Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives

Customer Reviews:

The starting point to the world of derivatives.......2007-09-22

"Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives" great subtitle and the author really delivers. I love books on finance. Possibly stemming from being dropped on my head as a child. Some are pretty brutal to read but this one is as entertaining as it is educational.

I was familiar with some derivatives like futures contracts and options, before reading this book. Now derivatives like CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligations), CCO (Commodity Collateralized Obligations), currency swaps, interest rate swaps, or even inverse floaters make sense to me. Obviously I am far from being an expert on any of these, but after reading this book I can now understand why Warren Buffet called derivatives "Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction".

The author does a great job educating you in story-like fashion. The book told of numerous investors that ended up getting screwed by some pretty good salespeople at different dealer firms. Buyer beware comes to mind time and time again as I read these episodes. The treasurer of Orange County California got in way over his head because he was making a ton of money. Which he attributed to his financial wisdom. Then when interest rates went against him and his county lost 1.5 billion dollars he changed his tune saying he had some kind of brain defect and could not understand numbers. That would have been handy for the voters of Orange County to know BEFORE they elected him to office.

I guess there are many reasons to use derivatives like avoiding taxes, moving risk from highly regulated areas to less regulated areas, using loans as collateral for even bigger loans, or repackaging bad credit in a way that transfers the risk to someone else. The more I learn, the more I am amazed that supposedly very intelligent people see these as a great way to make money. It just goes to show that most people invest in things they do not understand.

I read an article by the author, Satyajit Das today. In the article he mentioned that "1 dollar supports 20-30 dollars worth of loans" and that the derivatives market at the moment is valued at 485 trillion dollars, or to make that a little more understandable, 8 times the global gross domestic product. 8 times the GDP of the entire planet. Wow.

This book is a great introduction to the world of derivatives and I highly recommend it.

A little too cynical.......2007-09-22

This book offers a great amount of information and is very interesting. Being a derivatives trader myself, it does however strike me as just a tad too cynical.

Enter the World of Derivatives.......2007-05-02

An insight to the somewhat strange world of derivatives trading, the greed, the risk and the people. I cant say I agree with every word of Satyajit, but it is a real page-turner, the kind of book you finish in a day.

"Derivatives dont kill people, people kill people"

An Entertaining and Educational Reading Experience.......2007-04-12

I really enjoyed reading the book Traders, Guns, and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives by Satyajit Das. It is an interesting book in that it is a fictionalized autobiography of Das. As the book outlines the author's professional life in finance, it describes how he got involved in financial derivatives. The primary purpose of the book is to give a primer on derivatives, how they were created, how they are used, their benefits, and their dangers. The author's use of humor along with the hilarious vignettes of his finance associates (Nero, Clem/Crem, Adewiko, Budi, etc.) and funny anecdotes from his career made the book fun to read.
The book really helped explain what exactly derivatives are (giving me a good review of some of what I was taught in college) and how they are used today. I also appreciated the in-depth analysis of several well-known instances where derivatives were used by investors and companies which really helped to demonstrate their application in the real world as well as the oftentimes hidden dangers of using these financial tools. I found his discussion of the currency swap done by the Walt Disney Company in the 1980's to be of particular interest to me. Despite the fact that I previously read the HBS case study during a Derivatives and Risk Management course which I took as a student at Harvard, Das's explanation of the incident really gave me an even better understanding of how exactly the transaction was structured and how it eventually went wrong. His explanation of why Disney's financial advisors made the deal so complex was also amusing. (You will have to read the book to find out.)
Moreover, Satyajit Das really underscored the complex nature of derivatives and their use in either speculative bets or in hedges. Previously, I had considered these financial tools as an efficient and safe way to hedge. However, the author points out that there are significant risks even when they are only utilized as a hedge.
Hence, I really enjoyed this entertaining and informative book. The author explains complex concepts in a clear, readily understandable, and comical way. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to learn more about financial derivatives or the world of finance in general and who does not mind being entertained at the same time.
Thank you for your time.

Fascinating intro to the world of derivatives.......2007-03-30

Satyajit Das has performed a great service to all of us who have heard talk of derivatives and wondered what all the fuss was about. It is both an entertaining and informative read and an indictment of the investment banks that crank these financial products out. He shows first how Wall Street fools its clients by creating incomprehensible products chock full of profits to them as seller but markets them as the financial cure for cancer, without including the long and unwelcome list of potentially deadly side effects in their sales pitch. Second, he shows how Wall Street has fooled itself into believing they understand and have properly hedged their own exposure. The system will inevitably blow up, but the traders will already have moved on with their gigantic bonuses made using other people's money and someone else will be left to hold the bag and clean up the mess.

