Customer Reviews

Stupid Wars: A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have attempted to read many history books but I found most of them boring. Stupid Wars grabbed my attention from the beginning to the end. I found myself laughing out loud many times!! I highly recommend this enjoyable book to everyone to share in the hysterical historical discoveries of our past as beautifully executed by Michael and Ed. Keep laughing!

Monty Python Meets the History Channel!

Manages being a very amusing read while also being informative.

Well, a book with the word stupid in the title isn't going to be Gibbon or Macauley, so judging it by standards of serious history is pointless. Rather, Stupid Wars should be taken as a bit of light entertainment for history buffs, and it's hard to fault it too much on that score.

Stupid Wars lives up to its title, detailing a number of military conflicts waged either for stupid reasons (the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia) or waged stupidly (the Soviet invasion of Finland, the Bay of Pigs). Some wars are fairly well-known, others forgotten, but all impress with their head-scratching inanity: from Paraguay's suicidal involvement in the War of the Triple Alliance and the ill-conceived Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, to Romania's fighting a three-way conflict in WWII and the appallingly-staged US invasion of Grenada, a chronicle of military stupidity and headscratching incompetence is engagingly presented.

The authors try to make these stories accessible without getting bogged down in military and political minutiae, a serious danger with such obscure and inscrutable conflicts. They mostly succeed, providing concise, easy-to-understand yet admirably in-depth accounts of the wars, campaigns and putsches covered. Still, there are some irritants, mostly in the writing style. The authors get some funny bits in but much of the humor is extremely juvenile: for the most obvious example, in the chapter on the War of the Pacific they expound repeatedly on the fact that guano = bird excrement. Did Beavis and Butthead write this chapter? Perhaps it's personal taste but I found this childish tone a bit grating in spots.

On the whole though, Stupid Wars isn't bad for a bit of lighthearted light reading. One must add that there are more than enough "stupid wars" unaccounted for to make a half-dozen sequels, so stay tuned.

For the enlightened who enjoyed one of the greatest biting satires of all time - MASH - and its lead character Capt. Hawkeye Pierce who was at once brilliant, insightful, full of satire with a refreshingly candid sense of humor, comes this masterpiece for those looking to refresh their knowledge of history that may have last been revisited in a boring, associate professor-taught 200 level history course that you scheduled at 8am on Mondays and slept through 50% of the time. The authors present a well-researched, succinct and incredibly funny viewpoint of the truly inept and ill-fated dictators/leaders of all-time in a view that is all too accurate in additional to making you LAUGH OUT LOUD on numerous occasions. This book is one of the best kept secrets!

I loved reading this book. It's funny, entertaining and definitely gives a new historical perspective on those "stupid" episodes. It made me laugh out loud several times.
If you're not a fan of boring, strictly factual history books and long descriptions that get you lost in details, this is a great choice.

A very good read -- I'd definitely recommend for young adults who need an education but find textbook and newspaper accounts not as easy or interesting to follow. Makes tough subject matter readable. Grab it!

Start with this book!

It seems like most history classes below the college 300 level are designed to make history so painful and unpleasant that noone will look at another history course. This is, at best, tragic, and worst educational malpractice.
So the common criticism is that history is boring...

The folks who take themselves ever so seriously and have Causes (note the capital 'C'), hiss that history is bourgeois and written by imperialist, colonialist, capitolist running dogs who would be worse than hellspawn if they believed in hell. This is an adolescent and pretentious position to take, but also remarkably short-sighted.
So history is often considered a evil, nasty story written by those foul winners...

This book is a highly entertaining history of screw-ups. From the late Roman empire to the coup against Gorbie, this book has sixteen stories of how not to do it, with examples at the tactical, operational, strategic and grand strategic levels of war. The cases focus mostly on poor judgment at the higher levels (generals and heads of state rather than lieutenants and sergeants) and presents them in a historically accurate (but not always precise) fashion that is utterly unlike what you heard in high school or in the 100 level history classses.

I especially enjoyed the chapters on the War of the Triple Alliance and the Chaco War. These represented extreme cases of the insane excesses heads of state can get up to when they place machismo ahead of reason. And they are portrayed in exactly this light. No heroism, just murderous posturing by penny-ante dictators of third world countries.

The authors are cavalier in their descriptions of the actors and their decision processes, and this won't sit well with folks who take their historical knowledge too seriously. But if the goal is to entertain, give alternate interpretations of the facts, and make history more engaging and accessible, you'll have to accept the jocularity and take the flippancy in stride. And it is worth it.

Entertaining, informative, engaging, and great fun. This is the book to give the highschooler who 'hates' history.

E. M. Van Court

In a monument to the stupidity and cruelty of mankind, this book summarizes some of the stupidest and most inept wars, revolutions, and coups. The tone of the book is sarcastic, tactless, and entertaining.

While I enjoyed learning about these bumbling military misadventures, I frequently felt that things were being way over-simplified for the sake of making people sound like even bigger morons than they actually were. Given the over-simplification I only deemed this humorous history book worthy of 3 stars.

I was very intrigued when I found this book in the history section at Borers. I really didn't know what to expect. But as soon as I started reading it, I was hooked. I'm a history major myself and training to become an officer in Military Intelligence, and even I sometimes just have to roll my eyes at the lack of life in those history textbooks. If they were written like "Stupid Wars," I think you might have a lot more interest in history.

The premise was appealing to me. Rather than look at the heroic victories of the past, we could probably learn just as much if not more from the epic failures of military leaders throughout time. But the most striking thing about the book is not only that it covers wars that I had almost no knowledge of prior to, but it's a funny read as well.

For instance, I found myself laughing at the part when the authors recount the little-known Winter War between Russia and Finland. After the the last negotiations ended before the war started, Stalin "left to twirl his mustasche and plan the destruction of their country." At another point, one of the crazier characters of the book, Francisco Lopez "Compared himself to Napoleon and Alexander the Great. It would have been true if Napoleon and Alexander had been fat, ignorant failures from obscure countries."

The book is rife with such examples of making fun of blundering, idiotic leaders from the Roman Empire to modern times. Another great thing about the book was that it peaked my interest in various conflicts that I wasn't familiar with beforehand. Since reading the book, I've picked up books on the Russio-Finish War and the Chaco War in South America.

As described, this is really a funny and well-written book. It is also fascinating as far as history is concerned, giving far more information than one would ever get in textbooks about some of the more obscure engagements covered here.

This just bears out my long held contention that history does not have to be boring. The trouble is that most history textbooks are written by historians or pedagogues, whereas they should only be allowed to be written by seasoned authors. Preferably by those with a sense of humor.

Just compare a good historical novel with any textbook, and you will see what I mean.

This book is a lot of fun to read and you'll improve your knowledge painlessly.