The Soviet collapse made this book both possible and newly relevant. Possible in that the end of totalitarian secrecy led to the opening of the Russian Navy Central Archives in St. Petersburg. Newly relevant in that the Powers are once again, as a century ago, jostling for geo-political position and trade advantage in the Persian Gulf; and just as the Russians then challenged the British predominance, so they today challenge the American one.

In early 1899, Tsar Nicholas himself approved the sending of a shallow-draught gunboat, the Gilyak, to the Persian Gulf. As an aide put it, the intent was "by showing the Russian flag in the Persian Gulf, to indicate to the British and the local authorities alike that we consider the Gulf accessible to the ships of all nations. . . . the purpose will be to make an impression with no aggressive intent or plans for territorial aggression."

The documents Rezvan has collected that fill most of "Russian Ships in the Gulf" show just how successful this effort was. The local authorities, and Sheikh Mubarak of Kuwait especially, welcomed the Russians as a "natural ally in an anti-British coalition." But then the Russian ships disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, as developments in East Asia compelled them to devote attention instead to the Japanese navy.

Middle East Quarterly, March 1995

If you ever get around to shipping me this book, I will gladly review it.

"We Pierce," is less about fighting for what you believe in than finding what that is in the first place. Two brothers embark on adventures of discovery; one is confronted by all the demons of war, and emerges somehow unaffected - the same character at the end of Gulf War One as at the beginning; the other confronts the demons of self-worth and addiction and though we are left with hope for his recovery, never find out for sure. Both stories are well told, and tie nicely together, and the details of war and addiction coupled with the background of family history work well in giving us a believable picture; but, resolution seems to be missing. Overall, I was left wanting more; either closure, or an indication the story would be continued, rather than the feeling of life just going on. But maybe that was the point. Some people don't change much regardless of what they've been through, in which case I'd have to ask, "So what?" "We Pierce," is a good read, but guardedly recommended because of the lack of closure.

This series takes aspects of the Persian Gulf War and divides them into separate books. Each one begins with the same series introduction, then proceeds to an individual one. Political correctness is expressed by the constant use of the term "coalition" to refer to anti-Iraqi troops. There is less uniformity with this series than with some because the authors and even book length differ from book to book, although gray textboxes and black and white photos seem to carry through.
This title focuses on the weapons used in the Persian Gulf War, but it is not simply an inventory. Weaponry and its use are placed in the context of the entire war, the events leading up to it and the interaction/comparison to enemy weaponry. This type of title usually interests military minded males primarily, but even a female can get through the clearly written, straightforward text.

Why the Senate Slept provides an interesting, if myopic, glimpse into the legislative processes that ultimately resulted in the passage of S.J. 189, the joint House and Senate resolution commonly referred to as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The author, a Baltimore attorney and former legislative assistant to Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), contends that the Senate failed to temper the language of the resolution in such a manner as to limit the authority of the executive branch to wage unlimited war.

While debate on this topic has continued since passage of the resolution on August 7, 1964, Siff looks deeper into the role of the Senate in this debacle. Through deception, misinformation, and confusion, the Senate - led by Senators Richard Russell, William Fulbright, and Mike Mansfield - limited debate on the resolution to just three hours and managed to push the resolution through both the House and the Senate in less than 72 hours.

The author offers a different perspective on a historically controversial topic. In focusing on events in the legislative arm of the government, however, Siff does not address a number of critical related issues, tending to limit the utility of this book. For readers seeking a well-researched account of the activities of the Senate during a vital point in our nation's history, Why the Senate Slept will not disappoint.

This book, which "grew out of" the author's 1983-86 dissertation, presents some hard-to-find demographic data about working women in Bahrain (although the data are a little dated at this point). The author begins by describing how Bahrain came to import foreign labor. She then suggests that one way to decrease the number of foreign workers in the country would be to bring more Bahraini women into the workforce to replace foreign workers. The latter part of the book, chapters 4-7, present the outline of a plan how this could be accomplished through developing day care systems and improving education and vocational training for women. Personally, I wasn't completely convinced that the system of day care development that she advocates would be appropriate for the situation in the Gulf. The book was written before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, so it is mildly interesting in a historical aspect in that a reader can garner a flavor of pre-invasion attitudes within Gulf society concerning gender and the role of government.