The ladder of lights;: Or, Qabalah Renovata: a step by step guide to the Tree of Life and the Four Worlds of The Qabalists

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The ladder of lights;: Or, Qabalah Renovata: a step by step guide to the Tree of Life and the Four Worlds of The Qabalists
William G Gray
Manufacturer: Helios Book Service
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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The War and Peace of the WWII Air War

Petals of fire
Herb Alf
Manufacturer: Millennium Memorial Trust
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Untold Valor: Forgotten Stories of American Bomber Crews over Europe in World War II

ASIN: 0967814006

Customer Reviews:

The War and Peace of the WWII Air War.......2006-02-19

It is a pity that this book was produced in such limited numbers--only 2,000 copies were produced, all in rich leather and individually numbered--because it may well be the 'War and Peace' of the U.S. air war over Europe in World War Two. I first encountered this book some years ago, and since I was writing a history of the air war, contacted Mr. Alf and had the opportunity to spend time with him on several occasions. We talked extensively about his motivations for writing this book, which took him about fifty years from conception to completion. Mr. Alf was working on the screenplay for Petals of Fire at the time of his death.

Alf was a B-17 pilot in the 100th Bomb Group, who was shot down and became a prisoner of war. He began recording his thoughts and observations while in the camp, on whatever was handy. Some of the book was written on both sides of sheets of toilet paper. He was not only in the camps, he was also on a long winter march near the end of the war, and was twice bombed by allied aircraft while a prisoner.

This is not your traditional air crew memoir. It is a novel, and in it, Mr. Alf attempts to tell the story of the air war from the upper echelons down through the airmen themselves. He does this through his careful selection of characters. Extensively researched over many years, it is a milestone of history. It is a book to be treasured, and I hope that a publisher at some point will notice that and pick it up for republication.

Petals of Fire is, inherently, an anti-war novel. It traces the horrors of war, the snafus of the higher-ups and the effects on the men who must actually do the dying, all the while keeping all characters human and sympathetic. Though the book is classified as fiction, it draws so heavily from Alf's own experiences that the scenes about the aircrews, the prisoner of war experiences, and the long march are basically factual autobiography. For a full treatment of this outstanding book and the man who wrote it, you could read the chapter in the book "Untold Valor" entitled "Herb Alf's Journey", as it contains an in-depth analysis of the book and the man.

Herb Alf was a true American hero. He did his job, paid the price, and had the courage to look deeply into the complexities of war and reject most of war's premises. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, but his book will live on forever. If you are in any way interested in the air war, this book is absolutely required reading.

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World armies

Manufacturer: Facts on File
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Military Science | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0871964074

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Santana, the hero dog of France
Ernest Thompson Seton
Manufacturer: Phoenix Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Best Internal & External Bio of the Psychedelic Experience
Entheogens: Professional Listing

The man who turned on the world
Michael Hollingshead
Manufacturer: Abelard-Schuman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Customer Reviews:

Best Internal & External Bio of the Psychedelic Experience.......2004-09-14

A must read for the history of modern America psychedelics!! Great autobiography and history of the psychedelic movement! The perfect book to read after Timothy Leary's High Priest, which is where I'm coming from. And you can get a HTML copy of this on acidmagic.com. I printed 213 pages. This book is for anyone interested in Mysticism and internal spiritual seeking and the meanings within psychedelics. I'm saddened that this book is out of print and unavailable for a decent price.

Where Leary leaves off, Hollingshead picks up and goes further down the historical road of psychedelics and its progenitors, describing the psychedelic renaissance from the Leary-Albert streams into that of a whole movement, first of Harvard 1960-61, then of the International Federation for Internal Freedom in the 1963-64, the Agora Scientific Trust, Inc in Manhattan 1963 and Castalia Foundation (named after Herman Hesse's book) of 1964-67 and the League for Spiritual Discovery of 1966-68, etc., etc., expression of the metaphysical reality and the beauty of the flower of the spirit, the Age of the Flower Children born out of the individual experience of transcendence as in an earlier age, the Vedic Soma that brought the light of consciousness into the world.

Hollingshead has been there, said that, done that and has done a hell of lot more than most people I've had contact with. He's the man with the famous Maionaise Jar with 5,000 hits of pure Ergot acid, the man who first turned on Timothy Leary and Richard Albert (Ram Dass), Maynard and Flo Ferguson and many, many others.

Hollingshead knowledge of the external movement and influence of psychedelics is both impressive and of great interest, things you find out that you never knew but wish you had. But ultimately, it's his understanding and depth of the internal Buddhistic, ego-crushing descriptions, his Eastern and Western comparisons, that have me loving this book as a real treasure.

