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Slick91 -> RE: Books for your reading pleasure! (5/6/2004 12:13:51 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: FlashfyreSP
One man's political bashing is another man's insightful analysis. Freedom of speech for one and all, I say. As for the "pop shots", I hope you haven't fallen under the spell of the propangandists, who would like us to think our commanders in WWII were infallible. Quite the contrary....many of the commanders didn't like one another, even in their own command structure. To some historians, it IS a miracle the Allies were able to pull off a win, given all the factors against them.
On the contrary, I want to read a book featuring both sides of an opinion, not just one side. I also don’t mind the author inserting an opposing view from something that I may be in favor of. Mr. Atkinson’s latest work goes above and beyond offering an opposing view point of the war. He goes out of his way to repeatedly and flagrantly criticize and flat out insult every reason for going to war in Iraq. Not just in the early chapters, but all the way through the book. That sir, is not journalism, it is pushing your beliefs and shoving them down the reader’s throat. After all, he is a senior writer for the Washington Post, not exactly a conservative newspaper.
As far as my take on “An Army at Dawn”, maybe his view points are valid as his synopsis is trying to show how a green Allied Army fairs against a much battle seasoned Germany Army. I just didn’t care for his writing style and it seemed maybe a little too critical. To quote Gen. Patton, it seemed as if according to Mr. Atkinson the Allies “couldn’t fight their way out of a piss soaked paper bag.”
I also didn’t care for his writing style due to the fact that he seems to enjoy using a thesaurus a little too much. I have a Bachelor of Science degree (with honors) and I’ve never seen some of the words he includes in his writings. I’ll usually read about a book per month (typically military history of about 300 pages or so). For the most part, I can get through a book and usually find two or three words in the entire text that I’m unfamiliar with and curiously look them up in the dictionary. When reading something by Mr. Atkinson, I sometimes found myself coming across three or four words on a page that I’ve never seen before. That is very distracting when trying to absorb your self in a book. To me, that makes the author come across as arrogant and elitist. That sir is NOT what good, fair, and balanced journalism is about.
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