Jim > Recent Status Updates

A very interesting read, but, as others have mentioned the book requires extensive technical knowledge of the ships of the era to understand.

Summarizing a subject as immense as WWII into 400 pages requires careful choices about what to include, and for the most part Stokesbury makes good ones (though inevitably no one will agree with all of them). His narratives are tight and succinct, though maybe too much so. His analytic history, however, is excellent and summarizes complex topics informatively with great insight. An excellent single-volume summary.

After flying the 1902 Wright Glider replica at Kitty Hawk in August, I realized I knew little about the brothers, so "The Wright Brothers" had to be acquired and put ahead of the to-read books I've had waiting in some cases for several years.

A fun red that combines the history of the AT as well as the authors adventures in hiking it.

An interesting collection of stories, some better than others. Probably the most original and interesting was the one from the point of view of the dianoga in the trash compactor on the Death Star.

An excellent single volume history of the Eastern Front, a subject that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. Very detailed on individual operations down to the unit level (TOO detailed for some) and makes use of the latest material from former Soviet archives. This reader would have liked to see a little more analytical material, but that's just just an opinion. What's there is good. Excellent documentation.

Lousy weather + still getting over whatever bug I have/had = lots of reading. New periodicals haven't arrived yet so I'm planning on knocking this (very good so far) novel in a couple of days.

Fascinating book... one of the best I've read. Certainly the best on the subject matter.

This book is slow going (obviously). There's good stuff in here but it's at least twice as long as it needs to be with lots of repetition. It's getting easier now that most of the writing is Franks' personal account of the ground war.

A very interesting read so far. Interesting to compare the NASA of the 90s and 00s with that of the 1960s after reading several autobiographies of Apollo astronauts. Also interesting to note the completely different versions of astronauts needed for shuttle flights vs the station.

Fascinating book. Kraft doesn't hold back criticism and it's interesting to compare his versions of events with others who have written their own histories of the space program,

Really looking forward to this one.

Somewhat slow going in places because of my complete lack of knowledge of anything mechanical, but I am learning a great deal. Also nice to find out how much I *do* know about some things.

Good book so far. Overy's works are always interesting. His focus is on analysis of events and trends but he manages to make things not only readable but interesting. Most every paragraph is packed with data but is more than readable. Probably going to slow up on reading this for a while as I tackle some other tasks.