Customer Reviews

Army Dictionary and Desk Reference, Second Edition

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a vital reference volume for young soldiers, and will facilitate your adoption of the martial vernacular.

This book is a compendium of everything arising from the ongoing invaluable program titled Deployed Uniform Military Basic Acronym Standard System, with which every service person eventually becomes intimately familiar.

This reference guide is a must for anyone in or intrested in the Military. It is a valuble piece to start your military book collection and can help identify even things commisioned and nco's would have no clue about. "put in on your wish list"

Everybody knows that a MASH is a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. But how many know that a MARS is a Military Affiliate Radio System, or that HIMAD is High to Medium Altitude Air Defense. All of these, along with more than 3,800 terms are defined in this 320 page paperback. I find myself wondering just how you can compile a dictionary this large of such strange terms and concepts. It must have taken Mr. Zurick an awfully long time.

It's been pretty rare that I've just sat down and read a dictionary. But then again, it's been pretty rare that I've seen a dictionary like this one - that means never. If you are a reader of military history, or any of the current Army magazines, you need this on your desk.

Not really much of a dictionary, in my view -- e.g., the entry for "TIS" simply tells you what the acronym stands for. That's it. I was hoping for an actual entry, with notes that place the term in context. Maybe not encyclopedic, though that would have been great -- but at least the rudimentary entry of a "dictionary," for Christ's sake! I'm just short of sorry at having purchased this -- what does it matter to know that "TIS" stands for "Time In Service" if I don't know what that *means*??