Book Description
Charting the whole Burma war, this book flows like a novel from the high command to the sharp end setting out a myriad of facts and considerations in a clear and coherent narrative. Ranging far beyond pure military history the story is multi-layered, combining objective analysis with a sensitive account of human reaction in the face of bitter, cruel warfare, disease and an inhospitable terrain. Military events are painstakingly detailed, and set in their political and cultural context. Equal attention is paid to both sides of the conflict and the insights made into Japanese plans and responses make the book uniquely informative, exciting and moving.
'If one had to select one book about the Burma War, this fine work is the best' Dekho, magazine of the Burma Star Association
'There will be few more thorough chronicles of World War Two's most dreaded front than Louis Allen's Burma: The Longest War' The Listener
Customer Reviews:
Burma Star.......2007-01-25
Louis Allen, who was there, has captured the completeness of the longest war, the three year non-stop struggle for Burma, magnificently. This largely forgotten war, which saved the Indian sub-continent from Japanese dominance, has been well described, mostly in fragments, based on their personal experiences, by several authors but none has undertaken a complete description that encompasses both the Allied and the Japanese perspectives and Allen's work does this brilliantly.
Based on many interviews with both Allied and Japanese personnel this book captures the struggle from the initial defeat through the retreat into India to the final overthrow of the Japanese military in this large, often beautiful, and unfortunately, today mostly closed ,country.
Fought over widely varied terrain and with a savagery akin to that of the German-Russian experience this book is a tribute to the bravery of military personnel from a wide variety of backgrounds. On the Allied side soldiers from Britain, China, America, India, Nepal ( Goorkas), East and West Africa and Burma were motivated by excellent leadership to stop and then defeat the Japanese.
Interestingly it was to prove to be both the proudest moment and the swansong of the world's largest volunteer army---the British Indian Army. In the Burmese campaigns this army, with its mixture of races and religions form today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma truly came into its own only to be broken up two year later.
One must not forget the part played by the logistics services. Both the Allied and the Japanese forces were low in priority for equipment and at the end of a long supply chain. Much of the Allied success was due to a superior supply capability, and in particular, the concept of aerial supply was perfected in the ejection of the Japanese army from Burma.
This book is an excellent read for any student of military history if only to ensure that we never forget the Kohima Memorial inscription.
"When you go home,
Tell them of us and say.
For your tomorrow
We gave our today."
Agree on all accounts but one........2002-10-01
This excellent book is hard to put down but I am afraid that in going from a hardcover edition to a smaller paperback that the maps have become very hard to read. The letters are so small on some of the maps that they are nearly impossible to read. Hope the editors do something about it but I doubt it will happen. Minor flaw in a great read.
Definitive Account.......2001-02-19
This is an outstanding book that must be considered the definitive single-volume account of the campaign in Burma in WWII. The author is a veteran of the campaign in the British Army where he was an intelligence officer. What is especially enjoyable about this book is that it includes many firsthand Japanese accounts in addition to Allied. The author speaks Japanese and drew upon official Japanese histories and personal interviews with participants. I have read several other books about this often forgotten Theater in WWII ( including Viscount Slim's "Defeat Into Victory" ), but this is the first book that includes Japanese sources. The author starts with the Japanese invasion of Burma and discusses the political situation in Burma prior to the invasion and how the Japanese used this to their favor. It includes the retreat of the British into India, their recovery, the British offensive in the Arakan, and Wingate and the birth of the Chindits. The author goes into great detail about Kohima-Imphal and this is where the Japanese perspective is so interesting. It follows with battles of North Burma and Stillwell, Mandalay/Meiktila and the race to Rangoon and the Japanese breakout of the 28th Army and then the surrender of Japanes forces. The book has good maps and it is not to difficult to follow forces on the battlefield. The most daunting task is trying to remember the Burmese and Indian names for places and trying to remember all the names of the Japanese sources and officers. But all this helps to add to the authenticity of the book. This book is a must read for anyone interested in WWII. It is well written, easy to read and very enjoyable. I highly recommend it.
