Days Of Infamy: Military Blunders Of The 20th Century

Rating:
Summary: The Biggest blunder on military history in the 20th Century
Review: The jacket blurb says this is "a book no history buff can put down." I had no problem putting it down. Written in the style of a teen ager trying to get the term paper up to the 500 word minimum, and loaded with factual errors (Coffey sinks the Bismarck both off France and Norway; Iraq invades Kuwait both in August 1991 and August 1990). Surprising that History Channel would get behind such a flawed history.

Rating:
Summary: A fine High School Term Paper, except for Factual Errors
Review: The jacket blurb says this is "a book no history buff can put down." I had no problem putting it down. Written in the style of a teen ager trying to get the term paper up to the 500 word minimum, and loaded with factual errors (Coffey sinks the Bismarck both off France and Norway; Iraq invades Kuwait both in August 1991 and August 1990). Surprising that History Channel would get behind such a flawed history.

Rating:
Summary: The Biggest blunder on military history in the 20th Century
Review: This book is amazing in its number of errors, shallowness of analysis, and conceptual ignorance. Even for the most significant battles of World War II, the author gets numerous facts wrong. For example, in discussing the Pacific war, he notes the Japanese had 2 carriers sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea (they lost 1 small one) and 3 at Midway (4 were sunk). He states that German blundered by not launching an amphibious invasion of England, even though the Germans lost the war in the air(most military historians would regard launching an amphibious invasion without having air supremacy against a country with naval supremacy suicide). He blames the German Air Force for the fact that German industry didn't go into a war footing until 1943. Huh? Blaming an armed service for flawed industrial policies? This is the most error filled history book I've ever seen and ranks top among the biggest blunders on military history in the 20th century. Considering the high quality of the History Channel, it's amazing that they would associate themselves with such a book of errors.

Rating:
Summary: Decidedly Underwhelming
Review: This book was prepared as a companion to a History Channel series and it has the depth and detail one would expect from a television program. As some of the other reviewers have noted, there are sporadic factual mistakes, but the greater shortcoming, to my mind, is the lack of much to say. The factual issues discussed are pretty much common knowledge to anyone having much familiarity at all with military history (or history in general) in the Twentieth Century. Worse yet, the insights and commentary provided are little more than unimaginitive "conventional wisdom." I had some suspicions about this book being of a mass market paperback quality, but I picked it up because it was one of the first in .mp3 audio format. This proved to be a mistake as my first concerns were conclusively proven correct.

Rating:
Summary: Decidedly Underwhelming
Review: This book was prepared as a companion to a History Channel series and it has the depth and detail one would expect from a television program. As some of the other reviewers have noted, there are sporadic factual mistakes, but the greater shortcoming, to my mind, is the lack of much to say. The factual issues discussed are pretty much common knowledge to anyone having much familiarity at all with military history (or history in general) in the Twentieth Century. Worse yet, the insights and commentary provided are little more than unimaginitive "conventional wisdom." I had some suspicions about this book being of a mass market paperback quality, but I picked it up because it was one of the first in .mp3 audio format. This proved to be a mistake as my first concerns were conclusively proven correct.

Rating:
Summary: Days of Infamy: Military Blunders of the 20th Century
Review: This is a sophomoric effort at examining an intriguing subject, the "what-ifs" of history. Coffey spends pages giving background on the incidents, but mere paragraphs on the blunders themselves; and speculation on alternative outcomes is non-existent. The book is riddled with mistakes and contradictions. Two examples: Intro. to Part IV speaks of an inexperienced British plane crew lost in the desert when, in fact, it was a British oil survey team that located the lost American plane decades later. On page 112, Coffey writes, "On May 27, 1941, just five days out of port from the Baltic, the Bismark was sunk..." Yet 20 pages later he writes, "Bismark was soon sunk, sitting in port in Norway." It was in fact the Admiral Tirpitz (sister ship to the Bismark) that was sunk in the Norway port. With such glaring mistakes, the rest of Coffey's book must be called into question. I am sorry that my favorite TV channel (History Channel) has lent its name to this project. It is hardly worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Days of Infamy: Military Blunders of the 20th Century
Review: This is a sophomoric effort at examining an intriguing subject, the "what-ifs" of history. Coffey spends pages giving background on the incidents, but mere paragraphs on the blunders themselves; and speculation on alternative outcomes is non-existent. The book is riddled with mistakes and contradictions. Two examples: Intro. to Part IV speaks of an inexperienced British plane crew lost in the desert when, in fact, it was a British oil survey team that located the lost American plane decades later. On page 112, Coffey writes, "On May 27, 1941, just five days out of port from the Baltic, the Bismark was sunk..." Yet 20 pages later he writes, "Bismark was soon sunk, sitting in port in Norway." It was in fact the Admiral Tirpitz (sister ship to the Bismark) that was sunk in the Norway port. With such glaring mistakes, the rest of Coffey's book must be called into question. I am sorry that my favorite TV channel (History Channel) has lent its name to this project. It is hardly worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Idiotic Infamy
Review: This is one of the worst books I've ever read on military history. You have to wonder how someone can get a book like this published. The author is a journalist, but even that is usually not a disqualifying factor with a book on military history, or any sort of history for that matter. Journalists, after all, deal in fact also.

In this case, however, the book is filled with factual errors, and you get the idea that the author sometimes missed the point of a battle or campaign that he was recounting to you. Given that he's so often mistaken about what happened, it's not much of a surprise that his interpretations are going to be poor also.

All of this leads to my final conclusion. I would avoid this book at all costs. I don't get rid of any book that's non-fiction, usually, but this one's going to the used bookstore. I expect them to reject it, and I'll probably wind up giving it to the library, who will overprice it in their book sale at $1.00.