ERA Reviews

Wilberforce is a monumental figure. Vaughan does a good job of portraying many of the qualities that made Wilberforce the moral giant that he was. However, I would have appreciated a more straightforward biography than a thematic approach based on Wilberforce's virtues and leadership skills.

The strength of this biography is its coverage of Wilberforce's means of greatness, namely his deeply held personal faith. Wilberforce is most famous for his tireless work to end the British slave trade, which he accomplished, but should also be remembered for persevering another 25 years for the full emancipation of all British slaves. In addition, his monumental work on the reformation of manners still remains a classic treatment of living a life of faith in every facet of life. Wilberforce maintained that it was not enough to act like a Christian on Sunday and to keep up appearances of morality; instead, he believed that one's faith must permeate every area of life and that faith preceded great deeds and sustained a humble spirit in the face of success. In addition, this biography deals with areas of personal struggle and criticism as faced by Wilberforce and how he overcame them with humility and determination. All in all, this is a fine biography and is also a shorter read than several other Wilberforce biographies on the market. The reader interested in Wilberforce may also like Kevin Belmonte's book, Hero for Humanity, since it is written in a more narrative style and reads like a story of Wilberforce's life. For a technical treatment of Wilberforce, one may want to consult John Pollock's, Wilberforce.

Richard Griswold Del Castillo's work is beneficial for a probing and well rounded study into the Mexican War and the Treaty that followed. This book has great content. Castillo knows the Treaty and the debates surrounding the Treaty inside and out. Also, he is able to inform the reader of unresolved issues still relevant today for a treaty that was signed over 150 years ago. Nevertheless, he is looking for a specific outcome for his analysis. Castillo condemns the United States for it's unfair treatment of Mexico and former Mexicans. However, much of his argument is based on Article X of the Treaty and the Protocol of Queretaro. Neither document was endorsed, nor supported, by the United States. He aknowledges that, yet still attacks the United States for not abiding by both of them. It's an angry look at the United States which portrays Mexico as an innocent victim in the conflict in 1846, and the United States as a selfish, evil empire forever after.

This useful book offers more than its title implies. Instead of being a dry legal analysis of a treaty, it offers a different way of looking at the history of Mexican-American relations. The author provides a compact review of events before, during, and after the Mexican-American war. In addition, the book provides a capsule review of attempts by Chicanos to seek the reversal of past injustices through the courts and by means of political action. The clearly written text is supplemented with five maps and four figures. Michael Michaud, Vienna, Austria

This is straight forward history of the conflicts between the northern and southern churches leading up to the Civil War. What is most interesting is that it destroys the popular myth that the churches were in the vanguard of the abolition movement. While there were some churches that were, they were the off shuts of the more established churches. It appears that the established churches were more interested in staying neutral and not creating conflict with their sourthern breathern then in fighting the evil of slavery.

The book has written in a scholarly manner and is very dry reading. But, for anyone who wishes to understand the role that the churches played, or didn't play, in the abolition movement the book is a good read.

In the October 28, 1985 entry of my personal journal there is a reference to my having read this book. That was over sixteen years ago, I do not own a copy of the book, and I do not have present access to it. The major impression that remains on my memory was the additional confirmation this scholarly book provided as to the importance of Evangelicalism and segments of Evangelical churches in the battle against slavery.

Of all the presidents I have studied so far, Taylor could very well be the least deserving of the presidency. I think Mr. Bauer is a very good writer and historian, but Taylor is neither a very exciting subject or a very well-documented one (apparently many of his private papers were lost during a sacking of his plantation home during the Civil War).

He was essentially a very average intellect and not very creative either in his politics or his military acumen. Compared to other generals who have risen to the presidency (Washington, Jackson, Eisenhower, Grant), his military capabilities were very dim. His successes in the Mexican War, I think, were due more to capable, think-on-your-feet lieutenants than strategy-making onhis part.

This book confirmed the impression of Taylor that I had formed from reading other works about the era: that he was petty, defensive, couldn't control his temper a lot of the time and was politically naive (not necessarily a bad thing...).

I don't believe a man like him would have been elected today. He benefited from remoteness, little interaction with the press and letting other, more powerful politicians essentially run for him.

Like other presidents between 1845-1860, he also had the misfortune of being president during one of our most challenging periods and when the country was probably really run more by Clay, Calhoun and Webster. You couldn't do much in those days without their support and Taylor seems to have been too naive to either (a) recognize that or (b) go along with it. As a result he accomplished very little during his short tenure. I don't think he would have accomplished much more had he lived longer.