Waterman spends most of the book whining. The three main threads of his complaint are the ecological devastation, how the native peoples were taken advantage of by the various colonizers, and how his one year old marriage seems to be on the rocks. When he talks about the stark beauty of the land, it is always in the same breath with how badly the place is getting ruined.
I read the book when I was in Baja California Sur in May, 2003. The place was beautiful, the weather was great and the people were extremely friendly. The book's doomsday predictions were very much out of whack with the reality.

I read the book after sailing the Sea of Cortez. It was a depressing book by a disenchanted romantic written during what appears to be the breakup of his marrage. The wife sounds great but he can't maintain her paddling pace and she does not share his penchant for whining.) If you are looking for a guide book to the Sea of Cortez, this book has little to offer. I meet some folks at Bay of Conception who were among the few who had received favorable remarks from the author. They were furious that he had totally distorted their comments. Save yourself the greif and try something else.

It's very well written and full of interesting information. but it's one of these misanthropic ecology tracts. Much of what he says is well justified but, considered as entertainment, it was so full of grouching about the adverse effects of everything on the environment that it ended up with too many sour notes.
I was struck by how close his moral attutudes were to those of the early missionaries he describes. He extols the virtues of mortifying the flesh, and relishes describing the hardships he has inflicted on himself. He keeps encountering residents who do not share his beliefs about how life should be lived. They commit such crimes as fishing and using toilet paper. They are not the original inhabitants of the country.

As a USS Stark FFG31 Plank Owner, I found the book informative, but, somewhat biased toward the Investigators point of view. I believe that the book would have been much better had the Authors interviewed the Crew members since apparently there was a little too much reliance on the "Official documents." Hopefully, some enterprising Author will do this and publish another book from the Crew Members perspective.

Despite my first review, this is a very important book and the only book about the USS Stark.

As a former Firecontrolman onboard FFG-7 Class ships I found this book good reading...I know the capabilities and LIMITATIONS of the weapon control systems onboard that ship and I would like to be able to read the real version. Even the Navy's report was more factual.

As a member of the 101st Airborne Division,I was really looking forward to reading this book. I wanted to get some sort of insight into how the soldiers fought this war. The book focused entirely too much on the officers and 1/101st. I work in aviation & I know that there can't be too much that's interesting about that branch. What about the NCOs and enlisted guys that made everything happen? That's who the author should ave focused on. It took me months to finish reading this book, primarily because of the poorly written content. Don't waste your money on this piece of "literature."

This is a history of the 101st Airborne Division's role in the Gulf War.
It starts off by being incredibly schmaltzy. The author writes about his father, "My father wore the [division Screaming Eagle shoulder patch in WWII....] [O]nly the Screaming Eagle is engraved on his headstone, as it had been on his heart. I'd worn it in the jungle where it seemed a talisman and inspiration."
He goes on to describe incidents like one battalion commander publicly promising to his unit's families, "I'm going to bring every guy back alive ... every one of your husbands ... will come back alive." Is this a war or a camping trip? The schmaltz continues after the war as five division deaths are lamented. "Five from the ill-fated crew had settled all accounts on this earth.... We had been so fearful there would be many, many more. We had to be grateful.... But it was a guilty gratitude."
More serious problems in this long 440-page book include failing to put events in perspective. The author brings in many anecdotes, often in the form of lengthy quotes from soldiers he interviewed for the book, without letting the reader in on the secret of what this soldier's role was, what the unit was doing, why the unit was doing it, etc.
Not only is the author's writing style disjointed, but the author cannot get his tenses straight. He usually writes of these past events in the past tense, but then lapses into current tense, and even into future tense on occasion.
I enjoy the genre, but this particular book is a definite pass.

