History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

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Wonderful Lines in a Wonderful Book
The Outermost House: A Yeaar of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
Beston is without a doubt the best!
Customers interested in this title may also be interested in ...
Bird-watching the Soul

The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Henry Beston
Manufacturer: Owl Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 080507368X

Book Description

A chronicle of a solitary year spent on a Cape Cod beach, The Outermost House has long been recognized as a classic of American nature writing. Henry Beston had originally planned to spend just two weeks in his seaside home, but was so possessed by the mysterious beauty of his surroundings that he found he 'could not go.' Instead, he sat down to try and capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to: the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued that, 'The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.' Seventy-five years after they were first published, Beston's words are more true than ever.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful Lines in a Wonderful Book.......2007-09-23

Note: I made some Mormon reader angry over my negative reviews of books written by Mormons out to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews.
Your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks.

On The Outermost House: Henry Beston's account of his year on Cape Code in the 1920s is a classic. It's worth reading just for the poetic lines. Here is an example:

"For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars--pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time."

Highly recommended!

The Outermost House: A Yeaar of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.......2007-01-05

I particularly enjoyed this book as it is set in an area that has a large simularity to where I grew up and I particularly liked the lonliness and bleakness that I identified with.

Beston is without a doubt the best!.......2006-10-03

I wouldn't dream of heading for the Cape without this book--Henry Beston captures the Cape more beautifully than any other author. THE OUTERMOST HOUSE is one of those enchanting books which improves with each rereading.

Customers interested in this title may also be interested in ..........2006-08-04

Since Amazon hasn't provide a link between Outermost House, by Beston, and The Winter Beach, by Charlton Ogburn (ISBN 068809418X), I would like to suggest here that, if you like Outermost House, you will almost certainly enjoy The Winter Beach, as well. From the jacket description: "A naturalist and man of rare wisdom shares with you his journeys along the Atlantic shore."

Bird-watching the Soul.......2005-11-13

There's an H.G. Wells story (in Bloom's anthology for children) called "The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes"; the title character is struck by lightning and undergoes a visual hallucination in which he believes he sees a desolate island, or as he puts it, "Dark sea and sunrise! And yet I'm sitting on a sofa in old Boyce's room!...God help me!" I didn't think much of the story at the time I read it, but now, on reading "The Outermost House," I find it a remarkably excellent and relevant critique of American nature writing. Surrounded by friends and family, Davidson's gaze is turned inward-or rather projected far outward-to a pristine setting that becomes a horror to the reader.

I'm surprised I didn't like Beston's book better. The introduction makes comparisons to Whitman, which drives me crazy. There is no triad of selves; in fact, I didn't find the author good company, with his external, concrete eye. The objective details never gain in implicit resonance like those in Hemingway's "Great Two-Hearted River," for example, in which concrete actions assume ritualistic meaning. The book is a quick read, and it's a good thing, because there's only so much I can take of foam, little birds, wind direction, and dunes. (There's something passive about the narrator; I'm trying to remember something Bloom wrote about Robinson Crusoe in this context.) Perhaps it's a matter of temperament; I mean, I'm as introverted as they come, but I was lonely reading this book, and I kept waiting for augmenting meanings; perhaps it appeals to a more concrete, introverted type, a bird-watcher in other words.

The prose is beautiful in places, but it's not exactly Proust on the ocean, either. It's always so curious to me that American writers, to get elemental or visionary, go to nature, while Europeans still get to enjoy culture. I guess we don't have a Bois, like Proust, with which to associate feelings of longing, nor do we have earthy peasants or Duchesses whose very names carry traces of soil. And isn't there something ultimately selfish in the isolated nature-observer? Maybe that's part of the appeal-the freedom from the demands of family and culture-the illusion of primal interconnectedness. In any event, not Whitman! Matthew Arnold, sure! Ironically enough, I felt Arnold's "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" every other paragraph. Ultimately, this is a thoroughly PAGAN book in which the soul-less thrumming of cold insect life is celebrated, the sun is worshipped, and human sacrifice (in the form of deaths and drownings at sea) is required. Have we progressed no farther in the past millennium or so? Cold comfort.

