After listening to this author’s Great Courses lecture about the Vietnam War, I decided to seek out more of his books. I pulled up this one and quite enjoyed it. This book’s thesis is that the beating heart of the modern military is NOT the airforce, or navy, or tank cavalry, or artillery. Instead, it’s the infantry.
You need infantry to go in and fight guerilla wars. This book sites examples from Iraq and Vietnam, where American technological superiority isn’t enough to win the day. You need infantry on the front lines talking to people, to figure out who is a civilian and who is a SS spy (back in World War 2), and who is a civilian and who is an Al-Queda agent (Iraq). Again and again, air power, naval power and the rest are all best used in service of supporting the grunts on the ground.
How Great Science Fiction Works Goodreads
I watched this Great Course lecture on Kanopy. It’s by Gary K Wolfe, one of the co-hosts of the scifi and fantasy podcast ‘The Coode street podcast,’ which does book reviews and author interviews. It covers everything from ancient scifi, such as an ancient Greek myths of space travel, to the WW1 and WW2 era magazines, to Asimov and Heinlien, to Dune and the 1960’s and 1970’s, to finally the modern day.
I thought it was good, and very well researched and well-informed.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 