9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dockery misses the target with this one., August 2, 2007
This review is from: Stalkers and Shooters: A History of Snipers (Paperback)
Dockery, the author of a number of books on military subjects, phoned this one in. "Stalkers and Shooters" begins with several chapters that present a brief history of sniping. Readers of other books on sniping will recognize a number of the anecdotes Dockery uses. The discussion of current sniping focuses mainly on American snipers.
Dockery includes sections of commentary from experienced police and military snipers. This is the portion of this work readers are likely to find most interesting. Unfortunately, the quality of this commentary is hit-or-miss. The better sections are informative and well-composed. Some of the others meander and could have used better editing, notably one in which the contributing sniper rambles on in a know-it-all way about, among other things, politics, journalism and grand strategy in Iraq. It doesn't fit in a book about sniping and some of the soldier's clear factual errors go uncorrected by the author.
Photographs of soldiers holding sniping rifles dot the pages. Many of the photos were taken in Iraq. They are of good quality, but not all are closely related to the nearby text.
There are more interesting and better-organized books on sniping available. Steer clear of this one.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stalkers and Shooters, June 15, 2009
The book is slightly mis-titled. Early chapters are more about firearms-development and include fairly detailed descriptions of some battles in which a purposeful long-range rifle shot was effective in killing an enemy. It is a good book although a little uneven, but certainly worth the time. It is not, however, of the same format and detail as Martin Pegler's
Out of Nowhere: A history of the Military Sniper. So the title may mislead some readers who then feel the book doesn't fulfill its apparent promise.
The text was obviously run through a spell checker but some mistakes got through, allowing a plural when the word should be singular, or not catching an error when a correctly spelled but syntactically incorrect word occurred through mistyping (or typesetting). There were also a few odd uses of the semi-colon and various other stylistic blunders. On the other hand, the author is clearly trying to be accurate and informative, and he makes satisfying distinctions that some authors would glide over.
I would have liked to see footnotes. There were many instances when, some fact being mentioned in the text, I wondered where the author learned it.
The book ends with some very interesting chapters (the best in the book) written by actual police and military snipers; and in these pages, as well as earlier in the book, the question arises of how the term 'sniper' should be used in our language. As used in the military and law enforcement, the term is a job title, so the methods used, skills needed, and the duties routinely assigned to those with the title -- mission planning, land navigation, camouflage, stalking (getting into position), concealment, reconnaissance, surveillance, reporting intel, understanding ballistics and optics, being a marksman, having a partner who is a spotter (observer), shooting only under legally sanctioned conditions -- have within these communities come to be seen as unavoidably included within the full meaning of the term. Outside of those communities, or those who look to them for language usage, a sniper is someone who, from concealment or a long distance (which is effectively concealment even if the sniper's position itself is not concealed), uses a rifle to purposefully shoot, with the intent to kill, a specific, targeted individual. It is not a job title. It refers to a particular type of shooter and manner of killing. Oswald was then a sniper, as was Charles Whitman (chapter 20 is an account of Whitman's shooting spree from the bell tower), when under strict law enforcement or military usage they were not.
CONTENTS --
Prologue to a mission
1. To begin - the story of a word
2. Technology of the era - prehistory to 1200
3. Anatomy of a shot - 1066 to 1307
4. Technology of the era - 1250 to 1430 - the beginnings of the gun
5. Anatomy of a shot - 1429
6. Technology of the era - 1500 to 1600 - the coming of the rifle
7. Anatomy of a shot - 1643
8. Technology of the era - 1620 to 1820 - the flintlock, the jaeger, the American long rifle, the Ferguson breechloader
9. War 1775 to 1783 - the American Revolution
Birth of the sniper
10. Technology of the era - 1810 to 1860
11. War 1861 to 1865 - the Civil War
12. War 1914 to 1918 - World War One
13. War 1939 to 1945 - World War Two
14. War 1950 to 1953 - the Korean War
15. War 1964 to 1973 - the Vietnam War
16. 1975 to 1999 - into a new century
17. Somalia 1992 to 1994
The war on terror opens
18. Snipers into the Twenty-first Century
Law Enforcement
19. A new era
20. Anatomy of a shot - August 1, 1956
21. Technology of the era - law enforcement sniping
22. Anatomy of a shot - December 2, 1992
23. The law enforcement sniper mission - tactical and legal considerations
24. Anatomy of a shot - July 3, 1982 - shoot to wound
25. Anatomy of a shot - August 16, 1993 - shoot to disarm
26. Anatomy of a shot - April 4, 1991
27. Technology - suppressors
28. Equipment manufacturer Dr. Philip Dater, Gemtech Suppressors
The shooters - law enforcement
29. Law enforcement shooter - Deputy Vickers
30. Law enforcement shooter - Officer Sheldon
31. Law enforcement shooter - Officer Bourdo
32. Law enforcement shooter - Officer Klein
The shooters - military
33. Military shooter (Marine) - Travis Mitchell
34. Military shooter (Marine) - Jason Bombaci
35. Military shooter (Army) - Staff Sergeant O_____
36. Military shooter (Army) - Sergeant First Class Dillard J. Johnson
Bibliography
Index
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