The book itself is well-written but not interesting. Again, I think that has to do more with the subject than the author and I wouldn't mind reading something else by Bauer. Still, if you need to read about Taylor, this is probably your best choice.

Zachary Taylor was one of the most unlikely men to ever serve as president of the United States. Self-educated, an average and conservative military leader and definitely not an intellectual, he was thrust into the limelight because of his success in the Mexican War. Although a southerner, Taylor opposed the extension of slavery and threatened dire consequences to secessionists. He died unexpectedly after serving only sixteen months as president. His death occurred just as he was reorganizing his administration and attempting a recasting of the Whig party. Mr. Bauer does a good job of describing the effect Zachary Taylor had on the nation as well as who he was as an individual.

This book is a perfect example of the saying among journalists, "don't let the facts get in the way of a good story." Brill approached this book with an agenda and stuck with it. He made heros out of some and scorned others. One of the best examples is his praise for the two Border Patrol agents in Detroit who used their union positions and union agenda to provide their opinion of the state of border control. Some, including myself, who call this providing aid to the enemy. Brill--in his hatred for BP and INS supervisors, and who just might be looking at the big picture of border control--labeled them heros. But don't be fooled, Brill hardly spared anyone except for those he himself decided were worthy. The book has moments that are interesting, but be prepared for a long, hard read. The nuggets are few and the mundane detail is plenty. A more tightly written book, perhaps a couple of hundred pages less, would improve this book greatly. My recommendation: borrow it if you have time to kill, but don't buy it.

Sorry, but I ordered this book from bluvolt.com who apparently doesn't send out books, according to their recommendation list. It does sound interesting, though and I would review it if I had a chance to read it.

This book both fascinates and repluses at the same time. Fascinates in the story telling. Repluses with the actions of lots of people in the administration, especially John Ashcroft, and their assult on our civil liberties in the name of "protection".

This was a successful chronicle of Jefferson's policy and his role in building a new republic. A wonderful read that brings history to life!

Excellent survey of how the founders idealized the future of America as contraposed against the "old world" as well as how, even in the early stages of the Country, the founder's time was idealized as a kind of ever receeding eden to which the country aspires to return to. You can hear the echos of this today in family values rhetoric, the contining (if anachronistic) idealization of the family farm and "main street." McCoy sets up the American experience as a continuing striving to re-create that idealized world of the founders that never really existed. Central that idealized conception was the idea of "virtue" among all of the citizens that the founders saw as a pre-requisite of a lasting republic. That is a republic could only work if its citizens were "masters and slaves of none"--this is where the ideal of the single yoeman farmer of Jefferson comes in. Only with this economic self-sufficiency, the founders thought, could citizens act for the common good. This is why it is often said that the founders didn't like or anticpate poltical parties--they felt that in this ideal republic, the citizens would always abandon their self interest. McCoy also talks about how important it was to inculcate this vision of the way that the repulbic "should be" throough educational exhortation and poltical economics (open land in the west)so that future generations would both understand their vision and be able to take care of it.

In The Elusive Republic, Drew R. McCoy presents a compeling work on the development of America's political economy. After walking away from this book I felt that I had a good grasp on an area of Jeffersonian republicanism that I had not been exposed to. This is a book to hang on to.

Almost everyone agrees the current U.S. ascendancy in global politics is temporary. Even conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer says Americans should enjoy their current geopolitical dominance because it will not last. In "The End of the American Era," Charles Kupchan also thinks that American dominance is temporary and believes a strategy is needed by which the U.S. transfers some of its global responsibilities to other emerging powers.

He begins his book by addressing the shortcomings of other recent major conceptual frameworks of global politics as conceived by Frances Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Paul Kennedy and Robert Kaplan (who Kupchan groups together), John Mearsheimer, and Thomas Friedman. The flaw in all of these thinkers, according to Kupchan, is that none of them have recognized the most important fundamentals of the present global system, which is America's current overwhelming power and the fact that its hegemony cannot last.

If the U.S. is in decline, who will take its place? Kupchan believes a united Europe is rising and that East Asia (China and Japan) is not far behind. In this global environment, and because of U.S. domestic tendencies towards isolationism, he thinks a grand strategy is necessary for the U.S. to smoothly make the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. While Kupchan is not entirely clear about the timing of this transition, in at least one area of the book he says Europe is about a decade away from forming a credible alternative axis of world power and East Asia about three decades away. Other countries - mostly Russia, sometimes India - are also mentioned in places throughout the book as potential poles, but without much detail.