Voyage Of Discovery To The North Pacific Ocean, And Round The World In The Years 1790-95 ( 3 Volumes )

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Wonderful first hand account

Voyage Of Discovery To The North Pacific Ocean, And Round The World In The Years 1790-95 ( 3 Volumes )
George Vancouver
Manufacturer: Reprint Services Corp
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0781251001

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful first hand account.......2001-07-04

George Vancouver served as a midshipman under Captain James Cook during Cook's earlier voyage to the Pacific Northwest and in 1790 he got a chance to take two ships, the Discovery and the Chatham, for his own adventures there. Vancouver's writing style is sometimes factual (he knew when writing the journals that they would have to be handed over to the Admiralty upon his return) but always interesting. He matter of factly recounts the fascinating events that punctuate the voyage and never loses sight of his objectives - to liberate the English fort on Vancouver Island from the Spanish and the ever present objective of the times - to find a North West Passage.

These journals also form a fascinating historical account of the day to day activities aboard a voyage of naval exploration, as well as explaining why so many bays, islands and sounds bear the names Howe and Chatham (two of the Lords of the Admiralty at the time). I found that if you read these journals with a good atlas, you will also note that almost every member of the crews of both ships has a contribution to today's world geography - including Mount Baker and Puget Sound (in Washington State) and Vancouver and Vancouver Island (in British Columbia).

Book Description

Tourist Third Cabin offers a window into a bygone era, where the technological marvels and floating palaces of modern steamships like the Queen Mary, the Normandie, and the Olympic transported a new breed of tourist between Europe and North America. The interwar period saw the birth of mass transatlantic tourism, and women, students, and the burgeoning middle class took to the seas in search of educa-tion, fun, and freedom. This book offers an intimate glimpse at the microcosm of the changing world that was the luxury liner. From crew mem-bers to passengers, ship decor to technological innova-tion, through labor unrest and political upheaval, we see the social world and the business of travel at the dawn of the modern age.

Customer Reviews:

BOREDOM AT SEA.......2007-07-19

I personally own over 200 books on steamships and ocean liners. Until I read this book,I did not think it was possible to find a boring book on ocean line travel. If I found myself at sea with only this book I would jump overboard.

Dear Exile : The True Story of Two Friends Separated (for a Year) by an Ocean

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I laughed, I cried (well, almost)!
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful
Compelling, insightful, and funny.
Not as absorbing as I had expected

Dear Exile : The True Story of Two Friends Separated (for a Year) by an Ocean
Hilary Liftin , and Kate Montgomery
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375703675
Release Date: 1999-04-27

Book Description

A funny and moving story told through the letters of two women nurturing a friendship as they are separated by distance, experience, and time.

Close friends and former college roommates, Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery promised to write when Kate's Peace Corps assignment took her to Africa. Over the course of a single year, they exchanged an offbeat and moving series of letters from rural Kenya to New York City and back again.

Kate, an idealistic teacher, meets unexpected realities ranging from poisonous snakes and vengeful cows to more serious hazards: a lack of money for education; a student body in revolt. Hilary, braving the singles scene in Manhattan, confronts her own realities, from unworthy suitors to job anxiety and first apartment woes. Their correspondence tells--with humor, warmth, and vivid personal detail--the story of two young women navigating their twenties in very different ways, and of the very special friendships we are sometimes lucky enough to find.

Download Description

A funny and moving story told through the letters of two women nurturing a friendship as they are separated by distance, experience, and time.

Customer Reviews:

I laughed, I cried (well, almost)!.......2005-07-31

I'm going through the process of applying with the Peace Corps. I loved the candid nature of this book, and I found that it said a lot about friendship as well as the Peace Corps. This book is a quick read, and hard to put down. I appreciated having a window into one person's PC experience. And, I enjoyed identifying with the close friendship shared by these two women.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.......2003-07-03

A great book. I loved reading the letters between the two friends and their different styles of writing. I hope their friendship will always endure. I look foward to reading more by both. I've already read Candy and Me by Hilary. I hope to hear more from K8.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.......2003-07-03

Compelling, insightful, and funny........2002-11-23

This is about as perfect as a book can be. I won't recap the concept; plenty of other reviewers have summed it up. But I want to express my unbounded admiration for this book. I would never have imagined that a set of letters between friends could make for fascinating, hard-to-put-down reading, but this set of letters does. In spades. These women's lives are just plain interesting--Kate's, in part, because she's in a situation most of us know little or nothing about and Hilary's, in part, because she's in a situation most of us know all too well. There's more going on here, though, than just the fact of being interesting. The friendship between these two comes alive on the page; the insights about the world and about each other that the women reveal are meaningful; the wit each writer possesses is sharp and on target. I loved the book. I'm giving it to everyone I know for Christmas because they're all going to love it, too.