At the end of the book Hollingdale writes:

Our mind craves dreams, those magical realms, for ever present between somewhere and nowhere, which beguile us with a thraldom all their own and help keep our sense of wonder alive. And if the new 'matter-of-factness' encroaches on our brain to no other end than to make of our life a thing and not, as it longs to be, an instrument of self-transcendence, we feel distressed by our inability to dream as once we did; and all delight is gone, our life somehow diminished, which is the cause of most of the angst in the self-the knowledge that what is most human in our life is being determined not by our 'true' needs, which are divined from the centre of our being, opening like the petals of the lotus and are beyond thought, beyond intellect, 'beyond striving', but are on the contrary, determined entirely by external forces, through no choice of ours.

We are at once the victims and the beneficiaries of modern technological advances. Reality is now the new myth-making substance. We are manipulated by man-made dreams which develop artificial wants: frozen and tasteless foods, bland, homogenized lives; cliché-ridden beliefs and standardized rituals; conspicuous consumption; the 'pooled self-esteem' our Western forms of nationalism make possible; mechanical gadgets; devotion to science and the 'reality-principle'; and the abandonment of any religious revelation, so that even our religious leaders and intellectuals do not use words like 'spiritual' and 'idealistic' at all freely, for they are themselves quite happy with their material comforts and the labor-saving world of gadgets and good health that goes with them, and would consider those who preached that the happiness people want should be sought for in any kind of nirvana, mystic ecstasy, theoria, transcendence, as certainly other-worldly.

What the spread of technological culture has done is to push the boundaries of the literal miracle, the 'other-world', the magical far outside the range of ordinary everyday human happiness. Miracles, our politicians tell us, do not originate in some supernatural religious state but must be realized in this world and have their basis in the familiar facts of technological progress, in communication, education, transportation, public health, etc., etc. But those who have found a source of happiness in a life of the spirit are of the opinion that there has been a retrogression in our aim for a true culture of humanity. While we are busily pouring ever-increasing intellectual efforts into improving our means, we have forgotten the ends they are intended to achieve. Do we really know what we want?

This question is more likely to be answered in the Alternative literature of protest, the theme of vagabondage, and the exploration of individual human consciousness via drugs, Zen Buddhism, Yoga, esotericism, Buddha, the Hermetic arts, alchemy, visionary experience, Tantra, hesychast methods, hypostatic union of Christ and man, and all the charismas of the spirit. Those who affirm that the real truth and source of all human joy and happiness lies wholly 'within' must try, with whatever means they can get, to break the hold of that view of life which has replaced the potentialities of the human mind with the perspective of its mechanical extensions, the extensions of transportation and social planning and mass conditioning which are now turning on the body and strangling it as the serpents did at Laocoon.

Modern society is growing infertile, devoid of a living culture, no longer productive of any personal form, an abstract, lifeless, cinematic world of machine-made interpretations about the self. It is not surprising therefore if we tell ourselves that all revelatory experience is foolishness, so much so that man sees himself increasingly as nothing but an 'energy slave' or a cipher on the face of a moral and spiritual void. And as the knowledge of his own disorientation cannot be handled within the framework of so-called normality, he turns more and more to his brave world of machines. And through the power of his machines he acts out the uncomprehended tragedy of man's inner disruption. Yet it was the Ancient Chinese Sage, Huang Tzu, who proposed some 2500 years ago that dependence even on a simple kind of machine causes man to become uncertain of his own inner impulses; and further, the result may lead him to forget how to master his own world.

So we have learned instead how to master our machines, because machines do not serve us unless we service them, but in the process we have had to adjust our human organization to our equipment. We tend to get what the machine can best give us rather than what is most desirable.

Entheogens: Professional Listing.......1999-04-29

"The Man Who Turned On the World" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy" http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy

The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons

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Starts great but falls apart at the end
on a superficial level it's eye-opening; beyond that, it's dreck
Another perspective
Filled with substantive and interpretive errors - Kernan gets it all wrong
a sad but illuminating book

The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons
Alvin Kernan
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Aviation | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

All Deals | Blowout Books | Stores | Books
ASIN: 030010989X

Book Description

The Battle of Midway is considered the greatest U.S. naval victory, but behind the luster is the devastation of the American torpedo squadrons. Of the 51 planes sent to attack Japanese carriers only 7 returned, and of the 127 aircrew only 29 survived. Not a single torpedo hit its target.
A story of avoidable mistakes and flawed planning, The Unknown Battle of Midway reveals the enormous failures that led to the destruction of four torpedo squadrons but were omitted from official naval reports: the planes that ran out of gas, the torpedoes that didn’t work, the pilots who had never dropped torpedoes, and the breakdown of the attack plan. Alvin Kernan, who was present at the battle, has written a troubling but persuasive analysis of these and other little-publicized aspects of this great battle. The standard navy tactics for carrier warfare are revealed in tragic contrast to the actual conduct of the battle and the after-action reports of the ships and squadrons involved.

Customer Reviews:

Starts great but falls apart at the end.......2007-09-04

Now a college professor, the author was, in 1942 a member of the aircrew on the USS Enterprise at the Battle of midway and clearly the loss of his friends in the torpedo squadron in their infamously suicidal attack stayed with him until it flowed out of him into the pages of this work.

