Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A book I am sending to several friends to read,
By G. B. (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Military Intelligence Blunders (Paperback)
I am a history buff and this book is excellent at giving you an understanding of what happened at some of the most important wars in our recent history. Hughes-Wilson does not pull punches. There are many analogies between militay/political and business decisions. In places the author is redundant, but so what? The information and analysis is in depth and opened my eyes to many things I did not know. Hughes-Wilson's explanation of of the evolution of human and electronic and how they relate is facinating.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, and detailed,
By
This review is from: Military Intelligence Blunders (Paperback)
Apparently Colonel John Hughes-Wilson was in British Military Intelligence for a decade, and made a study of the profession and practice while he was there. When he left, he set out to write a book on the history of the art, using various historical examples to show why things work out the way they do, and why certain practices should be followed or avoided.The book follows a simple format. The first chapter is an introduction to the subject, explaining the objective of Military Intelligence and the means of obtaining, evaluating, and disseminating the information involved. The rest of the chapters (save a short conclusion) discuss individual events from the past sixty years where an army or nation was surprised or somehow failed by intelligence. There's a brief discussion of the overall course of the battle and the parameters of what the author wishes to discuss, and then a critical analysis of the intelligence that was available, how it was handled, and what was made of it by the end-users. Usually, of course, the end-user ignored or misused the intelligence, and the result was a disaster. The one minor quibble I had with the book was the selection of the various anecdotes involved. I felt that a couple were badly selected (notably the one on Malaya in 1942) mostly because the battles involved were British, and of course the author is a Brit. That having been noted, it doesn't detract much from the overall impact of the book, and there actually is some worthwhile information even in that chapter. I would have preferred, however, if he'd used something like the Japanese failure at the Battle of Midway, where their signal intelligence basically lost them the battle. That all being said, this is a very worthwhile and intelligent book, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nine vignettes with a consistent message,
By
This review is from: Military Intelligence Blunders (Paperback)
This very engrossing book covers nine intelligence failures, from Stalin's misuse of his intelligence assets in 1941 to the failures that preceded the 1991 Gulf War. All nine carry a similar message: The raw intelligence was available to avert a blunder, but the analysis was in some way flawed; Stalin, for example, chose to be his own intelligence analyst, and he turned out to be a very poor one. Another message comes through, as well: In all nine examples, the defender's intelligence failed. The attacker, if he can maintain surprise, has the intelligence advantage.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
See all 37 books this book cites
See all 16 books citing this book
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