Definitive Account.......2001-02-19
This is an outstanding book that must be considered the definitive single-volume account of the campaign in Burma in WWII. The author is a veteran of the campaign in the British Army where he was an intelligence officer. What is especially enjoyable about this book is that it includes many firsthand Japanese accounts in addition to Allied. The author speaks Japanese and drew upon official Japanese histories and personal interviews with participants. I have read several other books about this often forgotten Theater in WWII ( including Viscount Slim's "Defeat Into Victory" ), but this is the first book that includes Japanese sources. The author starts with the Japanese invasion of Burma and discusses the political situation in Burma prior to the invasion and how the Japanese used this to their favor. It includes the retreat of the British into India, their recovery, the British offensive in the Arakan, and Wingate and the birth of the Chindits. The author goes into great detail about Kohima-Imphal and this is where the Japanese perspective is so interesting. It follows with battles of North Burma and Stillwell, Mandalay/Meiktila and the race to Rangoon and the Japanese breakout of the 28th Army and then the surrender of Japanes forces. The book has good maps and it is not to difficult to follow forces on the battlefield. The most daunting task is trying to remember the Burmese and Indian names for places and trying to remember all the names of the Japanese sources and officers. But all this helps to add to the authenticity of the book. This book is a must read for anyone interested in WWII. It is well written, easy to read and very enjoyable. I highly recommend it.
Average customer rating:
- The WWII Burma Campaign with a Japanese slant
|
Burma: the Longest War 1941-45
Louis Allen
Manufacturer: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Myanmar
| Asia
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Strategy
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Asia
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0297821687 |
Customer Reviews:
The WWII Burma Campaign with a Japanese slant.......1998-03-12
Louis Allen was a Japanese interpreter in the British Army in the Burma campaign. He has written this book with more of an understanding of the Japanese mindset. The description of the bloodletting of the Japanese armies at Imphal and Kohima give an insight into both the tactics and the attitudes of the, hitherto, undefeated Japanese armies in 1944. It is salutory to read the deprivation suffered by the Japanese as they tried break out from the Pegu Yomas to cross the Salween River and escape into Thailand. It is interesting, almost mandatory, to read this book in conjunction with Slim''s "Defeat into Victory".
Average customer rating:
|
Anecdotes of Burma: (the longest war, 1941-1945)
J. W Peyton
Manufacturer: J.W. Peyton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
General
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Personal Narratives
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
20th Century
| Canada
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: B0007BX6M6 |
Amazon.com
In Holy Madness, Adam Zamoyski has written a history of revolutions, and of the romantic and sometimes ridiculous revolutionaries who inspired them. But because revolution was so ubiquitous an activity in the 19th century, what he has actually produced is a comprehensive account of Western civilization from 1776 to 1871. Inspired by the American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789), the whole of Europe, and large portions of the rest of the world, was regularly convulsed by the urge to fashion Utopia on Earth. Zamoyski manages to flesh out these events with well-chosen detail and a fine sense of the touching comic-heroics they often entailed, as well as the bloodletting and the horror. As a historian of Poland, Zamoyski untangles the many uprisings in Eastern Europe with particular aplomb, but his account of France is also adept, with a vivid portrayal of the idealism of the Paris Commune, overthrown in 1871.
