Military

Most likely few history readers aren't familiar with at least one version of "Custer's Last Stand." A Terrible Glory goes much deeper than retelling the popular version of events. James Donovan uses extensive research to form a brilliant and compelling narrative of individual soldiers and officers and how they all ended up in such a mess on the hills above the Little Bighorn River. The author does a great job explaining the grudges and rivalries among Custer and his senior officers as well as painting a picture of the political context in which Custer was embroiled. As a result, the popular myth of a glory-seeking Custer stumbling to his own demise should be finally removed from the collective perception of events. The narration is perfectly matched to the narrative creating a whole work that you won't want to end.

This is how history is supposed to be written, and narrated. Michael and Elizabeth Norman present a powerful work stitching together the overall story of horrific events with the common thread of a central soldier, Bud Steele, and a few other American and Japanese who appear throughout the captivating pages. Michael Pritchard delivers a brilliant interpretation of the text with a voice that is sensitive at all times to the mood of the moment - soft when necessary, urgent when called for, and always entertaining. The authors go deep into the psyche of the ordinary Japanese soldiers and their campaign commander to help the reader understand how the horrible events that took place were part of a chain of seeming inevitability. This work is an admirable marriage of comprehensive research, skillful writing and a narration of artistry. If there is a fault it is in leaving the fate of some of the people mentioned in the text hanging in historical mystery. Even so, this is a fantastic read and will probably rank among your favorites.

If you're an avid Easy Company reader and you've read everything else, you'll find a few nuggets buried in this work. It was pleasant hearing about the familiar places again: Curahee, Foy, Carentan and the rest. The author describes this work as his effort to give a voice to every soldier who was on the Easy Company roster whose stories have not been told. To use a baseball analogy, if you're a big fan of a World Series winning team, you might want to know the first hand stories of everyone who was on the roster during the season, regardless of how brief or how uninteresting, but chances not. That is what the author has done here, in the form of first-person responses to his questions. But rather than hearing their own voices, those voices are narrated in about 20 or so different accepts. The narration by George K. Wilson is brilliant, but the overall effect is a bit ridiculous. At the end of the book, there are a few interviews with children of Easy Company soldiers recalling their fathers. The interview with Herbert Sobel's son is very interesting and revealing and I gave this review one extra star just for that interview. If you haven't read Band of Brothers, this book is definitely not for you. Otherwise, read any or all of the other good biographies of Easy Company soldiers, including the book by the same author on Lt. Buck Compton, before reading this book.