A Historical Eye-Opener, but with Flaws – 3 stars
The United States has been involved with many countries militarily over the nation’s lifespan, both as an ally, an opponent, or as advisors and trainers. Just how many countries have come under these categories may come as an eye-opener or even a shock to those not familiar with the details of history.
The authors present each country with which the United States has had some form of military contact, friendly or unfriendly, in alphabetical order. Some sections are brief, such as the entries for Ivory Coast and Liechtenstein, while others are much longer and have more detail such as the entry for Vietnam.
I was surprised to note that included in many of the countries’ entries were references that various state national guard units are “partnered” with specific countries. I would be interested in finding out what these partnerships entail and what obligations those units might have towards their partners. No specific information was given in the book about these partnerships or how they were assigned or by whom.
There are no footnotes, references, or bibliography included for any of the information presented in the book. There is a glossary at the end for some of the acronyms used in the text. The charts at the end which were meant to summarize the types of contact the US has had with each country that was covered in the book, they do not display properly on a Kindle. I would have liked to have seen a time line indicating when each action cited in the book occurred in history to put them into a better overall context.
The tone of the text often tries to be cute or cool which detracts from the subject matter. The authors rush to assure us that the Commodore Matthew Perry who traveled to Japan in the 19th century is not the same person as the actor on a popular television show, twice. Often the style of writing seems to be that of a term paper (but without the footnotes or references), with the simple cataloging of facts and over-uses the phrase for instance unnecessarily to the point that it can become annoying to the reader.
Tangential information is put in, again in an attempt to be cool no doubt, to link various countries or actions with popular stars that do not have anything to do with the stated subject of the book. Did we really need to be told that David Bowie’s wife is from Somalia? Yet fact-checking on more important points seems to be lax as when discussing Turkey, they miss that the capital of modern Turkey is Ankara, not Istanbul.
This book was not meant to be a scholarly work, but should have at least been held to some minimal standards of proper attributions and references.