Holy Madness advances a particular argument: that the century of revolutionary upheaval was the direct result of the waning of religion as a universal human-value system. Post-Enlightenment men and women turned to the ecstasies of patriotism and revolution to fill the void left by belief in God, hoping to construct a paradise on Earth rather than wait for one in heaven. According to this thesis, revolution was a new theology: "The theology may have been shaky, but the new religion did have a god. That god was the sovereign nation, whose service was the highest calling, as countless revolutionary catechisms pointed out." It's an ingenious line, worked through thoroughly, although it doesn't explain everything--for instance, why Britain was almost entirely free of revolutionary upset during the same period. But this is thought-provoking and well-made historical writing. --Adam Roberts, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
"Entertaining and thought-provoking." (Times Literary Supplement)
"Zamoyski skillfully brings together all the strains of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nationalism, from the American Revolution to the Paris Commune, showing how quasi-religious idealism prepared the way for both fascism and communism. . . . A stimulating and finely written book." (Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad)
From the first shots of the American Revolution in 1776 to the last agony of the Paris Commune in 1871, Adam Zamoyski recreates an era when determined men and women were willing to die for the cause of an idealized nation, and who transformed the society of Europe and its colonies. Moving fluidly through the history of the tumultuous years that embraced the American and French revolutions, the Irish Rebellion, the Polish uprisings, the liberation of South America, and the Italian Risorgimento, Holy Madness captures the passion of revolutionary figures who were caught up in the fervor of the nationalist crusade, while exposing the dangerous fallacies of their idealism.
Customer Reviews:
How Love of Country came to replace Love of God.......2007-07-19
That is Zamoyski's premise: as the Enlightenment loosened the Church's hold on the minds of the intellectual classes in Europe it was replaced for some by a mystic, fanatical love of "country." The entire concept of belonging to a country, of having loyalty to a country, of dying for a country was something of a novelty in 18th century Europe. While people may have been willing to fight an enemy to defend their personal home they idea of having a bond with countrymen - people you have never and would never see - was almost unthinkable in, say, the 14th century. The word "madness" in the title is deliberate. Zamoyski shows that this love of country all to often went over the edge of fanaticism and incorporated many of the worst excesses of religion that the Enlightenment disavowed. In some respects Zamoyski is offering a countering theory to Schama's Citizens in which faith in Science and Progress unleashed the excesses of revolution.
This was the second book I read by Zamoyski (The Last King of Poland was the first) and like the first book this is not a quick read. It requires attention. Zamoyski's chapters in this book often start out slow making the book grind to a near halt on occasion. If you enjoy European History and a distinctive POV stick with it, this book is worth your time.
Romantic revolutionaries and the cult of the nation-state.......2005-03-03
~Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots, and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871~ is an exploration of the ideologues and revolutionaries behind the great multitude of revolutions that befell Europe and the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Zamoyski captures the romantic idealism and quixotic fixations of oft-times crazed revolutionaries who sought heaven on earth. Enmeshed with Rousseau's blissful optimism, the revolutionaries sought to free their nation from the grip of both the church and nobility in a mass rising of peasants and bourgeoisie. They hoped to usher in a glorious new age where the nation reigned supreme. Their quasi-religious idealism invoked crude caricatures of Christian concepts of redemption. They often nostalgically and blasphemously cast their messiah as the nation or the people themselves. Zamoyski also tells the story of more moderate nationalists and revolutionaries who borrowed the idealism of the radicals, and tamed it with a desire for peaceful constitutional and political reform. The cast of characters herein is vast including Rousseau and Robespierre, Bonaparte and Bolivar, and Metternich and Mazzini. Zamoyski captures the cross-currents of the holy madness that reverbrated in violent revolutionary passions as well as harmless romantic sentimentalism and quixotic theorizing by poets and ideologues. Zamoyski takes the reader from the crescendo of the holy madness with a tale of regicide in 1793 to the short-lived Paris Commune in the 1870s. Zamoyski tacitly admits this work might be the bane of specialists (presumably on the subjects of modern Europe, revolutionaries and nationalism) in his introduction. He by his own admission is not at all methodical in its explorations. In my estimation, the book is kind of abrupt in its pronouncements and haphazard in its writing style. The author leaps from point to point without clarity or any set direction at times. On the other hand, some portions are quite stimulating.
