Customer Reviews

Cassell Military Classics: Military Mavericks: Extraordinary Men of Battle

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

 

 

I'll concur with the other reviews here. The book is short on scholarship and is really a precis of the work of others. Little in the way of references, and one suspects, original research. No significant conclusions, no real surprises, and a very straight-forward retelling of well-known biographies.

The author should probably have chosen lesser well known subjects, and done more primary research with extensive footnotes. Even if one argues this is simply intended as "light reading", it's all been said before.

Rather than provide a thorough study of any one military maverick, Rooney, in this uninspiring compilation, attempts to introduce the already well-known facts and idiosyncrasies of certain well-known military commanders.

The book is divided into twelve chapters, each discussing one notable individual. Each chapter provides a brief (generally too brief) bio of the man, a short history of the conflicts in which he gained fame, a quick allusion to certain eccentricities, and finally a short prologue. I found the book lacking historical insight, as well as a readable style, which leaves the work at times slow and monotonous. Rooney's book perhaps would have been better recieved had he shortened the number of characters from twelve to six and expanded the chapters to create a more full description of the individuals.

Although the author attempts to render a history of martial nonconformists from Alexander to Guderain, each brief biography lacks any real meat, or surprising new information. All too often Military Mavericks leaves the reader wondering just how much time Rooney spent on his work.

This book fails in some many ways. While it could very easily be a good general introduction for those only slightly familiar with the personalities named, it presents them in such a humdrum way it cannot be said to do even that. A person who is not already familiar with many of the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia or Patton would leave still ignorant of them. The author drops the names of numerous personalities having nothing to do with the specific subject matter at hand as a means of comparison. Here or there this could be helpful but it is overdone to the point where it becomes annoying and one gets the feeling they are only being mentioned as a ploy to gain some academic credentials. Also, the habit of referencing these people only by their last names (first ones are never mentioned) is especially hard on the nerves.

The chapter on Giap - in particular the part having to due with Vietnam - is especially poor and cannot accurately be called historical nonfiction. I shows a knowledge of the conflict which is more than bordering on ignorance. It reads often like a communist propaganda piece, ignoring Giap's actual skills and tactics and relying more on flowery expressions and the same tired BS about stoned-out American drafties loosing the war.

Finally, the book makes an atrocious number of outright errors. The author is associated with Cambridge - one of the educational pillars of Western Civilization - and this book would earn an F as a middle school history paper. These errors range from the obscure to the mild (claiming the object of Operation Mincemeat was a fake invasion of Sardinia... it was really a fake invasion of Greece) to the jaw-droopingly brain-dead (The date for the Hiroshima bombing is incorrect and the author states that Nixon defeated LBJ in the 1968 election. No, really. He says that).

All in all a beyond sloppy piece of work which must have been put together overnight to make some beer money. The author shows a clear mixture of ignorance and bias. In the hands of readers familiar with the subjects it makes for a good chuckle to see how low it gets. In the hands of the new student of military history it is plain dangerous.

I will give the book 2 stars, only because of the selection of commanders featured within, especially Orde Wingate.

However, my overall impression of the quality of the chapters is NOT favorable.

Frequently, I felt as though I was reading a thesis of an opinionated and annoyingly precocious junior high-school student who is not nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is.

this was excrutiatingly apparent in the chapter on Vo Nguyen Giap: utterly INACCURATE propagandistic GARBAGE! Rooney absolutely GUSHES over Giap, in the manner of some vapid 1960s campus radical wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt. Its clear that Rooney hates America, and the U.S. Military, ...who were actually WINNING the Veitnam War in all aspects. U.S. politicians shamefully soiled themselves in the face of the increasingly hysterical anti-American lefto rabble. But thats an issue best discussed in detail elsewhere. Giap was definitely of the "maverick" mold, ...but nowhere near as effective as leftos wish us to believe.

Subtracting the pathetic chapter on Giap, this book might qualify for 3 stars, if re-edited, and some supplementary FACTS included.