The early parts of this book show where the scholar of now blends with the young mechanic of 60+ years ago in detailing the working of a carrier's air group and the now know to be fatal flaws in US torpedos and aircraft.

Unfortunatly he should have stuck with that and either run that theme through the book or have written a shorter book. The second part of the book degrades as Kernan launches his own strike against the CAG (Commander Air Group) of the USS Hornet whom he blames for the destruction of that ship's torpedo squadron and failure of the Hornet's bomber and fighter squadrons to engage at all. The rest of this epic battle is reduced to little more than "you know what followed..." I was reminded of "The midnight Ride of Paul Revre" where it cover's a day's battle as "you know what happened in the books you have read, how the redcoats fired and fled..."

He details that there was a lack of communication between Enterprise and Hornet and that there was a failure to agree between squadron leaders but all squadrons of torpedo planes were decimated in the attack and other leaders don't get the venom that Kernan spreads on the Hornet. As Kernan was on board the Enterprise at the time, it's never clear why he has such a particular ax to grind with the Hornet's command. If the CAG and Captain of the Hornet were praised today as the hero's of the battle you could see this as "setting the record straight," but as the heros are Nimitz, Fletcher, Spruance and the commanders of the bomber squadrons from enterprise and Yorktown, this comes accross as just a personal vendetta without explanation. The end result is that the rest of the book, pancakes into sea making it almost as pointless as the torpedo attacks it documents.

on a superficial level it's eye-opening; beyond that, it's dreck.......2007-07-28

one of the first things I noticed upon reading this book was that the author was a 'veteran member of one of the torpedo squadrons" that fought at Midway. I thought it was unlikely that any of the pilots of the few surviving torpedo bombers was still alive, though maybe some of the radio-operator/gunners were.

I was a bit disappointed to read that the extent of Kernan's participation in the torpedo attacks in question was as an ordinanceman for Torpedo 6 aboard the USS Enterprise. I am by no means saying his participation wasn't significant, nor am I saying that I don't think he was just as brave as anyone else. I simply thought (and still believe) that kernan was neither then nor now in a position to second-guess command decisions made by men whose level of responsibility was far greater than his own.

For example, another reviewer correctly pointed out that Waldron, while undoubtedly brave and a fine pilot, committed a grievous military offense in disobeying a direct order from his commanding officer. Disobeying a commanding officer in a combat situation is precisely how to get a lot of people killed, and that is exactly what happened except in this case "a lot" turned out to be "every plane in the squadron." Kernan, however, heaps praise on Waldron's correct guess for the position of the Japanese fleet.

I can't help but believe that Kernan, as an enlisted man, feels or at one time felt a certain jealousy or misguided animosity toward commissioned officers, such as those who flew many of the planes or made some of the command decisions aboard the ships. For example, Kernan points out rather uselessly that among the seven surviving TBD Devastators among all three carrier squadrons, "a high number were enlisted pilots." The clear implication is that the enlisted pilots were more skilled than the Annapolis pilots, who were, in Kernan's view, privileged "ringknockers' and other such members of the good ol' boy fraternity that had excluded him.

Excuse me, but I don't think an Annapolis ring or lack of one counted during the devastators' attack runs, as no amount of flying skill could make a lumbering, 1934 torpedo bomber design escape a Japanese Zero pilot at low level, with a height advantage, and little or no American fighter escort. Ironically, by Kernan's logic, it was only a matter of flying skill that resulted in a torpedo bomber pilot's survival or death during the attack. Waldron, Lindsey, and Massey all died, therefore they must not have been very good pilots. Clearly, kernan didn't intend to say this, so there really wasn't any point to him mentioning that a "high number" of the survivors weren't officers, unless he just wants to get that anti-Annapolis shot in.

Kernan also goes to great pains to point out that American fighter pilots might have been afraid to tangle with the Mitsubishi Zero pilots. This suggestion is so insulting that it alone destroyed Kernan's credibility for me. He doesn't question the courage of the American bomber pilots (as well he should not), and yet the fighter pilots are subject to his accusations of cowardice? Kernan must have had a great view of the battle above the Japanese fleet, from the hangar deck of the Enterprise. He wasn't there and yet he has the gall to write as though he was riding in the cockpit, thinking other people's thoughts. Kernan should know that despite the F4F's deficiencies (and there were many), the Mitsubishi A6M also had many deficiencies which American fighter pilots were gradually learning how to exploit through teamwork and a greater understanding of how to make the most of their own plane's strengths. Kernan conveniently forgets from time to time that in June 1942 America had been in combat with the Japanese for only half a year, against an enemy with a [shrinking] numerical advantage and the initiative. considering these things, the F4F pilots performed very well. Needless to say, the American navy had no lack of volunteers for the fighter units, even if the F4F in use at the time was inferior to the A6M in several respects.