Europe is the main object of Kupchan's attention. According to his argument, Europe's ever-growing economic and political solidarity will soon naturally give rise to geopolitical power. If the U.S. cedes some of its power to Europe now in preparation of that development, a healthy relationship will grow between the two; if not, then we can expect a bumpy ride on the way to multipolarity.

While I agree with some of Kupchan's premises, such as the inevitable relative decline of U.S. power and the likelihood that the new world will be multipolar, I disagree with both his vision of what that new world will look like as well as his suggestion for a grand U.S. strategy on how to handle it.

Contrary to Kupchan's thinking, Europe has neither the will nor the military to become a geopolitical force within the next decade. If economics and some shared values were all that was required, Europe would have become an alternative axis of power rivaling the U.S. years ago. Instead, as the crisis over the U.S.-led war in Iraq makes clear, if the Europeans are ever going to be a geopolitical force, they will need institutions to make common and *binding* diplomatic and defense policies that override the national priorities of their constituent states. And even if they have these institutions, the money will have to be found to build a first-rate military. With many European nations heavily in debt, and a demographic crisis looming on the continent, where will this money come from? Kupchan brushes aside these difficulties.

Europe's common military does not have to rival America's, but it must have power projection capabilities to both Eastern Europe and the Middle East. If it doesn't, then Europe will still require the United States to enforce stability in those areas using its military power when other measures have failed. After all, a resurgent Russia might still haunt the future of Eastern Europe, and Europe, as a whole, is far more dependent on Middle East oil than the U.S. Nothing we see today shows Europe will be ready to handle those responsibilities any time soon.

The less said about Kupchan's thoughts on East Asia, the better. His brief sections on the region and the countries in it are surprisingly thin, devoid of fresh thinking, or even proof he did anymore than just remedial reading on the area. What's more, his vision of how U.S. strategy fits into the region is shockingly naïve, envisioning the United States leading the way towards a sort of united East Asia by - among other things - helping Japan and China to forsake old enmities. That's not strategy; that's fantasy. Even Kupchan admits as much.

There is a common theme to this book. No matter what the region or area - whether it's to Europe, East Asia, or international institutions - Kupchan's strategy calls for the U.S. giving up power. This seems an odd strategy for what is still by far the most powerful country in the world and what is likely to remain the most powerful country in the world for the foreseeable future. Wouldn't a realist at least call for giving up power in one region where it is less needed so that it could be at least partially redeployed somewhere else where it is more needed? Instead, Kupchan seems to think that U.S. power is a cheap currency to be spent on dubious schemes such as pushing Chinese/Japanese reconciliation.

By showing he has only one general prescription to fit every region's future, Kupchan signals he is less interested in seeing the shifting balance of world power as it is, and putting forth a strategy to deal with it, than he is in pushing an ideology of world power that he feels comfortable with. The final section of the book gives a clue as to why, showing he is highly downbeat about America's future. Interestingly enough, having dismissed Robert Kaplan's vision of a splintering world divided between north and south, he buys into Kaplan's view of the United States as a splintering country. Kupchan believes that even as the U.S. helps the rest of the world come together (Europe and Russia/China and Japan/north and south), regions within the states themselves are destined to grow apart. This ending is a contradictory and absurd coda to an already faltering book.

Between the book and several reviews here, I'm just astounded. I'll try to take on several matters here:

1) America will never 'fade from the world stage'. She may eventually no longer be the _sole_ superpower, but she will always - always - be _a_ superpower. She will never be 'overshadowed' by another superpower, as no one will be a full-spectrum power in all measures as is America. The European Union does not have the desire to rival America militarily, which is fortunate for it because it does not have the money; those who think even a fully integrated EU could simply 'build a military' to match America in 10 years - or even more - are completely naive as to the actual balance of power. Europe _will_ have a comparable economy in terms of overall GDP once full integrated (beyond even the 2004 expansion), and it _will_ have the ability to project credible military power regionally. On the other hand, it is simply not possible for the EU to build a matching military without a) scrapping most of its social programs and b) spending all that money and more every year for two decades in a massive military buildupng and c) fundamentally reshaping a large portion of its industrial and overall economic capacity to absorb these changes.

2) America has an economy worth nearly 11 trillion dollars. This is not old Britain where a small native population spent a majority of its overall economy maintaining a military deployed around the globe, nor a Spain or other past empire in a time when the global economy was a static pie and the rush was to grab the biggest slice. As America gets richer, others get richer (this is why the current account and trade deficits aren't simply a liability or even necessarily a negative). As others get richer, America gets richer. No other economy comes close to the size of America's. Should China continue growing as it has been, it will not be of a comparable size until 2050. Integrated the entire European continent would be required to 'overshadow' America's economy, and even then you would simply have to gargantuan economies towering over all others.

