidents kept crucial illegally locked away from prying eyes of congressional leaders.

3. Westad takes the standard line on that "horrible Joseph McCarthy" in the senate, out to destroy honest hardworking Americans employed by the State Department. Well there is much truth that has been PROVEN by the Venona decrypts, which were released to the general public in 1995, so these revelations aren't a small unimportant story to the big picture of the Cold War. Perhaps Westad should have taken the time to read "Blacklisted by History" by M. Stanton Evans, or "Stalin's Secret Agents" by M. Stanton Evans, and Herbert Romerstein. The material in these books alone will give Americans a Cold War chill like they NEVER felt before!

4. The author almost seems to deny the fact that the Venona decrypts (revealed in 1995) proved that there were MANY communists and fellow travelers firmly embedded in the U.S. government, especially the State Department during the 1940's, 1950's and beyond. Hopefully, thinking Americans learned what happens when you have one party in control of the Executive branch of government for 24 years! The moles have a long time to establish themselves and eliminate the people who can potentially expose them.

5. The coverage in this book on China went way beyond what I have ever been exposed to. There was much to be learned. However, there was no mention of the debacle regarding the treachery in the State Department of John Stewart Service and his eventual defection to communist China after he was discovered as a traitor. I don't recall any mention of Lauchlin Currie either. These two traitors probably have more to do with China being led by a communist government after World War II than anyone else, as far as the US governments interest were concerned. This is all well documented in The Venona Secrets written by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel.

6. I also believe that point was lacking with regard to the extensive damage caused by the many communist spies in the US and in the U.K. governments that succeeded in spoiling democracy for many countries after WWII and responsible for the slaughter of at least hundreds of thousands of innocent people caught in the web of deceit.

7. There was also nothing mentioned in the text about how livid Eisenhower was with the fact that the US State Department and military planners had no contingency plans on how the U.S. should react when Stalin either died or was removed from power. Here was a golden opportunity, if properly planned to begin a Cold War thaw. This just shows how infested the State Department still was with communist sympathizers always trying to topple our government.

8. My last point of non-coverage involves the fact that I am not a believer in the innocence of Harry Hopkins, special advisor to Roosevelt and later Harry Truman. I do think there was enough evidence (although not absolutely proven) that he sold out eastern Europe. The greatest level of incompetence shown by F.D.R. during his entire administration, was his inability to properly brief Harry Truman, his new incoming vice president in his 4th term. Truman had very little truth of Roosevelt's wishes except for the backstabbers in the State Department and Harry Hopkins. He trusted Hopkins to be a special envoy to the Soviet Union to negotiate a settlement with Stalin with regard to Poland and Czechoslovakia. What Stalin got was a man who was willing to go against the intentions of Truman, paving the way for the eventual enslavement of millions of people in the countries trapped behind the iron curtain.

Westad does a great job with giving a background on the various Soviet leaders. As mentioned above, his depth on China's communist leadership is immense. The autocracies are covered in rich and sickening detail at times, but proves the wretchedness of communism.

Westad provides a great background on Korea, taking the reader through the history and division of that country into North and South. He covers the Korean war with rich detail.

The book also focuses on the client states of the Soviet Union and the US. There were some really terrible things that happened to people in these client states, by both superpowers. The US has NOTHING to be proud of here, with the manipulation by the CIA to put evil people in power in these client states to stem the tide of communism, especially in Africa, Central, and South America.

Another area where Westad covers with outstanding detail the things that happened during the Cold War in Western Europe. He shows how various US presidents acted and reacted to the state of affairs with regard to NATO countries, as well as non-NATO countries like France, when they pulled out of NATO.

I realize this is a long review, to an much longer book packed with many details about the Cold War. This is the longest book/audio book, I have ever read & listened to with regard the the Cold War. I would definitely recommend it to those who are serous students of the Cold War era. Few books get into this level of detail. But, as I mentioned in the eight points above, this book is lacking in some very important subject matter, that leaves the big story incomplete. So read/listen and enjoy, but remember, there is so much more out there that will help you build a clearer picture of this historical time.

D. Hill
Valparaiso, IN

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A Comprehensive Biography of Lindbergh

Revisado: 11-21-17

Thomas Kessner has written a masterful account of Charles Lindbergh with his involvement in the rise of American aviation.. As much as I am an aviation enthusiast, I realized how little I knew about one of Americas most influential aviators.

The subtitle of the book is "Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American Aviation", is truly the theme of the book. Kessner does a great job of telling that story. He covers Lindbergh in his early days. He writes about the complex relationship with his mother and father and how their divorce affected Charles in his youth. The author devotes a significant amount of time on the relationship between Lindbergh and his mother, which is very revealing in how it shaped his personality.

Kessner's coverage of the story regarding the transatlantic competition and Lindbergh's eventual triumph is told really well. This part of the story does not drag on, he really makes it all come to life!

Kessner devotes a large part of the text to Linbergh's effect on the rise of American aviation. This is truly the underlying theme. He spends many pages of the book discussing his courtship with Ann Morrow, their marriage, and her involvement with him and his career as a pilot, and Ann's eventual certification as a pilot too.

What I found a bit odd was that Kessner writes the final chapter of the book on the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. (their first child). It is followed by the Epilogue that merely mentions the rocky relationship with the Roosevelt administration, when that was such a large part of his persona with the general public, which prior to that, adored him as a great hero. This part of his life and acceptance of Nazi fascism, turned many fans of Lindbergh into many that were loathe of him due to his political stance leading up to World War II. Just a mere mention of his time spent in the Pacific theater during the war is recorded in this book.

However, Kessner names his Epilogue: "The End of Heroes", for a good reason. He exposes the many flaws of this great figure, telling history at face value. There are plenty of shocks and surprises revealed about Lindbergh in his later years, which I will leave to the reader/listener.

In short, it was a very good read. I was totally captivated by the story. I found that there is so much to learn on any subject. I read 58 books this year, so far. This is definitely in the top 10!

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