All in all, Kernan writes fluidly enough, and the way he presents his case might convince the casual reader that there was some kind of conspiracy to cover up American incompetence at Midway. A more informed reader will be aware that America was new to the war and still learning how fight it, and still learning how to build the weapons to win it. The A6M Zero was designed in response to the Japanese' experience against Seversky P-35s and Russian I-16s in China. The F6F Hellcat was designed in response to the American experience against the Japanese. Kernan should be applauding the navy rather than bashing it.

He seems to really dislike the elitist Annapolis types, and yet it is clear that his position as a Yale professor paved the way for this dreck to reach the book store.

What's good enough for the goose, Kernan. Whatever.

Another perspective.......2007-05-27

The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons

This book is a very quick and very informative read and offers a very different perspective as to the Midway encounter. I recommend it.

Filled with substantive and interpretive errors - Kernan gets it all wrong.......2007-04-06

At the beginning of World War II the author was an 18-year old enlisted aviation ordnanceman who subsequently served on several carriers in the Pacific. Readers would hope that he would leverage this experience to provide a unique and original viewpoint of war on a carrier. Unfortunately, Kernan strays far outside his expertise. Many of his comments and some of his facts are dead wrong; some of his comments and many of his interpretations can seem to be creditable on a superficial level, but are also either dead wrong or one of the breed of insidious half-truths that have a life of their own and are hard to squash. This book will be cited in future works, so another cottage industry has been created to correct the horde of myths and inaccuracies that will trickle down into Naval history from this book. To crown this achievement, Kernan creates a new "conspiracy theory" about the Battle of Midway.
Any good conspiracy theorist needs to first establish his personal credibility. This Kernan attempts in a few introductory chapters where he talks about military history, carrier aviation, ship design, and aerial torpedoes. His believability dies quickly. Specifically, I count 20 substantive or interpretive errors or half-truths in the book's first 25 pages.
There are errors where his facts are just dead wrong:
* "The USS Oglala was hit by four torpedoes ..." No, she was not hit by any torpedoes - she sustained underwater damage from a single torpedo hit on a light cruiser that was moored inboard of her. Because she sank without taking any direct hits herself she was later known as The Ship that Was Frightened to Death;
* The Japanese had not "stalemated the Russians in Manchuria," actually the Japanese were soundly beaten at Nomonhan, the 23rd Division being nearly annihilated with 76% casualties. The only reason the Soviets halted was because they had Poland to invade and then the Germans to repulse;
* The US Navy had radar "courtesy of the British." No the first USN radar was on a ship in April of 1937, and the first production radar, the CXAM, began installation in May of 1940. Exchange of radar information with the British did not happen until the Fall of 1940;
* Carriers to launch wanted 30 knots of wind over the deck, not "30 knots [of ship's speed] plus the wind."
... and many other factual errors.
There are errors where his proffered opinions are either only half right or misleading. For example, his comments on the placement of islands on carriers, boiler and engine room subdivision, and stack numbers and placement are superficial and uninformed, and generally half-truths. Tonnage limitations and how the disposal of stack gasses effect turbulence in the landing area is never mentioned. He thinks that early US carrier designs had arresting gear at both ends of the ship because "depending on the wind, the carriers were as likely to launch and land planes while going backward as forward" - no, Alvin, the arresting gear at both ends was for emergency recoveries without having to break the deck spot, or in the event of battle damage.
Even more egregiously, he does not understand the distinction between belt armor and a ships torpedo protection system, mixing them up in his discussion and then laughably coming to the conclusion that carriers succumbed to enemy torpedoes "because they were not armored enough." He uses technical terms improperly: for example, a ship's propeller shafts are referred to as "drive shafts," equating a carrier's propulsion system with that of a 1941 Chevrolet roadster.
After thus establishing his credibility, Kernan then goes on to collect some of the reasons why so many of the US torpedo bombers were lost at Midway. Most are straightforward, collected from other secondary sources dealing with the battle, and are presented in a workmanlike manner. However, when he moves to original material he reveals his true roots, not those of a Navy aviation ordnanceman, but of an English Professor from an Ivy League school. What he really wants is to talk about racism and class barriers in the wartime Navy. Racism he could work in only for a sentence, since it is clearly irrelevant to the story. Classism, however, becomes the centerpiece of the only "original" analysis in the book. Kernan contends that there was a conspiracy among the Navy high command to confuse or suppress the facts surrounding the attack of Torpedo 8 in order to protect the career of the Commander Hornet Air Group (CHAG), Commander Ring.
The bare facts are the following: the enemy carriers were located inexactly. Ring and Waldron have an argument before launch on the flyout course to use to find the enemy, but Ring is unconvinced by Waldron's arguments. Ring, as CHAG, gathers his squadrons and heads out. 30 minutes after launch Waldron again argues over the radio with the CHAG, then, on his own hook, departs from the formation with his squadron of torpedo bombers. Waldron finds the carrier, attacks, and his entire squadron is shot down, inflicting no damage. Ring does not find the target and returns to the Hornet.
Waldron is Alvin Kernan's hero. He dedicates the book to him.
In Kernan's view, Waldron is the self-sacrificing hero and Ring is the goat for not agreeing with him, and subsequently for not finding the targets when presented with the "correct" course by Waldron. This is exactly 180 degrees out, and where Kernan displays a lamentable ignorance of how military organizations work. Waldron was obligated to present his views to his commander; however, he was equally obligated to follow the orders of his commander afterwards. Kernan spends a lot of ink explaining why the Devastator was a poor aircraft and inadequate to the task; how, then, can he make Waldron out as a hero for disobeying orders and leading his squadron on a suicide attack in such an inadequate aircraft? If the TBD was unlikely to penetrate to the target without fighter support and the diversion of a dive bombing attack, points all well made by Kernan, how can Kernan subsequently praise him for doing just that?
Waldron was guilty of disobeying orders, and should have been court-martialed; the real "conspiracy" was that the Navy gave him a Navy Cross for getting himself and his people killed.
Examine what could have been: if Waldron had followed his commander's orders, he would have arrived at the point of no return and turned back, undoubtedly with a great big "I told you so" expression on his face. But then, his torpedo squadron would have been back on the Hornet and available for subsequent strikes, including those against Hiryu and against the Japanese cruisers on the 6th, after the Zeros were gone and the TBD had a reasonable chance of getting hits. Had he acted appropriately, his combat power would have been preserved for later, instead of senselessly thrown away. These points totally evade Kernan as he obsesses with his conspiracy theory.
The evidence that Kernan presents to support his idea that there was a Naval Academy Alumni Association conspiracy to "save" Ring career is that Ring did not submit an after action report (rather, that Kernan could not find an after action report in the archives, quite a different thing), and that Mitscher's after action report was inaccurate as it supposed that Ring passed to the south of the target carriers, when he evidently actually passed to the north. Kernan does not understand that the after action reports, submitted only days after a battle, sometimes reflect the very real confusion of the battle. Considering that Torpedo 8 and Fighting 8 were lost in toto, Mitscher was writing a report based on limited inputs and not a full picture. Often only an exhaustive after-action review is able to get the facts sorted out. From this slim reed - the lack of a report, and an inaccurate report - Kernan claims a conspiracy to protect Ring. That's the jist of Kernan's argument. There is no other evidence, no corroborating testimony, no other facts, just Kernan's perception of class jealousy manifested into a conviction of a conspiracy.
One wonders if Kernan's research in the field of English is held to the same standard of evidence.
One should buy this book if one would like to see a collection of secondary source information regarding the US torpedo bombers at Midway. He has some quotations from works that are not easily located, and collects faithfully most of the arguments against US torpedoes and the Devastator torpedo bomber that are located in disparate sources. One should not buy the book for clear charts or graphics - "minimalist" is the style, so minimalist as to be nearly incomprehensible. One should also purchase this book if one wants to be entertained when the real naval historians go into damage control mode to stamp out all the disinformation spread by this book.
One should not buy this book if you are less than an expert in the field, for you are likely to be misled by what is known in the Navy as "bum gouge."
Dr. Alan D. Zimm, CDR USN (ret) (By the way, NOT a USNA grad).