The French Revolution was one of the more violent revolutions in this primordial rise of "holy madness." Moreover, 1789 inaugurated a multitude of revolutions, egalitarian fantasies and campaigns of bloodletting throughout Europe. In 1793, King Louis XVI submitted to the guillotine. "When the executioner held up his severed head for all to see," the crowd shouted "Vive la nation!" Quite a few disturbed people took their own lives and drowned themselves in the Seine. The spectacle they beheld was the removal of the "anointed of God" as it was the king that "gave validity to the ideological and cultural compound that was France." Zamoyski avows, "The nation had replaced the king as the sovereign and therefore as the validating element in the state." Beforehand, Europe was a vast multitude of loose confederations, kingdoms, duchies, and fiefdoms. Thus, the medieval nation (natio) was conceptualized as a compound composed of the nobles not the people.
Napoleonic France saw itself as first among the nations, the revolutionary fountainhead of liberty and equality, and cast itself as La Grande Nation. Zamoyski captures the contradictions, chauvinism and selfishness which maligned some national revolutionaries (particularly in France.) While purporting to express fraternity and sympathy for other fledging nationalists, the Napoleonic French embarked on a conquest of imperial grandeur and exploitation under the guise of liberation. With promises of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," Napoleon sequestered property and conscripted great masses of Frenchmen, Poles, and other peoples on a campaign of conquest supposedly against the corrupt old order. Decrying the aristocrats, blue-bloods, and feudal lords of the old order, Napoleon hypocritically garbed himself in the pomp and splendor of a modern-day Caesar. "The manipulation of liberated territories for France was shameless," declares Zamoyski. France hid behind revolutionary platitudes, demagoguery, and egalitarian idealism, and cast her conquests as being pure in motive. In an ironic, twist of fate, as Napoleon was busy being the continental imperator forging his New Order in Europe, nationalist sentiments grew strong, and thereafter national risings sprang throughout Europe borne out of resentment to their "French liberators." National revolutionaries grew tired of expressing solidarity with the French. Likewise, the idea of a secular imperium ostensibly under "benevolent French hegemony" didn't sit well with them. Nonetheless, the Poles found the French to be a worthy ally in liberating her from Prussian and Russian suzerainty as Zamoyski points out. Though, the Poles gave a lot of blood as their soldiers fought in Napoleon's armies and died.
Other revolutionaries like Mazzini and Metternich prophesized universal redemption through an apotheosis of nations. Their influence no doubt brought internationalism to fruition in the twentieth century, as they found common cause in the desire for national liberation and universal redemption for humanity in some unrealized New Order. Moreover, they labored in common cause with other revolutionaries throughout Europe. Profoundly anti-clerical, radically egalitarian, they set the stage for socialist and nationalist movements throughout Europe. Mazzini founded Young Italy and labored with other dispossessed nationalists throughout Europe. The quintessential Leftist, Mazzini had a vision of Italy freed from the thumb of Papal and Austrian domination, and united in fraternal brotherhood as a social democracy. Mazzini founded a National International of sorts in Switzerland in 1834, and it was formally known as Young Europe. Through its sister organizations, it sought to export national revolutions throughout Europe. Mazzini "meditated on the distant promise of universal salvation, Mazzini even contemplated the possibility that the nation might become redundant," notes Zamoyski. Mazzini was appalled at notions of rights and constitutional reform, and was more interested in organic political systems rooted in monism and exaltation of the nation and its people. He spoke he almost blasphemous terms, in declaring, "That which Christ did Humanity can do." The nation was to be a surrogate Christ, for Mazzini, and he saw Italy as a torch-bearer of a new order. Mazzini was eventually martyred for his cause. His compatriots would venerate the bullets he was shot with as holy relics. Shortly thereafter, Springtime came in 1848, and a number of revolutions were sparked throughout central and eastern Europe. These revolutions were a peculiar mixture of anti-clericalism, egalitarian socialism, collectivist folk ideology and nationalism. In that same year, Karl Marx penned his Communist Manifesto borrowing Mazzinni's internationalism while dismissing utopian socialism in favor of his own brand of scientific socialism. In Marx's eyes, the national risings of his times were but a foreshadowing of a greater proletariat rising to come.
