Rating: 
Summary: A Great Story Poorly Told
Review: This is a great story about a company of soldiers who brought deception to WWII for America. Mush of the story was kept classified until the last few years (although the author never tells us why or when it was declassified). Unfortunately, the book is poorly organized. The author also gets bogged down in minutae which often is not relevant to the story or just plain uninteresting. The book is at its best when it steps back and looks at the big picture of this small company or is describing the methodology it used. Those parts are too thin in the book. Also, the author tries to walk the tightrope of relating a very specialized aspect of the US Army in WWII while at the same time attempting to put that small aspect into the overall. Thus the reader gets two sentence analyses of major events, which are often insultingly simplistic. One would expect that if a reader is going to pick up this book devoted to one company, he would know the general aspects of the war. Many of the characters are compelling as are the battles (for lack of a better word for the activities of deception troops) in which they contributed. The technology is also interesting. I think this would have been a much better book had it been 100 pages shorter. It also could have been improved if the author did not gush so over Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. The amount of space devoted to him in the opening chapter is disproportionate to the role this Navy man in the US Army deception comapny. An example of the author's obsession with Fairbanks and the unorganized nature of this book is seen when, in the middle of a long chapter on the deception techniques the company is using France on its way to Germany, the author breaks in with a two page update on what Fairbanks was doing at the time -- in the Mediterranean and in the Navy and nothing to do with deception!!! Nothing at all to do with what was going on in the 75 pages before and after. A glaring example of the superfluous and disorganization running through the book. I wish I could recommend this because of teh great accomplishments of those described in this book. Unfortunately, it is a long hard journey to get from beginning to end.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Review: This is a very interesting book. Not one like many which reiterated the war so much so you felt like you were reading the same book for the umpteenth time. There are new perspectives on what he's saying here. I'd recommend it for your home library if your a war buff and have true history interests.
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