a sad but illuminating book.......2007-01-02

This is an odd book---part memoir, part history. Kernan was 18 and serving on the Enterprise during the battle. He later becomes a professor at Princeton but never got over the pointless destruction of the torpedo planes at the battle. I hope writing this book lets him puit his burden down. The torpedo planes never had a chance: there was no training for the pilots becuase there were not enough torpedos to practice with; how the torpedos were launced in combat not only did not work but made the planes all to be certain to be blown apart(come in low , drop the torpedo gently into the water, get as close to the enemy ship as possible was tuaght and was all wrong); no fighter cover although argued for by Commander Waldrin and rejected by Commander Ring). And Ring comes in for an allegation by Kernan of cowardice for taking his planes away from the while Waldron follows his gut and headed for it. Was their destruction pointless? Not really---they kept the enemy busy and gave the Enterprise dive bombers a chance to find the Japanese.

Unknown Soldiers: The Story of the Missing of the First World War

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The soldier's point of view
History and Humanity and the Tale of the Unknowns
First rate account of WW1
Gold Star Mothers
Engaging

Unknown Soldiers: The Story of the Missing of the First World War
Neil Hanson
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Military & Spies | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

World War I | Military | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0307263703
Release Date: 2006-05-16

Book Description

The First World War was a conflict of unprecedented ferocity that unleashed such demons as mechanized warfare and mass death on the twentieth century. After the last shot was fired and the troops marched home, approximately three million soldiers remained unaccounted for. Some bodies were found, but they bore no trace of identification; many more men had been blown to smithereens or had simply vanished in battlefields where as many as a hundred shells had fallen on every square yard.