I find the book wanting in some areas, as the earlier chapter entitled 'The American Parable' really doesn't have the desired for historicity or make the marked dichotomy that distinguishes the American war for independence from Europe's tumultuous revolutionary tradition. Some European and French Revolutionaries looked with admiration at what was achieved across the Atlantic, and saw the promise of an idyllic New World utopia in the making. They were apt to crudely caricature the so called American Revolution, and with admiration and out of ignorance many believed they were themselves emulating it and making a New World for themselves. The American Revolution had a conservative sobriety without the egalitarian fantasies. Though the American Revolution was an act of political separation, it was also a contest for the restoration of cherished Anglo-American liberties. The "American revolutionaries" didn't seek lay waste to the preexisting civil society, they had no blissful utopian optimism about the future or rosy views about human nature. Lastly, the American patriots did seek to reset the calendar to year one and make the world anew.
In précis, Zamoyski succeeds in capturing the fervor and militancy of the eighteenth and nineteenth century revolutionaries. He paints a stark picture of their internecine wars and coups, and he illustrates the consequences of the holy madness wrought out during this time. Such revolutionary vehemence paved the way for the totalitarian incarnations of twentieth-century fascism and communism. In dissecting the revolutionary "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" trinity and its application in the twentieth-century: the fascists lauded the fraternity element while the communists lauded the equality element above all. The fascists saw the nation or volk as the vehicle of deliverance. The Bolsheviks saw a self-conscious proletariat class rising as the means of salvation. Indeed, this holy madness birthed the millenarian religions of communism and fascism. These quixotic totalitarians had their own eschatology (doctrine of last things) where the elect of humanity was to obtain heaven on earth, a new millennium, but it was to only be consummated after a climatic struggle that was paid for in the "cleansing blood" of revolutionaries and dissidents alike. Fortunately, the more liberal-minded among the revolutionaries like Lafayette set the stage for political compromise, constitutional reforms, and thus calm and deliberative parliamentarian campaigns of reforming civil society.
As a Burkean conservative, I realize "our patience will achieve more than our force." This sad state of affairs in European history and elsewhere needs to be understood and studied with much prudence and not blind unflinching sympathy for the revolutionaries that progressives have (nor the utter contempt that reactionaries like de Maistre express.) There were a lot of problems with feudal Europe and the Bourbon absolutism was utterly tyrannical, but the overreaction was even more problematic as Burke surmised in his 'Reflections on the Revolution in France.' Sadly, in liberal academia, most secular humanist historians are blinded by their God of infinite progress, and their objectivity is clouded in dealing with such subject matter. Zamoyski on the other hand does a fair job at presenting the revolutionaries without getting sentimental in his affection for them. Thus, his objectivity is fairly reasonable and to be commended. Anyhow, if this sort of subject matter interests you than you might want to consider _Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith_ by former Library of Congress librarian James Billington. All things considered, this is a fairly good read but not without its weaknesses and I give it a 3.5/5.0 rating.
New history?.......2005-01-05
After stating on page 11, that Ben Franklin worked for British intelligence during the Revolutionary War the rest of this author's work is discredited.
Bracing and Breezy.......2003-06-30
Zamoyski's ambitious book is a triumph. His sweep encompasses virtually all of Europe and North and South America from the 1770s to the 1870s. His theme is the way in which radicals, nationalists and revolutionaries appropriated religious fervour, rituals and iconography for their own protean causes. We meet an amazing assortment of cranks, would-be messiahs, unfocused idealists, adventurers and imposters. Though the events it describes are sometimes quite tragic, enlivened by Zamoyski's unfailing light touch it is one of the funniest history books I have ever read.