First off, this book stands alone as a work of excellence. What it is describing is the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division of the U.S. Army; its true to its subject matter--if the reader is bored or cannot understand its on him to ask himself if its he that is lacking in skill/understanding or the 101st is boring--which is highly doubtful. Second, books are not in a zero-sum competition with each other. There is no rule that says if I rate this book "5 stars" (which I do) another must be "4". What Col Taylor's book does is priceless--it describes the "Screaming Eagles" in Desert Storm better than any other book. Now I will explain why.

To the serious student of warfare Taylor explains candidly why the 101st has been left out of Small Scale Contingency operations like Panama because its helicopters use up too much fuel and cannot fly far and fast enough to get there compared to the 82d Airborne Division which airdrops from fixed-wing USAF aircraft. The 101st's helicopters have to be disassembled and placed inside USAF fixed-wing aircraft or shrink-wrapped and placed on slow-moving ships to "get there". For a good comparison of the pros/cons of America's infantry, I highly recommend Col Dan Bolger's Death Ground: America's Infantry in battle, which echoes Taylor's observations. The Division, tired of being "orphaned" went on a strategic lift diet and cut out as many ground vehicles as possible to speed their mobilization. This is not some remote experience---the problem of getting U.S. Army forces with 3-D maneuver capabilities to the battlefield are as current as TF Hawk's woes were in Albania. For Desert Storm, the crafty planners at Fort Campbell were ready, and their foresight resulted in their AH-64A Apaches leading the way for the entire war by destroying key Iraqi radars. We need to employ the same thinking-ahead mentality today.

The next learning point for the war student is the fuel logistics---this may be boring to a reader wanting a RAMBO story, but this demanded that a ground supply line of trucks be used to link-up with the 101st as it bounded forward into operating bases deep into Iraq. If you read this book for the details and to see how the leaders overcame the obstacles of fuel, weather and terrain to position themselves at the "back door" of the Iraqi retreat you would be reinspired to the creativity and humanity of the men in this great Division. What strikes up at you when you read this book is that once at Highway 9, the 101st lacked enough mobile infantry to keep that route closed to enemy escape, the tactic chosen was to use Apache gunships flying free to detect/attack from stand-offs targets of opportunity as the infantry basically secured the fuel dumps for the attack helicopters. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, its clear that had the "Screaming Eagle" Infantry been equipped with light Armored Fighting Vehicles like the German Airborne's Wiesels, massive amounts of fuel to use helicopters randomly could have been avoided by using this now mobile, "Air-Mech" infantry to deliberately/precisely close the ground routes out of Kuwait from the Iraqi Army. The third and "achilles heel" of the 101st is its foot-mobile-constrained infantry; and for this problem, the leaders came up short in Desert Storm because to fix it requires a new type of ground vehicle to be obtained as the Russian Airborne figured out long ago.

Overall, this book is entertaining and a very important document since it details procedures like how 2 HMMWVs were loaded INSIDE a CH-47D Chinook helicopter to effect more fuel-efficient and speedy travel. That these HMMWVs were not used as infantry carriers as a sort of "rat patrol", creating an "Air-Motorized" force is a question but one that is easily answered as noone wanted to take any risks on the ground with unarmored vehicles that may get Americans killed, though Army SOF did it to hunt for SCUD missiles farther west behind Iraqi lines. This makes it all the more important that the 101st acquire a small UH-60L helicopter-transportable AFV immediately so the next time we need "lightning" the voltage doesn't fizzle when it touches the ground.

This book is hard to read and difficult to understand at times. I should have taken the advice and not read it.

I did not take the advice of the veteran's of this unit, but read this book anyway. What a shame. A great subject matter totally SNAFU'd. Having been in combat and wounded by friendly fire I understand Burn's hesitancy to "lock and load". As a soldier for 25 years I found the actions and mindsets of some of the soldiers confusing. I finished it, but it was hard.

I read company c several years ago and had a hard time following the flow of the story(non-linear). I was the gunner on Shaffers tank and knew how the story ended but it was still confusing at times. Perhaps from a third party perspective it might be easier to follow,but having first hand experience of the whole thing can make the book very frustrating. Some events are out of sequence and some seem to have been embelished (not outright lies but not entirely accurate). As for Scott Medine I'm apalled that he would attack a fellow soldier,though not completely surprised. Well said Steve.