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Wallace Bruce is the pen name of Roy Bridge's Joe Smith. When Mr Smith was a college lecturer, he took a group of students to the USA as guests of Neil Armstrong, and then began his interest in the eighteenth-century American hero.
John Paul was a gardener's son in Scotland, went to sea as a cabin boy and quickly became a Merchant Navy captain. When he was twenty-eight he changed his name to Jones, following the killing of a mutineer off Tobago. He then made his way to Philadelphia and joined the infant American Navy, rising to the rank of Captain by the start of the War of Independence. As well as harassing British shipping, he became famous for leading his men in the raid on the UK mainland at Whitehaven.
The author described all this, Jones's promotion to Commodore, his responsibility for organising the new navy, and his later work for Russia, with admirable respect for the facts along with the ability to pull the reader into sharing Jones's life under sail and in battle.
A great deal of research has obviously been carried out, but Mr Smith still manages to carry the story along in a lively fashion.
From: Lochaber Life, November 2002, No. 121
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This composite narrative combines three written English versions of the oral tradition; The Newhouse, Chiefs & Gibson.
Three men, obviously each quite different, recount recollections of their experiences. If all one knows about war -- the vast majority of us who have never seen combat -- that it is Hell, then these stories give us all we need to know about why this is really so.
The authors pull no punches, make no excuses for the surprising level of brutality. Their texts, surprisingly well-written, take us along on their hunter-killer missions, carefully planned lethal traps, sprung on the Mekong Delta's Viet Cong fighters. They are very close to each other, each life depends on the guy next in the six-man column. Some of them don't come back and we wonder now was it worth it?
But it's not all blood-and-guts fighting. (A vivid description of a beheading left me more than light-headed.) We see some very introspective reflections during the quiet moments, an occasional R&R, the usual intra-squad bitching and brawling.
Little wonder that only 365 days in a high-risk combat unit could have such a lasting effect on the participants.
History is still judging if was worth it. This modest but important addition to that assessment makes its own understated but powerful contribution. Definitely worth the price, and then some.
NINE FROM THE NINTH is not a global perspective of the conflict, but it never pretends that it is. Rather, it is a collection of nine stories taken from the personal remembrances of two former US Army Rangers who served with Company E. of the 75th Infantry Rangers, and a third author, Jack Bick, who volunteered and went on combat operations with Company E as a photographer and writer. For them, combat didn't include the nightly comfort of an air conditioned Officer's Club in Saigon or the relatively safe vantage point of an aircraft 10,000 feet above the jungle. Instead the stories present the personal, close-up views of combat that can only be told by those who have "been and done", and survived.
Jack Bick, accurately observes in "Smart Charlie" that the Vietnam conflict was unique; as opposed to WWII, US leadership wasn't fighting to win, so soldiers generally, including even the elite Ranger's, lacked an overall sense of purpose....their strategic goal became to survive for 365 days, and go home! Along the way, the three authors, Jack Bick, Paul Newman, and Bob Wallace, formed bonds of friendship that outlasted the terror, anger, and hate of combat and survive thirty years later.
Bob Wallace's story of "Staff Sergeant Frost" is a revealing look inside one of the war's most legendary fighting groups, the LRRPs (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols). These six-men, self-contained, voluntary units would deploy for days at a time inside enemy controlled territory to "observe and report". Regardless if an officer was with the LRRPs, it was the senior sergeants like Frost (E-5s and E-6s) that ran the teams. Their reputations were for eating snakes and ravaging the countryside, but the profane and gritty senior noncoms made the teams work, fight, and ultimately survive. As very young soldiers they were called upon to undertake harrowing tasks that brought about sudden maturity. So brutal was the LRRP experience that lasting for three weeks on a team converted a "cherry" into a veteran!
Paul Newman's account of the "Bo Bo Canal" is a gutsy story of the fighting along "a mosquito ridden canal" that ran for 20 miles, and became a "water road" for the VC. Carrying more than 8o pounds of combat equipment the team members would sink so deeply into the mud that walking was often difficult. This uncensored tale isn't for the squeamish but accurately conveys the unavoidable brutality of warfare and how it changed the outlook of the men who survived it.
After Vietnam the three authors left military service and took with them the best and worst of their experiences in Vietnam. The same training and personal skills that helped them survive in combat ultimately helped them succeed in their later careers. Initiative, risk taking, determined individualism and community involvement were common hallmarks as each man became successful in a variety of endeavors.
This is a highly recommended book for anyone interested in real stories of the Vietnam War, and the memoirs of three men who served their country honorably, proudly and well.
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Wallace constructs his analysis by building on the theme of his choosen title. Part one, explores the 'faultlines' that major studies identify, and awaits explanation in the next section, the 'tremors'. If you understand the logic of the opening chapters, then the 'shockwaves' should not be a big surprise. I suspect we'll have to live through it before anyone truly understands it. This is partly a get-out clause for political leaders who ought to urgently set out plans for, for example pensions reform, but since people and politicans don't tend to think and act for the long term, you can imagine wallace urging disapproval.
Each facet of life merits a mention; from ageism in the workplace, to the effect on property prices, spiralling healthcare costs and the impending 'pensions crunch'. While many of the current baby boomer generation are looking forward to early retirement, wallace leaves us to wonder if we, the younger generation, will have to work so much harder to share their (modest) ambition of enjoying their leisure after 40 years of labour?
A good read.
Wallace shows that the dependency ratios (the ratio of non-working "dependents" to working folk) will lead to a point where each worker will need to support not only himself, but a pensioner as well, and his own children, if any (and there will be very few). As the number of young working people, usually the more creative of all age-groups, continue to shrink, innovation will also came to a halt, and ultimately economic growth will vanish and then reverse the secular growing trend. While some environmentalists may feel overjoyed by this implosion of capitalism, most of us who rather liked material comforts and hoped that they would continue to grow endlessly will be less satisfied. The impact of the "agequake" will be felt in every sphere. Corporate hierarchies will make less sense when there are more middle-aged managers than young newcomers. The relationship between youthful and aggressive Third World Countries and rich older OECD countries (where elderly women will be the most influential constituency) will be fraught with dangers. Share prices will tend to collapse as the "Baby Boomers" start to retire and prefer to liquidate some of their assets. The housing market will be altered beyond recognition.
What can be done to avoid this future? Unsurprisingly, not much. Government policies cannot permanently improve fertility in rich countries, immigration in the scale required to make up for the shortfall of young workers will be politically indefensible, and the growing importance of older voters makes it virtually impossible for politicians to effect changes in fields such as retirement ages, pensioners' rights
or public health.
All in all, a sobering read. When these things happen, those of us who read it will have at least a headstart on everyone else. Not bad for a few bucks, eh?
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I absolutely love the attention to the excellent service examples and their technical explanations - consider i-area, the very smart location-based service in Japan. Developers are show the key emulators, how to develop ringtones, animations. It also puts SMS and WAP into perspective comparing service structures and microbilling differences.
This book is thoughtful and an incredible research report from the future in a difficult to access part of the world for most US and European developers who want to prepare for the future.
WAP is not coming back from the dead, so the future is HTML-based mobile applications. This book gave me both a foundation for HTML and XHTML wireless programming, as well as a the technical understading of handsets, location based services, and generating revenue. I wish all tech books were so comprehensive!
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