Military
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Review: Blood, Gun, Money – How America Arms Gangs and Cartels – by Ioan Grillo
This is the third Grillo installment that I have tackled and Ioan is an author who is a gritty investigative journalist who tends to put himself into quite dangerous situations in order to explore very controversial and often violent global subjects. Following on from Grillo’s groundbreaking work on Mexican cartels, this book, which explores the… Continue reading
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Review: Wired for War by P.W.Singer
Although by the time I finally finished reading this book it was perhaps over a decade old and hence due the hi-tech nature of the subject, perhaps dated, I gained a lot of new knowledge about the robotics industry, technological progress in society and in particular, the application of robotics to warfare. Nowadays everybody from… Continue reading
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Review: Even Silence has an End – My six years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle – by Ingrid Betancourt
Ingrid Betancourt was one of the most high profile political prisoners in the world during her captivity in the Colombian Jungle at the hands of the FARC-EP, Colombia’s left wing communist guerrillas. A brutal civil war has raged for the best part of 60 years in this Southern hemisphere country. The rural FARC occupy the… Continue reading
Book Review, crime, Dragon Translate, Foreign Languages, International Relations, Military, PoliticsBetancourt, captivity, chontos, civil war, Colobia, Colombia, Colombian Civil War, Colombian jungle, Communism, Communist, FARC, FARC-EP, France, Fuerzas ARmadas Revolutionarias Colombianas, guerrilas, Guerrilla, hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, jungle, kidnap, Latin America, left-wing, Marx, Marxist, Military, Revolution, revolutionaries, socialist, USA, war -
Review: Soldier Spy by Tom Marcus
I initially bought the second book in this series, I Spy, but on learning that this volume preceded it I thought it apt to try this one out first. It’s not a huge book and is very accessible. The autobiographical account of a soldier from the streets, recognised for his unique skills and recruited to… Continue reading
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Review: Atatürk – The Rebirth of a Nation – by Patrick Kinross
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was from humble beginnings. He lived through a critical period of Turkish history, witnessing the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire and making it possible for the modern secular, Western-focused nation state of Turkey to phoenix itself from the Ashes. Atatürk was a military man and although very lucky, his innovative… Continue reading
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Review: The Billion Dollar Spy – by David E. Hoffman
This espionage thriller tells the true life story of one of the Cold War’s most valuable assets, a Russian spy working for the CIA in the heart of the Soviet military aerospace sector. Adolf Tolkachev made the first tentative moves to reach out to the Americans in January 1977, in the heart of Moscow. At… Continue reading
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Review: The Edge – Is the Military Dominance of the West Coming to an End – by Mark Urban
Only a short volume, this well-written work documents the weakening of the West in the geopolitical arena. The book first focuses on the reductions in military power of Western nations, both in terms of their military budgets and also their matériel. Despite modern weapons being produced, the volume of forces and the amount of weapons… Continue reading
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Review: The Art Of Betrayal – Life and Death in the British Secret Service – by Gordon Corera
They say that truth is often stranger than fiction and this book that I have given a 5 star rating reads very fluently and tells the real story of British secret service agents as they engage in the art of espionage across the globe. True heroes and heroines emerge as you quickly flutter through the… Continue reading
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Review: Cartels At War – by Paul Rexton Can
The author is a military expert and the phrase he coins to determine Mexico’s narcotics problem is a ‘mosaic cartel war’. This book analyses in detail the various cartels that are present in Mexico that operate in a highly competitive, highly profitable, highly illegal, immensely violent global industry. The Mexican cartels mainly provide a distribution… Continue reading
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Review: The Rise Of Islamic State – by Patrick Cockburn
This is an excellent introductory text for those wishing to better understand the complex details of the rise of Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL. From its arrival due to the Syrian Civil War and its cancerous spread into post-war Iraq, this extremist-terrorist Sunni Islamic (Wahhabi) nation/fundamentalist organisation, has been indefatigable. The best minds and theorists… Continue reading
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