Not as absorbing as I had expected.......2002-09-30

I was a bit disappointed in this book. I love corresponding with others, and I looked forward to learning about Hilary and Kate by reading their letters. I felt that something was missing and I cannot quite put my finger on it.

The book was short and I think what I had been looking for was a longer narrative. Kate and Hilary's friendship certainly is one of a kind, and it was nice to have a look at their confidences and challenges.

Book Description

This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1818 edition by John Murray, London.

Southern Pacific in the Bay Area: The San Francisco-Sacramento-Stockton Triangle (Golden Years of Railroading Series)

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Transition-Era History of Core SP Operations

Southern Pacific in the Bay Area: The San Francisco-Sacramento-Stockton Triangle (Golden Years of Railroading Series)
George H. Drury
Manufacturer: Kalmbach Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Southern Pacific Passenger Trains (Great Trains)

ASIN: 0890242747

Book Description

Follows the SP as it serves the San Francisco area. Detailed photos and descriptions include commuter trains, streamliners, heavy freights, and electric interurban trains working hard in the hills and communities by the Bay.

Customer Reviews:

Transition-Era History of Core SP Operations.......2000-07-15

The book focuses on "transition-era" (1945 - 1955: the transition from steam to diesel power) operations in one of the most interesting places for railroading: Southern Pacific's own home region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The archives are opened to deliver photographs of many interesting railroad sights now long-gone: the Oakland pier; Third St. station in San Francisco; electric street cars in Berkeley; Port Costa; etc. In this book the pictures do the talking, with minimal additional text to provide background, context and explanation. All photographs are black and white and mostly cover the SP's steam power used extensively at this time; all are of high quality and provide great insight into the realities and details of railroading during the period. The pictures also document an intriguing history of the Bay Area from a different perspective. (The pictures date from 1937 through 1957, with most in the 1945 to 1955 period.) References are provided to other publications to fill in some of the gaps not covered in this book.

Seal Wars: Twenty-five Years on the Front Lines with the Harp Seals

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Seal Wars: Twenty-five Years on the Front Lines with the Harp Seals
Paul Watson
Manufacturer: Firefly Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 155297751X

Book Description

Captain Paul Watson has rammed fishing trawlers, smashed whaling ships, sailed boldly into Soviet-controlled waters, and stood bravely on an ice floe between a baby harp seal and an oncoming seal boat. In this daring and sprawling memoir, the captain of the Sea Shepherd recounts his remarkable life on the front lines in the war to stop the viscious slaughter of the Canadian harp seal.

Seal Wars opens in 1996 with Paul Watson -- holed up in a hotel with Martin Sheen in the Magdalen Islands and facing an attacking mob of angry sealers -- being rescued by police and airlifted to safety. Watson recounts the childhood experiences that shaped his adult consciousness and environmental ethic. He records a history of the seal hunt (including all the tragedies, brutalities, and government mismanagement and obfuscation) from its beginning up to the rescue campaigns he courageously led from the prow of the Sea Shepherd.

Starting in 1976 with a Greenpeace crew off Labrador, Paul Watson has braved numerous forays onto the ice floes, many with such celebrities as Brigitte Bardot, Farley Mowat, Martin Sheen, and Pierce Brosnan. He has served time in prison, debated politicians, and quite often put his life on the line. In a passionate defense of environmental responsibility, Seal Wars guides us through the highs and lows, the defeats and successes of Watson's untiring devotion to this noble cause.

