River Kwai Railway [Paperback]

C Kinvig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2003

Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the building of the Burma-Siam Railway, this book examines the episode in its strategic, logistic and manpower contexts. Its purposes, planning, construction and ultimate contribution to Japan's overall strategy are assessed from the perspective not only of the Japanese soldiers and the Allied prisoners, but also of the Burmese and Indian labourers whose plight has less frequently been considered.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Brassey's UK (February 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1857532058
• ISBN-13: 978-1857532050
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,670,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Incredible story, but not a very compelling writer., April 4, 2008

By 

C.J. Hustwick (Riverside, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: River Kwai Railway (Paperback)

Reading this book is a chore, as the author has almost no ability to write a compelling account of one of the most ambitious and brutal totalitarian undertakings of modern times. However, most of the raw statistics and data from the Burma-Siam Railroad are so interesting that even he cannot get in the way of this incredible story.

I think part of the problem lies in the fact that Clifford is a military historian and suffers from an all too frequent "laundry list" approach to ennumerating different battalions and minutiae that were relocated, shipped out, etc. The book literally drags for pages at a time while the narrative simply stalls.

Another annoyance is the author's painfuly obvious pro-UK and somewhat veiled anti-American tone; in the first chapter he takes some jabs at the yanks without giving them credit for much of anything in the Asian theater. It's the old argument that the only reason the Americans were able to do anything at all was because of our industrial capacity. That argument is insulting and been proven erroneous many times over -- and besides which, if that were the case than how do you explain Vietnam? But the Brits frequently have this problem and are known the world over for their elitism and pomposity.

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget that Alec Guinness/William Holden stuff, this is the real deal!, November 21, 2001

By 

Harvey Henkelmann (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: River Kwai Railway (Paperback)

This book tells the true account of the building of the 'Death Railway' through Burma and present-day Thailand in which thousands of Allied POW's died at the hands of the Japanese. Told from many perspectives, including the many native laborers who worked and died alongside the British, Dutch, and American prisoners of war. I recommend this book to all students of history.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating topic, difficult reading, October 15, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: River Kwai Railway: The Story of the Burma-Siam Railroad (Hardcover)

Although one of my favorite movies of all time is "Bridge on the River Kwai," I knew that much of the details were fiction. That's why I purchased this book, hoping to learn -- as promised -- the real story behind the Burma-Siam railroad.

However, the book's prose is so bland and uninspiring that it manages to make an otherwise interesting story boring. There is little narrative here, the paragraphs are large and clunky and the comma-free punctuation will annoy readers.

That said, if you have a deep interest in and knowledge of the Pacific Theater in World War II, you might find this book more approachable.