PositiveThe Wall Street JournalTerrifying—and yet somehow familiar. The picture Ms. Jacobsen paints is a version of the nuclear apocalypse we’ve seen portrayed before.
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... an engaging and insightful account of the forces that shaped Hitler’s fateful decision.
Charles J. Hanley
MixedThe Wall Street JournalAs Mr. Hanley’s narrative gathers force, he seeks to share out the blame equally between the two sides—or, as he terms them, \'the communist and capitalist powers\'—for the war’s staggering record of suffering. Whether he makes his case persuasively is doubtful, but he does manage to show that all wars are hell, not least the forgotten ones ... Mr. Hanley’s granular approach, which makes such compelling reading, leaves aside the larger issues involved. In the end, Ghost Flames resembles a series of police reports rather than a work of history. Mr. Hanley delves into the darker recesses of this conflict without shedding light on why it was happening ... \'War is the worst thing in the world,\' Ridgway said when the fighting in Korea stopped at the end of July 1953. Mr. Hanley’s harrowing account, in all its vivid detail, confirms that judgment while stopping short of measuring with similar precision why some wars are worth fighting all the same.
Brendan Simms
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... fascinating ... A weary reader might ask why we need yet another biography of Adolf Hitler. Mr. Simms believes that, despite the attention Hitler has received, there is an unknown Hitler that other biographers and historians have missed—the Hitler who spent his political career grappling with the emergence of America as the dominant power of the 20th century. After reading Hitler: A Global Biography, one has to agree ... If there is one weakness in Mr. Simms’s comprehensive treatment, it is that he fails except in passing to discuss the other German thinkers and politicians who created the cultural environment in which Hitler and Nazism could flourish ... Yet Mr. Simms is surely right to stay focused on Hitler, since it was Hitler’s unique gift (if that is the word for it) to turn rhetoric into reality, with terrifying results ... a thought-provoking guide to seeing what happens when dictators read America wrong.
John Gans
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalWhite House Warriors is a history of the National Security Council (not to be confused with the National Security Agency, the vast organization that collects electronic intelligence), but is also in many ways a work of advocacy ... a bottom-up history, told largely from the perspective of NSC staffers. Mr. Gans begins with the council’s formation in the aftermath of World War II and traces its development up through Donald Trump. But the issue of why the NSC has accumulated so much influence in the U.S. government, and yet seems to accomplish so little with it, eludes the author’s analysis ... Under an exceptional national security adviser—Henry Kissinger, John Bolton—the NSC can be a powerful force for good for America. But Mr. Gans’s account makes us conclude that all too often its successes are a matter of luck and circumstance more than design.
Craig L. Symonds
RaveThe Weekly StandardSymonds works hard to weave together the various fronts, campaigns, and personalities...into a single narrative that will educate the general reader (he has a short paragraph at the beginning explaining the difference between a cruiser and a battleship) but also satisfy the expert ... Symonds’s book is large. It is also a large achievement. It belongs on the bookshelves not only of every World War II buff but also of anyone who wants to think seriously about how we deal with a rising maritime competitor like China—and the geopolitical reality that, as the saying goes, whoever rules the waves rules the world.
John Lehman
RaveThe Wall Street JournalOceans Ventured describes the men and events that enabled the Navy to snatch the strategic initiative from a Soviet navy determined to challenge the U.S. around the globe ... Oceans Ventured, in its engrossing and illuminating narrative, reminds us that numbers are less important than strategy. Let’s hope a new generation of thinkers will soon gather to determine how best to respond to China’s rising challenge. Who knows? Maybe they’ve gathered already, and their plan is recorded on someone’s napkin.