The Ship That Held the Line: The U.S.S. Hornet and the First Year of the Pacific War

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Precise and Detailed
It's good to know the sailors' stories
The Story of the Hornet's Short and Checkered Life
Blue base and its war in the Pacific
Atrocious

The Ship That Held the Line: The U.S.S. Hornet and the First Year of the Pacific War
Lisle Abbott Rose
Manufacturer: US Naval Institute Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1557507295

Book Description

The American fleet aircraft carrier Hornet is widely acknowledged for the contributions she made to the war effort. The Doolittle Raid, launched from the Hornet's deck, inaugurated America's Pacific counteroffensive and transformed the aircraft carrier into one of the world's prime strategic weapon systems. She was one of three carriers to participate in the victory at Midway and the fighting around Guadalcanal. Through the experiences of this key warship and the eyes of her crew and the aviators who flew from her deck, Lisle Rose recreates the first desperate year of the war in the Pacific. He tells how the Hornet was molded into a deadly weapon of war, how the ship was fought and ultimately lost, and what it was like to live aboard her at a time when the fate of the United States depended on the Navy's tiny carrier fleet.

In chronicling the carrier's operational history, the author contends that the fate of the Hornet's air group at Midway remains one of the great controversies in modern naval history and that the ship's importance in helping to keep the Japanese juggernaut at bay during the most critical period of the Pacific war is incontestable. His arguments ring true today as the controversy continues. Rose succeeds both in letting the reader see things the way the men of the Hornet did and in placing their experiences in a broad historical context.

Customer Reviews:

Precise and Detailed.......2007-01-13

This book was extremely detailed and researched. Consequently the writing was impressed with the research and wanted to include almost all of it. It is a fine historical read for detail oriented persons, but lacks the verve of a good read.

It's good to know the sailors' stories.......2006-12-12

Everyone knows that four big Japanese aircraft carriers, the center of Japan's naval power, were sunk at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Less often told is the story of the American carriers.
Japan and the U.S.A. started the war at Pearl Harbor with six fleet carriers apiece. Japan lost four in a single day, but in 1942, the Americans also had four sunk: Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp and eventually Hornet. And during the critical days when the future of Guadalcanal was in the balance, Saratoga and Enterprise were damaged and out of action.
For tense weeks, only Hornet was able to project American power in the Pacific.
Lisle Rose's history contains as much about life on a big flattop as it does about military action. In truth, Hornet's career contained only two big days.
In April 1942, Hornet launched Jimmy Doolittle's bombers on a pinprick raid that had astonishing consequences.
Hornet was at Midway but accomplished nothing.
Her torpedo squadron, Torpedo 8, was immortalized by being wiped out, but Rose says the legend that Torpedo's 8's sacrifice allowed the American dive bombers to drop in on the Japanese carriers without warning is not true. In a long, argumentative chapter, Rose contends it was Yorktown's torpedo planes, who also were slaughtered, though not as completely as Torpedo 8, that drew the attention of the Japanese to the sea's surface, thus allowing the Yorktown and Enterprise dive bombers to reverse the course of the war.
A few months later, the Solomon Islands became the scene of the most evenly matched slugfests between roughly equal fleets since the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th century; but Hornet contributed little and suffered nothing but boredom.
These chapters, however, are full of interest for the nuggets of information about real life at war. During the war, combat correspondents engaged in a kind of conspiracy to assure moms back home that their boys were at least being well fed.
They weren't. Growing boys worked 12- and 16-hour days on coffee, a sandwich and an apple, when they were lucky enough to get an apple. For weeks on end, Hornet's crew subsisted on 'block beef' (Spam), coffee and 'mashed potatoes' made of ground-up beans.
Without doing a lot of physical damage to Japanese forces, the Hornet did interfere enough to ruin Japan's plans during what Lisle calls 'the greatest moral and strategic crisis the United States would face in the Pacific war.'
On Oct. 26, 1942, Enterprise had rejoined the fleet, and at the Battle of Santa Cruz, the American carriers punished the Japanese heavily.
Late in the day, however, Hornet was hit by five bombs and three torpedoes. Rose's story of the struggle to save the ship is clear and scarifying.
Some men were blown to shreds. Others were drowned in lakes of flaming gasoline. A group of injured signalmen was brought to the bridge, because it was impossible to get them to a medical station. (And wouldn't have helped anyway, since almost all the medical stations were wiped out.)
'One of the worst off,' writes Rose, 'was a boy named Russell, who had been the butt of much teasing because he was too young to shave regularly. As (Capt. Charles) Mason bent over him, the boy looked up and asked, "Sir, am I being brave enough?" ' Yes, the captain assured him, he was. Russell died that night.'
It's well that we know these stories.