An unassuming English chaplain first proposed a symbolic burial of one of those unknown soldiers in memory of all the missing dead. The idea was picked up by almost every country that had an army in the war, and each laid a body to rest amid an outpouring of national grief -- in London’s Westminster Abbey, Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, Rome’s Victor Emmanuelle Monument, and, for the United States, Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Reviewers have praised Neil Hanson’s account of the plight of the sailors in The Confident Hope of a Miracle, a history of the Spanish Armada, his last book. In Unknown Soldiers, he once again offers an unflinching yet compassionate account of the reality of battle on the front lines. He focuses on three soldiers—an American, an Englishman, and a German—and narrates their war experiences through their diaries and letters. Hanson describes how each man endured the nearly unbearable conditions in the trenches and in the air and relates what is known about their deaths: all three died on the battlefields of the Somme, within gunshot sound of one another. He delves into their familial ties, the ideals they expressed in their letters, and he explains how the death of one, the American pilot George Seibold, was instrumental in the creation of the Gold Star Mothers, an organization caring for bereaved mothers, wives, and families that is still active today. Hanson animates and brings to life the combatants who perished without a trace, and shows how the Western world arrived at the now time-honored way of mourning and paying tribute to all those who die in war.

Customer Reviews:

The soldier's point of view.......2007-06-05

When I agreed to review Neil Hanson's book, I expected something far, far different. Something perhaps more along the lines of an epistolary format or the utilization of a more conventional fictional format. What I got was a meticulously researched, well-written, captivating horrifying, narrative history that took me to the Somme in 1916. Hanson focused on three soldiers: A Briton, a German, and an American. "Their tracks, faint as smoke in the wind, intersect time and again, but they are united only in death, for each was killed on the Somme, within gunshot sound of each other."

Hanson uses more than the diaries and letters to explain the cost of war from the soldier's point of view. He researched the heck out of this battle, topic, and time as evident by the 96 pages of footnotes.

In an essence, Hanson is giving faces to the three million unaccounted-for soldiers from WWI. He also explains how the world remembers those unknown soldiers ever since. "The grieving families of such men were deprived even of the consolation of a funeral and a grave site, and for them, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier became the grave and the gravestone of their lost loved ones. In almost every combatant nation, an unknown solider was also buried at some national shrine and, just as in America, at once became the focus of a pilgrimage that continues to this day

I admit that, as a predominately fiction reader, the quote marks around quoted passages versus dialogue sometimes tripped me, as did the switch in point of view with a sentence. I had to often re-read paragraphs, sometimes, chapters, to be sure of what was happening. But the structure works--well, very well. I came away from this book with a new respect for fighting men and women everywhere. I also came away with an intimate new knowledge of trench warfare that on one level I'm not sure that I wanted to know but on another level compelled me to keeping reading.

I thought I kind of knew what WWI was like, but I had no idea. This book should be compulsory reading in every high school or college worldwide.

Armchair Interviews says: An eye-opening story of the soldiers of World War I. Check his web site to see what else he has written.

History and Humanity and the Tale of the Unknowns.......2007-05-08

This excellent book tells the story of the creation of the idea of commemorating the "unknown soldier" against the backdrop of the personal stories of three of the tens of thousands of missing and presumed dead soldiers (1 British, 1 German and 1 American). The tales of the three young men killed in their prime are told with a good blend of humanity and history. The impact upon their families (especially in the case of the American airman) is addressed as well. This is one of the best books on the First World War, capturing some of the history of the war, its beginning and course and much of the human toll the war took in the numbers of killed, maimed and otherwise traumatized by the mechanized killing over four long years.

First rate account of WW1 .......2007-05-06

Without getting into too much detail about the why of the great War, Neil Hanson tells a gripping tale of 3 soldiers (a German, an Englishman, and an American Pilot) who ultimately meet their fate on the battlefields of France.

Gold Star Mothers.......2007-05-02

I found this book to be fascinating. We are in a Iraq and have lost some 3,200 servicemembers; a drop in the bucket compared to the bloodbath of the First World War. It is amazing to see the changes in how we care for our wounded and killed versus 90 years ago. The author chose to cover an English, American and German casualty. I am not sure why he did not include the French or Belgian but I am sure he has his reasons. He covered the soldiers letters to home, as well as how the families responded to the individual losses. The American family was responsible for the founding of the "Gold Star Mothers" organization, which recognized a loss by the use of a pennant with a gold star for a fallen soldier in the family and a blue star for any still serving. What all the families share in common is the lack of a body to return home to them; all were either unidentifiable or destroyed on the battlefield. What many people do not know is that the French and Belgium are still unearthing remains and scrap from the First and Second World Wars today.Having not had a battle fought on American soil, more or less from the Indian wars of the late 1870's, we are fortunate not to continually have to relive the horrors of the past World Wars.

