Customer Reviews

Snafu: Great American Military Disasters

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Author Geoffrey Regan wanted to write a book which could have well been titled "The Wrong Stuff". Military blunders and disasters so incredibly stupid they defy explanation of how some General or Admiral ever rose to a place of command authority.

The biggest bone I have to pick with Regan is that there are lots of small historical errors in his book. So many that the reader is left to wonder about both the quality of Regan's historical research, and the quality of the book's editing. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was at Gettysburg. Regan didn't even get Chamberlain's first name right. The book has several errors like this, and military historians and history buffs alike will find SNAFU very annoying, and very unprofessionally researched.

The cover notes of the book also speak of Custer's infamous battle of the Little Bighorn -- yet there is absolutely NO chapter in this book on the battle -- only a passing note in Regan's conclusions at the end.

Even a snappy prose line cannot overcome a lack of thorough historical research.

SNAFU was an entertaining piece of history, but flawed in its research, editing and writing. The reader is left with the view that the author does not know what he is talking about. If any military historian ever writes a book on Great Disasters in Historical Writing, SNAFU will take up a well deserved and prominent, whole chapter.