The Story of the Hornet's Short and Checkered Life .......2005-12-25

I have to admit that I'm a sucker for this type of history, the story of a warship told through the eyes of the sailors who served on it.

The USS Hornet had a special place in WWII, being one of the precious few American carriers that had to mix it up with the more numerous, more experienced, and more disciplined Japanese carriers in the first year of the war or so. (Before the buildup of Essex class carriers could arrive on scene.) Although there were apparently multiple times when only one fully operational American carrier was in the war zones, and while the Hornet was "it" it didn't necessarily do anything the others didn't do, so the title might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Nonetheless this is an informative and enjoyable book, and the Hornet definitely did its fair share to turn the tide of the war. The reader is taken along with the Doolittle raid where the Hornet bravely dashed in close to the Japanese homeland to launch the B-25's stowed on deck, and made a mad scramble back to home. You certainly get an appreciation of the tension that must have filled the carrier, along with the pride and jubilation of being the first to really strike back at the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

The Hornet's next big fleet action was Midway, where, unfortunately the performance of the air wing was a dud. The author clearly spent a large amount of time researching the men and tactics of the Hornet air wing and relays the fruits of his research to you before getting to the battle. There's a long and interesting chapter about Midway but alas the author doesn't seem to conclude as to why much of the Hornet air group never even found the Japanese. Perhaps this is just one of those instances in war where chance can lay waste to even the best laid plans of mice and men.

After Midway the Hornet is actively involved in the Solomons campaign. What is most interesting here is the intenstiy and ferocity of the fighting, with the Americans both on the attack in a strategic sense and often hanging on by a thread at the same time. Also fascinating was the organizational difficulty of combined land and sea operations under different commanders. This purely bureaucratic wrangling unfortunately leaves the U.S. carriers marshaling in a specific zone of sea due to the nature of which command had responsibility over which region, and the Japanese were able to exploit this fact by pouring in their submarines. This leads to the horrific destruction of the USS Wasp which the men of the Hornet see firsthand.

The Hornet fights in the battle of the Eastern Solomons and then finally, meeting her fate, at the battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The writing of the battles is gripping, and a heavy counterweight to much of the fun and frivolity of leave in Hawaii and Espiritu Santo. Throughout, the author gives fair coverage to the entire spectrum of the crew's experiences as the ship evolved during the war into a real fighting machine.

The death of the ship is written in a particularly poignant and heartfelt manner. You really get to bond with the ship and her experiences throughout her short life and honestly feel the loss as she slips forever beneath the waves, devoid of all human life.

Definitely recommended for WWII history, Navy, or Carrier buffs.

Blue base and its war in the Pacific.......2005-08-30

A excellent biography of the carrier U.S.S. Hornet and her one year life. What she lacked in longevity, she sure made up for in activity. Her airmen were a deciding factor in robbing the Japanese of their finest pilots. Once her first line pilots were gone, the Japanese had few replacements and at that point, America was producing its second generation of carriers and another crop of pilots. The Hornet was indeed the last gift of the pre war U.S. Navy. Indeed, this carrier at one point was the only active serving carrier in the Pacific. It was indeed a ship that held the line. After her loss, no more fleet carriers were lost in the war.
The author did a nice job of detailing the life of this carrier.
He pointed out her weaknesses and that of the planes she carried.
After perhaps the Enterprise, Lexington, and Yorktown, she was one of the famous ships of the war. A nice read about a famous ship.

Atrocious.......2004-04-26

With all due respect to the other reviewers, this atrocious book is so loaded with factual and technical errors that it's hard to know where to begin. I was fortunate to know three Hornet aviators, and the two who lived to read this turkey were appalled that any author would think that the arresting hook goes on the flight deck rather than the airplane! Furthermore, the title is wholly misleading since it refers to a brief period of little activity in the Guadalcanal campaign when the Hornet was the only carrier available. The embarrassing story of the Hornet at Midway still remains to be told objectively, but the bottom line is: the US Navy fought its most crucial battle with two useful carriers against four Japanese veterans.

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