Customer Reviews

Nomonhan: Japanese-Soviet Tactical Combat, 1939

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While the reproduction on sale on Amazon is dated 2005, the book was originally published in 1981, so it predates Coox's "Nomonhan" (1985). Glantz (When Titans Clashed, page 324)calls Drea's book "the best short study on Khalkin-Gol...Alvin D. Coox, "Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia" is an exhaustive study, but is told almost entirely from the Japanese perspective."

Note that its fairly pricey for a slim paperback.

Do not buy this edition of this book -- hunt up a copy of the original university reprint, or of the original US GPO edition. This is essentially a low-quality xerox copy, poorly glued into a flimsy paper binding that will not survive normal handling. It appears that some of the original illustrations printed as blank. Other photographs are nearly black, and still others improperly scanned, showing an irritating moiré pattern. Most of the maps are legible (some have illegible contour line elevations, making the terrain a chore to understand). Most of the text is legible, but any text that was in a shaded box in the original didn't survive the poor xerox job, and the notes are illegible.

The story the book tells, of the hard fight of the IJA's 2/28 infantry, is a good one, well set in the historical firmament. One appreciates what allowed Zhukov to beat the Japanese, as well as the stoic character and courage of the Japanese soldier that made him such a hard opponent for the USA to fight. (Indeed, the book notes that the 2/28 would go down fighting on Guadalcanal within a few years).

Bottom line: good book, bad edition. Don't buy it. I hate to give negative reviews but this half-hearted Print-On-Demand job deserves no better. They're not even trying to make a usable product, let alone a quality one.