Richard Crowe

Excellent

Revisado: 07-19-22

This is how history should be written: clear, dispassionate and without prejudice or the intrusions of modern day 'sensibilities' shoehorned into the narrative or conclusions. This book is written with the era of the battle foremost in mind, not a present day mindset or a mindset told from the American perspective with the Japanese perspective inserted into an American prism.
To truly understand this battle and its actions or inactions, you need a cultural and procedural grounding that is absent from many historical narratives. Yet, here, it is a truly great strength.
I highly recommend this book despite the danger of it ruining many contemporaries fighter to their talking short of the standard here.

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Worth the read

Revisado: 04-02-22

It's funny, at first this book annoyed me-an old couple that couldn't remember, seemingly, anything. The reasons are slowly revealed as the book picks up pace and becomes heard to set aside. Listening via Audible, I looked for reasons to go for drives just to listen (home is for physical books ..). The book is cleverly and subtly written-you have to think and pick up clues as you read for little is directly spelled out.
The journey to the end is a crescendo and not entirely unforeseen. I cannot recommend this book enough.

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PC runs amok

Revisado: 04-02-22

I've enjoyed many of Berrys' books and I enjoyed this one about 3/4 of the way through. But, the current trend of authors who now trip over themselves to show the world how woke they are, not with subtlety and, oh, I don't know, clever use of language and metaphor as opposed to using a sledgehammer for finish work , is disappointing and off-putting.
I don't know many people who read to be lectured, and ham-handedly at that.
The message can certainly be presented but done in the manner it was done here, the sheer, monumental hubris to presume to speak for One whom Berry had no business speaking for is unconscionable and amateurish.
It's sad that a gripping story is so completely scotched by an unintelligent and condescending descent into proto-moralizing. It's far more sad that an author I used to enjoy has forgone the tools of his craft to become a literary stone -cutter.

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Was looking for excuses to take a drive...

Revisado: 01-12-21

I grew up during the latter period of the Vietnam War. I can still recall the images on the news broadcasts of the day, though, apart from a 4 or 5 year olds' thought that the country on the news seemed too beautiful to host a war, I didn't pass much time on thought about what it meant.
As I got older, the ripples from that conflict caught me once more as the country tried to reconcile the broad internal conflicts that reverberated still as we tried to face the wrongs we wrought, not only on Vietnam, but on our own national psyche and the grave wrongs were hurried at the veterans of that conflict. The flawed naivete that bound us to stay the course to a curious cause was borne most broadly by mere boys, led by men fighting previous wars no longer relevant to the complex conflict they were prosecuting now.
It is in this volatile mix that Matterhorn takes place. We see, not only the conflict in Vietnam, but mirrored just underneath, the violent turbulence swirling back at home hand in hand with the war half a world away. At once a gripping war story, it is also a timely social commentary-highlighting the issues but leaving solutions unsolved, pointing them into the light and leaving resolutions unresolved, much as they remain to this day
One cannot read this novel without the realization that the lessons from this conflict have still not yet been fully learned.

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A valuable history

Revisado: 05-10-19

Philbrick delivers another interesting and balanced journey through American history. An all too often glossed over period of early America post-Plymouth. Really the only missing observation is how b King Phillips War laid the foundation of America's future relationships with the Indians of the continent.

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fair to, sadly, middling.

Revisado: 05-05-19

This could have been so much better, even understanding the difficult journey. This is more a psychological journey through a difficult portion of the authors' life. Told mainly through the prisms of BLACK. WOMAN. OLD. (heirarched in that order and clearly meant capitalized...) though not correctly at times, it feels. While I cannot understand the BLACK or WOMAN views, I am coming to understand the OLD. This does not mean I do not empathize with her travails, I do, as best I can, but I have difficulty with excuse making, with a far too volatile, easily offence-taken. Yes, as a BLACK. OLD. WOMAN. who had lived through multiple generations of a society that has minimalised, marginalized, even demonized her race, her sex and her age-individually and in combination-I *can* understand the inclination.
Yet, at times, her story, which otherwise would be a personal triumph of perseverance and accomplishment becomes a seeming morass of bitterness and anger, at times of cruelty and pettiness.
I don't recommend one pass on this story, but caution that the art school aspect that might attract one to the book is more in the way of a literature device used to carry the real story forward. There are things within that might anger some-the racism, both latent and open; the dismissal of, for example, the Italian Renaissance as ' rich white people's art' and not the seminal HUMAN moment of history that it was.
As an OLD. WHITE. MALE. who has also later in life started to dabble on the (far) fringe of the art world, I understand the art world is heartless and cruel, yet I can understand and accept this as a reality of a heartless and cruel field without the baggages Ms. Painter likes to carry.
I would, ultimately, recommend this story, but only a lukewarm one. There is much to admire, but there is nearly enough darkness cast by the dark clouds within to extinguish the light.

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Misleading

Revisado: 04-07-19

This book is more about the authors' distaste of Teddy Roosevelt and Howard Taft than the eponymous cruise, which only appears briefly though the fogs of the authors' screeds. It isn't that the story he *does* tell isn't worth telling, as most may not be aware of the actual history, but it is the voice he uses to tell it that greatly diminishes it.
The constant, overbearing-childish-manner he uses nicknames (Big Bill, Princess Alice. Honorary Aryans...) as instruments of insult and derogation are something you expect to hear from a grade school playground or, apparently, the current crop of politicians we are now saddled with. This is not acceptable in a work purporting to be scholarly, rather it is churlish and unseemly.
To put into print imaginary thoughts of the subjects as though truths is a gross miscarriage of the responsibility of the author. It is something one would expect to read in a high school essay assignment, not in a a scholarly expose.
This may well be hard for many Americans to read, if unaware of our checkered political past. However, the inference and latent comparison of American Nazism, is far beyond the pale. His use of 'White Christian' and 'Aryan' which feels used more than in Mein Kampf is distasteful.
I cannot fully express my disappointment.

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Torn...

Revisado: 11-23-17

Like the conflict itself, this is a multi-layered and nuanced work. The viewpoints from both sides-crucial to a balanced, more complete look at the battle, its ripple effects and legacy-do seem to be slanted.
Slanted towards the North Vietnamese viewpoint.
I am not quite sure why this bothers me so, perhaps it may be the underlying sense of current sociopolitical hectoring I seem to feel listening to this work.I do not begrudge an author this right, but feel this sort of thing is best left (as, in fact, it IS here, though it weeps into the fabric of the tale throughout) to a final analysis/comment chapter. Ultimately perhaps, given the continued combustion of the Vietnam War, this is nigh impossible. I found, though, it raised my have throughout.
The telling of the tale, this aside, is first rate. Those opposing takes give that nuance to the book that helps view the battle with a much clearer lens than one otherwise may. The triumphs, the follies, the desperations.... all benefit from the more complete focus. The book, and the passenger, clearly benefit.
This is book I would recommend, despite some personal reservations, leaving others the right and responsibility of forming their own, personal opinions of the content and its lessons.

A final word, one I feel compelled to mention is that I did not care for the narrator- mispronounced words, a flat cadence at times... he just got on my nerves at times. To be fair, to this untrained ear, though, he seemed to be very capable with Vietnamese names and places.
Minor point, in the scheme of things, however.

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fantastic!

Revisado: 03-10-17

Bob Ryan is not merely a regional, but a National treasure. What a great, engaging book!

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The book...

Revisado: 10-23-16

... that piqued my love as history as a kid. Still enthralling after all these years and a good jump-off point for further ready and study. A classic.

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