This is the second book that I have read by David Kilcullen. The author is a former Australian soldier and a senior advisor to the US Military in addition to being a leading theorist of modern warfare. This book looks deeply at the fundamental Islamic terrorist state ISIS. ISIS grew…
Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui are from a new generation of Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers. They have mused upon the situation of modern military affairs and developed this theoretical book on war to describe the status quo as it was around the turn of the Millenium. The book is…
View More Review: Unrestricted Warfare – Wake Up, America! China’s Master Plan to Destroy America
David Kilcullen is an experienced Australian military professional. He is a senior advisor to the US Military. In this book, Kilcullen describes the recent Western conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq as relative anomalies in the progress of future wars and conflict. He focus on the Urban, networked littoral. Giant coastal…
View More Review: Out of the Mountains – The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla – by David Kilcullen
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…
View More Review: Wired for War by P.W.Singer
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.…
View More Review: Even Silence has an End – My six years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle – by Ingrid Betancourt
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…
View More Review: Atatürk – The Rebirth of a Nation – by Patrick Kinross
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…
View More Review: The Billion Dollar Spy – by David E. Hoffman
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…
View More Review: The Edge – Is the Military Dominance of the West Coming to an End – by Mark Urban
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…
View More Review: Cartels At War – by Paul Rexton Can
This book focuses on the role of French women during World War 2 and the immediate aftermath. It is clear that the women of France bore the brunt of dealing with the occupier, very often their men away, detained as prisoners of war or, for example, sequestered to work abroad…
View More Review: Women and the Second World War in France, 1939-1948: Choices and Constraints – by Hanna Diamond
This book is a nice, concise look at the Spanish Civil War. I used it for revision purposes, to remind myself of some of the details of heavier tomes that I have encountered on this subject. The author’s analysis of the causes of the War are precise and factual, without…
View More Review: Franco and The Spanish Civil War – by Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses
The Shuffle Show with Wez G – WEEK 2 – 09.11.14 – XPress Radio This week’s Shuffle Show on Xpress Radio begins with some laidback chilled sounds before special guest Flapsandwich (from Cardiff band Sicknote) beefs things up with his minimix after his interview with host Wez G. :::TRACKLISTING::: #…
View More Shuffle Show – XPress Radio – WEEK 2
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’d encountered Hemingway through his ‘Death in the Afternoon’ foray into bullfighting. I have always wanted to tackle some of his pure fiction and thought I’d delve into this shortish novel, with catchy title. I expected a…
View More Review: A Farewell to Arms – by Ernest Hemingway
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a 20th century classic novel I had to read. It is a fascinating story of the Second World War which grows ever more absurd as Yossarian proceeds on his quest to return home. The characters are fantastic, especially…
View More Review: Catch-22
The FARC: The Longest Insurgency by Garry Leech My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book covers a very interesting subject for what in general there is a dearth of information and that which does exist tends to be fundamentally skewed with bias. The left wing of Colombia’s forty year…
View More Review: The FARC: The Longest Insurgency