Engaging.......2007-01-16

This is a most engaging and poignant book. It is extremely well written, researched and referenced. Profound. Could not put it down. No book about this terrible war can avoid evoking emotion, and this one continues to do so. The approach to it's content, thru personal eyes, is what stabs at one's heart the deepest. Had to 'recover' after finishing this one...

Those Wonderful Women in Their Flying Machines: The Unknown Heroines of World War Two

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Those wonderful women in their flying machines: a story of perseverence and courage over mysoginism.
The Definitive Account of American Women Aviators in WWII
Women Link Aline Rhonie (Hofheimer) Brooks won WW II!
An inspiring read for any adventurous spirit or history buff

Those Wonderful Women in Their Flying Machines: The Unknown Heroines of World War Two
Sally Van Wagenen Keil
Manufacturer: Four Directions PR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0962765902

Book Description

A narrative history, from first-hand interviews, of the valiant American women pilots of World War II.

Customer Reviews:

Those wonderful women in their flying machines: a story of perseverence and courage over mysoginism........2006-03-13

I found the book easy and agreable to read, being split in chapters covering various aspects of the story of the WASPs. The book showed well the depth of the prejudice and intolerance, sometimes bordering on the criminal, shown towards brave women who only wanted to serve their country in a time of war. The autor also managed to cover the subject of aviation without using overly technical terms. The only possible critique I would give to this book is that more pictures may have made the book even easier to read, especially to the readers who have little or no knowledge of aviation. I am myself highly knowledgeable about aviation and war and found the information in the book to be both accurate and pertinent to the subject of the book. Overall a good book to have to relax or pass time during a long trip.

The Definitive Account of American Women Aviators in WWII.......2003-02-28

(by E.M. Singer, author of "Mother Flies Hurricanes")This well-written, thorough, engaging account is prefaced by short biographies on Amelia Earhart and Jacqueline Cochran. The author focuses mainly on the WASPs, but England's Air Transport Auxiliary gets a chapter (which is only right, because the ATA was the forerunner of the WASPs). Roberta Leveaux, who wrote the foreword to Mother Flies Hurricanes, is featured along with other American women who served in the ATA. (She was known as Bobby Sandoz then.) These 25 women, most of them, went by boat across the North Atlantic in 1942, the worst year of the war for U-boat sinkings on Allied shipping. Once in England, they had to endure the same privations and hardships as the British people-rationing, bombings, poor or non-existent heating in the places they were billetted, among other things. This book paints a vivid picture of ATA training, which was strict, comprehensive, and exacting. It had to be, since the pilots had to ferry dozens of different types of aircraft to hundreds of RAF maintenance units and squadrons scattered all over England. Keil's account also explores the feelings of culture shock and homesickness the women felt at being in a foreign country, which was a war zone on top of everything else. They overcame all the physical, mental, and psychological challenges thrown at them, and became top-notch ferry pilots who are still remembered today with admiration and affection by their British compatriots. For more recommendations on books about women pilots and the role they played in WWII, check out the motherflieshurricanes.com website.

Women Link Aline Rhonie (Hofheimer) Brooks won WW II!.......2002-09-30

Those Wonderful Women in Their Flying Machines
by Sally V. Keil is a wonderful attempt at giving credit
to true heros of our nation. Today women compete in many
areas and mostly against other women. In the air, women
obey all the laws of physics that men do. And these women
were very special. On such women was the late great Aline Rhonie
Hofheimer who besides being on the first to sign up, she also
served in ther British Red Cross Ambulance Corp and flew also with the ATA. Prior she created a huge fresco/mural in Hanger
F of Roosevelt Field on Long Island. It is important that
todays youth understand that such women existed and if not
poisoned by our culture can rise to the top again. God bless
the WAFS and WASPS and all of those women who put themselves
in harms way and never asked for special consideration. Buy
the book.

An inspiring read for any adventurous spirit or history buff.......2000-04-12

Facinating! A true and candid account of history's flygirls and the Women Pilots during WWII, this book is almost impossible to put down. So little has been told about these pioneering women of the skies. The amazing, daring accounts of pilot training, WWII travels, and the prejudices battled during service are a revealed in such heart-felt and sometimes shocking detail. No other book about women pilots has delved into the day to day life or recounted the history of women flyers with such vigor. You'll head for the nearest flight school!

A marine named Mitch: An autobiography of Mitchell Paige, Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps retired

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A marine named Mitch: An autobiography of Mitchell Paige, Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps retired
Mitchell Paige
Manufacturer: Vantage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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