9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some interesting stuff, but not that unique, December 27, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: What They Didn't Teach You About World War II (Paperback)
There is some interesting stuff in this book, but it's not the treasure trove of trivia that the back cover's reviews make it out to be. A lot of the information in the book can be found out by reading one of the large single-volume WWII books. And you get a complete history of the war with those, and without the editorializing.
And the editorializing in the book shows that Mr. Wright must have liberal leanings, since he writes from the perspective of today's political correctness with no regard for the times or for the simple fact that war is messy, and decisions need to be made in the heat of battle without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not serious, poorly edited, error-filled, but amusing, May 19, 2005
If you are deeply concerned with what various second or third rate actors and television personalities of 5 to 10 years ago did during the WWII, this is the book for you. Otherwise, this is a throw away.
The most startling new information provided in this book are that Prescott Bush was a Senator from Maine and that Winston Churchill was prime minister of the United Kingdom during the 1939 German invasion of Poland. Of course, Prescott Bush was a senator from Connecticut, and Churchill became prime minister in the Spring of 1940 after the Anglo-French invasion of Norway was defeated by the simultaneous German invasion.
France and England did not really come to the "rescue" of Norway from a German invasion. They had planned their own invasion of Norway at the same time as the German invasion. They were delayed by several hours due to weather and claimed to be helping Norway against Germany. Paradoxically, Chamberlain fell because of the fiasco in Norway, and Churchill who was the architect of this disaster became prime minister! Of course, this is the kind of fact you are never told about the war, that someone like Wright could never tell you. I expected to find such things in this book.
Mike Wright's ignorance and the absence of any apparent fact checking by the publisher indicate that both are worthless as sources of serious information.
With no special knowledge or interest in World War II, Wright compiles a bunch of humorous or trivia-related vignettes about the war as he appears to do about as many subjects as he can publish books.
However,I feel sorry for someone like the author who believes people need to know how Swooze Kurtz--whatever she does???--got her name. I feel sorrier for someone who is bamboozled into thinking this is a book with new information about the greatest tragedy in human history. A war in which scores of millions of people died and many countries laid waste deserves more than drivel like that!
With the opening of the archives of the old USSR and the GDR, all sorts of information that was not known before is available for a serious author who really wants to tell us things that we weren't told about WWII. I expected this kind of information when I purchased this book. Yet, Wright is oblivious to the fact the major segment of WWII in Europe was fought between the USSR and Germany and its allies.
His goal is to provide quick, entertaining, light reading on a subject that is neither quick, entertaining, nor light.
The copy editing and fact checking in this book is simply not professional. While a bibliography which is useful is provided, there is absolutely no regular sourcing in this book, which may, in fact, be a tribute to adequacy of his sources, compared to the inadequacy of his history. As somone who teaches college students to discern which books to use for research papers and which to avoid, I would advise people to avoid any book brought out by this publisher for serious research or reliable knowledge.
This book does have its moments. He gives an interesting blow by blow picture of the draft process when it was launched in 1941. He also provides interesting information about the deportation of Japanese Americans and Canadians, and about German prisoners of war in the US.
However, though he condemns Japanese brutality to Allied prisoners, Wright is completely silent the attrocities the US and UK perpetrated against Japanese soldiers who wished to surrender. Allied policy was usally not to take Japanese prisoners, but to massacre them. A grisly trade in Japanese sculls and gold teeth sent back to the USA grew up during the War. This is the kind of fact about World War II that "They Didn't Teach You" that is light years away from anything Mike Wright knows.
For a better look check out "Why the Allies Won." For an even better set of information about the Pacific war that is NEVER TOLD consult War Without Mercy by John W. Dower which will tell you about Allied abuse of Japanese prisoners as well as Japanese crimes against other Asian peoples.
I found this book OK to read while I was sick in bed. I did not want anything demanding, although I must say that one driving factor in getting me to finish it was to see how many ignorances and errors the book contained. Like the one Harliquin romance I read under similar circumstances, I thought it was appropriate to throw the book away when I finished it.
It is unfortunate Amazon does not permit one to have 0 stars or negative quantites of stars.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad for a subjective viewpoint . . ., September 24, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: What They Didn't Teach You About World War II (Paperback)
Some interesting information, though I could tell that the author is a left-wing liberal. In the section "Leaders Who Went to War" he talks about all the presidents who served in WWII. When discussing any Republicans, he tends to be negative, and when dicussing any Democrats, he glosses over any failings they may have had. Also when dicussing the prejudices that minorities and women faced then, he criticizes from today's viewpoint. However much we may dislike a part of history that doesn't toe the line with our politically correct times, we must see them in relevance to that period in history. What happened then was wrong, but we have made great strides since then. I have always considered myself an indepedent in political terms and if I had written this book or one like it, I would tried tried a little harder than Mr. Wright to keep my biases out of it. When I read history, I want the facts, not subjective opinions based on someone else's political leanings.
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