I'm sure in a book of this scope specialist historians will find minor errors of fact; but general readers should not be deterred. Sometimes the need to simplify matters leads to some questionable interpretations. For example, I thought Zamoyski understated the extent to which the French were duped by Bismark into starting the Franco-Prussian War. I also felt he was running out a steam towards the end, so that his treatment of the Paris Commune was not as rich as one might have hoped.
As someone who has long been baffled by the need for many European and American countries constantly to rehash their foundational myths, I found Zamoyski's good humoured debunking of them hugely enjoyable.
Anyone interested in modern history should read this splendid book as a matter of urgency.
Average customer rating:
|
Hall Effect Devices: Magnetic Sensors and Characterization of Semiconductors (The Adam Hilger Series on Sensors)
R.S. Popovic
Manufacturer: Taylor & Francis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Circuits
| Electrical & Electronics
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
| Design
| Digital Integrated Circuit Design
| General
| Integrated
| Microwave
General
| Electrical & Electronics
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
Apparatus, Devices & Design
| Electronics
| Electrical & Electronics
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
Manufacturing
| Industrial, Manufacturing & Operational Systems
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Electromagnetism
| Physics
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
Circuit Manufacturing
| Circuitry
| Computer Science
| Computers & Internet
| Subjects
| Books
Electromagnetics
| Circuitry
| Computer Science
| Computers & Internet
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Hall Effect Sensors, 2 Edition
ASIN: 0750300965 |
Book Description
Hall Effect Devices: Magnetic Sensors and Characterization of Semiconductors focuses on electron devices whose principle of operation is based on the classical Hall effect, and are used mainly as magnetic sensors and as means for characterizing semiconductors. Examples of these devices include Hall plates, magnetotransistors, and magnetodiodes. The book provides a self-contained description of the galvanomagnetic phenomena and modern device physics of Hall elements and related devices. It discusses the main concepts and physical principles of interface electronics, and carefully selected examples illustrate the arguments and provide a picture of the state of the art. The book also covers advances in the field, in particular the most important developments inspired by the progress in microelectronics. Hall Effect Devices serves as a useful reference for postgraduate engineers and scientists involved in the research and development of magnetic sensors as well as for those who apply the Hall effect as a means of exploring the basic electronic properties of solids or for characterizing semiconductor materials.
Average customer rating:
|
Fraser Darling's Islands
J. Morton Boyd
Manufacturer: Edinburgh Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Real Estate
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Scotland
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| England
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Reference & Tips
| Travel
| Subjects
| Books
| Beaches
| Business Travel
| Cruises
| Essays & Travelogues
| Food & Lodging
| Guidebooks
| Pictorial
| Reference
| Spas
| Tips
| Tourist Destinations & Museums
| Travel Writing
General
| Conservation
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
Natural History
| Nature & Ecology
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0852245149 |
Books:
- By Duty Bound: Survival and Redemption in a Time of War
- Celtic Warrior: 300 BC-AD 100 (Warrior)
- Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864
- Contract Warriors
- Deadly Brotherhood, The: The American Combat Soldier in World War II
- Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War
- Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II
- Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (Yale Historical Publications Series)
- Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin
- Fokker Dr I Aces of World War I (Osprey Aircraft of the Aces No 40)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Bad Blood: A Novel
- The Tenth Planet: Final Assault
- The Last Great Dance on Earth
- The False Fat Diet: The Revolutionary 21-Day Program for Losing the Weight You Think Is Fat
- The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
- The Phenomenon of Life: The Nature of Order, Book 1 An Essay of the Art of Building and the Nature
- The Time Traveler's Wife
- K2: Triumph and Tragedy
- The Little Princesses: The Story of the Queen's Childhood by her Nanny, Marion Crawford
- Eucalypts: A Bushwalker's Guide from Newcastle to Wollongong
The Jungle War: Mavericks, Marauders and Madmen in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II
Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific
MacArthur's Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign (Modern War Studies)
The Imperial War Museum Book of the War in Burma 1942-1945 (Pan Grand Strategy Series)
The Burma Road : The Epic Story of the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II