I was looking forward to reading this book based on the jacket notes. What promised to be an original and insightful work exploring the role mavericks played in military history instead turned out to be an insipid regurgitation of previous scholarship and pointless innuendo. The author seems to think what makes a maverick has something to do with pervese sexual appetites or religious fervor. Most disappointing was the utter lack of primary source research. What Mr. Rooney has created is a rather bland survey of the careers and lives of otherwise intersting people. His biggest miss is his self-contradictory analysis of Jackson. In one sentence he praises Stonewall's ability to conduct unthinkable marches and deliver troops to the field of battle in fighting condition, yet in the next he implies that Jackson was a religious zealot whose utter lack of regard for his troops well-being had them on the verge of mutiny. Rooney fails in all events to explain what earns a leader "maverick" status and how it makes them an effective leader. Throughout there is a real lack of tactical and strategic analysis- which, in spite of the jacket notes, Rooney totaly disavows to undertake in his foreword- that left me completely unsatisfied. In the section on Garibaldi, Rooney twice cites Mussolini as claiming that if Garibaldi had read Clausewitz, he would have lost every battle he fought. Yet there is no explication of this point. Finally, the pecadilloes that Rooney does use to show how eccentric each leader was, none of them are inform the reader as to the leader's greatness. Alexander's life long homosexual love affair does not provide insight into how he conquered the known world. I do not find it compelling that Shaka Zulu's- diminutive size- drove him to seize power. As a result of this bizarre focus on eccentricity and lack of tactical insight, Guderian's career isdownright boring. There are many better books on all of these subjects based on primary source research that are more informative as to what defines a trend-setter and what makes them great.

Rooney writes what he wants to write about and there is usually little ground breaking work in any of his books. They usually serve as general introductions into other subjects. So this books offers a little light intro into 12 Military Commanders of all time. There is little to unite them except to lump them into being "mavericks" of a kind... though Rooney does not give us a definition of Maverick.

In addition the book carries no analysis and little compilation. If one were to do one's own analysis then we can reach the assumption that mavericks:

1) Lead from the front

2) Are passionate

3) Have a meglomaniacal belief in themselves (with the exception of Guderian)

Beyond that I really do not know what the selection of this disparate group of people is supposed to prove.

I had low expectations. I just wanted a military book to cover a few historical areas in short, light chapters to be used for bathroom reading. In this sense the book admirably fulfilled my expectations.

An interesting note is that Rooney also uses this book to plug his idea of the "brilliance" of Orde Wingate... I personally disagree with his passion and I find the continued reference to every military leader in comparison with Wingate a little disconcerting and, frankly... odd...

This is supposed to be a book about great military leaders, and the maverick qualities that gave them the ability to defy contemporary conventions and to think out of the box.

In fact Rooney never really defines what a maverick is, what a leader is, and how a maverick leader differs from a conventional leader.

Which brings us the the true reason for this book. David Rooney loves Orde Windgate, and has spent his writing career building the proposition that Orde Windgate was a military genius, and that the failure of his Chindit organisation, and the horrific death toll of his men, were due to the machinations of his many enemies in the Military.

Every "Maverick" is compared to Windgate. This is done to make it seem that Windgate, instead from being a nobody in a sideshow of the second world war, was an Alexander, a Garibaldi, a Lawerence of Arabia. He wants to list Windgate amongst the great names of military legend. Quite why I do not know. In any case it has backfired by undermining the book.

This could be a good book if it was rewritten properly, and if Windgate was left out.

The author introduces in this book as many elements of psychology or psychopathology in studying military personalities than about strategy or tactics. Summing up, he says religious, sexual or another suspected peculiarities are compensated by great skills in war. It seems to me these type of judgements are little professional and mostly rough, although if he's right or not it's impossible for me to say but at last he's not a physician, but a military teacher and those matters are delicate. The most objective fact is that war isn't different from any other human activity in what respect for social stereotyped conducts, and so, this results in that great heroes or original military men, also are subject to social critics almost even in the heat of fire. This is specially clear in the case of Orde Wingate or Lawrence of Arabia. The victories achieved by these men no matter how valuable, seems as if his comrades would prefer an orthodox defeat than an irregular victory. Only personages above the media as Churchill are capable to appreciate the value of uncommon, high capable men.