Rating – Five Stars Bill O’Reilly hits a home run with his compendium of the 1940s Pacific War. He writes in an easy, sparse, and empathetic style. He paints the big pictures of the major land and sea battles and tells the stories of the “grunts” that did the fighting and dying. We know these […]
Author Archives: smartinshelton
Malaysia Flight 370
Around midnight on 8 March 2014, Malaysia Flight 370 departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 souls onboard. About three hours into the flight, it disappeared. Technical analysis of radio, radar, and satellite data indicated that the aircraft crashed into the Indian Ocean about 1,200 miles off Australia’s west coast. In the almost three years of […]
Book Review- Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last: Second Edition
Rating – Three Stars For the aficionado of the Amelia Earhart disappearance, Campbell’s book is a must-read. He has assiduously reviewed the relevant literature regarding her last flight and, with keen ingenuity, he has compiled a compelling account that purports to unmask the enduring enigma of that flight. From the pertinent publications, he has excerpted eyewitness […]
Book Review- King Tut and the Plagues of Egypt (The Adventures Through Time Series Book 1)
Rating – Five Stars Derrer sets the fantasy scenario for this manuscript in the 25th century. He weaves an intriguing and thoughtfully designed narrative that successfully integrates quantum physics, time travel, and family adventure. The patriarch of the family is Max Planck, who designed a quantum-physics time machine—controlled by the mastermind “Jeeves,” the all-knowing, all-seeing, […]
Book Review- The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech
Rating – Five Stars Kristen Powers, a self-acknowledged Democrat and liberal, expounds the political incorrect truism that illiberal left (her term) suppresses speech that does not kowtow to anarchist/socialist orthodoxy. She cites numerous instances where the illiberal left violated a person’s Second Amendment rights by intimidation, threats, and violence. And such suppression prevents audiences from […]
Book Review- Prof: Alan Turing Decoded
Rating – Two Stars I’m sorely disappointed with this biography of Alan Turing, one of the 20th century’s greatest mathematicians. He was the lead cryptographer at Bletchley Park and helped break the German’s Enigma codes, significantly hastening the end of the War in Europe. To this end, his intellect led to the development of the […]
Book Review: The Wright Brothers
Rating – Five Stars The Wright Brothers is an outstanding book. McCullough narrates an insightful, compelling, and empathetic account of Wilbur and Orville Wright—brothers and the inventors of the airplane (a manned craft that under its own power could take off, make turns, and return to its starting point without any assistance from the ground […]
Book Review: Traveling the Silk Road
Rating – 3 Stars This is a heavy and beautiful book. Its design, execution, printing, and binding is extraordinary and professional. It is a “coffee table” travel book of startling heft in weight and content. Starting in Xi’an, China, the narrator leads us by the hand and we vicariously travel the Silk Road. We […]
Book Review: Particle Physics A Graphic Guide
Rating – Three Stars The authors make a valiant attempt to familiarize Quantum Field Theory to an educated public in 192 illustrated lesions in a small paperback book. Unfortunately, they fail. Their goal was unattainable. Such a manifold complicated subject is a serious challenge for doctoral candidates majoring in Quantum Mechanics Physics. Each page is […]
Book Review: The Decisive Campaigns of the Desert Air Force 1942 – 1945
Rating – Four Stars Evans relates the large-scale accomplishments of the Royal Air Force in the Cyrenaica, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns in World War II. His matter-of-fact style, presents the Desert Air Force’s (DAF) campaigns in a chronological, military style order. I would suggest that this book is for the military aficionado—clearly not for the […]