3) America's military power ridiculously overmatches all others. The EU could integrate its military capabilities and modernize for a decade and not be anywhere near a 'match', though they would then be a military superpower. America's military capacity is not going to fade. It may stop growing the gap between itself and others, but it is not going to fade or fall behind.

4) America's population will continue to balloon. 3 years ago estimates for 2050 were around 400 million. A year ago estimates for 2050 were 500 million. Today, 500 million is increasingly being considered as a possible low-range, with a possible 1 billion Americans by 2100. By sometime after 2050 America will likely surpass even the expanded EU in population. Even at 300 million, America is too massive to 'fade from the world stage'.

In short, America's economy is so massive that it cannot fail to be an economic superpower. The arrival of a basket economy of comparable size in the form of the EU does not change the fact that now instead of one 10+ trillion dollar economy there are two 10+ trillion dollar economies, both of which massively eclipse all others. Budget deficits? Current account deficits? Been there and done that. Even accepting some sort of wrenching economic free-fall to correct both of these, America's economy would still be absolutely massive and roughly comparable to that of the European Union. It could be wrenching for unemployment, and could cause us to see stagnation for several years in terms of GDP growth, but then if that happened we might end up looking like Europe with very slow growth rates and high unemploymeny - yet no one seems to be discounting Europe for already being in such a position.

America's military capability is so overweening that it cannot fail to be a military superpower. The arrival of other credible militaries with the capability to project power regionally and to an extend globally does not mean America is no longer a superpower; the Soviet Union's military capability outstripped the dreams of the EU or the Chinese, yet when it existed there was not a 'sole' military superpower but two.

America's population is already more than large enough to ensure that with its wealth it is a superpower, and that population will continue to balloon as the population in Europe shrinks (the EU population will grow via adding more nations, but that only goes so far).

These simple facts cast a dubious light on any book such as this. No one will 'replace' America as the sole superpower. Other superpowers may rise, but none will 'replace' her or push her aside, she will simply become the largest of a likely handful of such powers. These same simple, basic facts dictate that the EU will become a sort of superpower alongside the U.S. in economic and political terms and to a much lesser degree military terms, and that China will eventually follow suit.

Yet regardless of any of that, America remains. She remains on the world stage, she remains with the largest single economy and one so massive that it's as large as the combined EU economy, she remains with the greatest military power and the greatest ease of paying for that power, she remains with the third largest nation-state population and one which will grow to eclipse that of the combined EU population through the century.

It's very simple, it's very obvious, and the only way to arrive at any other conclusion is by the physical destruction of the United States itself ..

And this is where Kupchan eventually tries to take us in a desperate attempt to avoid the basic realities I've listed above. It's also the same place Kupchan has been trying to take us for three entire decades. Perhaps in another 10 years he can modify his theory a bit for the times and re-publish it again to explain how just annny old time now we're going to 'decline'.

The End of the American Era deals with a crucial and very timely task. It endeavors to find a 'grand strategy' for the United States in an era of power transition in years or decades to come.

It is by and large about peaceful change of international order, which is highly going to be shaped by American policies. Kupchan's work is remarkable as it makes an effort to bridge theory, history and present time. It draws attention to power or balance of power in international politics. This realist base, however, is also complemented by liberal notions of strategic restrain and the need for international cooperation. In this sense, Kupchan's analysis is based upon a mixture of realist-liberal framework. Moreover, Kupchan makes several policy recommendations for current American foreign policy. He criticizes unilateralist drives of the Bush administration, which lead to counter-balancing behavior against the United States by major powers in international system. For this reason, the author recommends American foreign policy elites to follow strategic restrain for the sake of peaceful change of international order as well as the on behalf of American interests.

This book is a well-written and timely one on American foreign policy and it is highly recommended for students of international relations and American foreign policy. Alike, this book is recommended for the informed public. No doubt, Kupchan's work seems to remain as an important key to understand the potential implications of the current Iraqi crisis on the relations between the United States and other major powers.

The "Famine Ships" is not a scholarly work on an important time in Irish and American History. Readers interested in fairly light, shallow treatment of the subject may enjoy the book. Readers interested in in-depth treatment of the subject should look elsewhere. As noted by other reviewers, there are technical problems with the book including poor copy editing and some writing problems. It is about one-draft away from being a better book.

Anyone interested in their family history, the treatment of the Irish by the English Crown and the resultant holacaust called the Great Famine, should study this book. Well-documented and well-illustrated, it provides the history of the circumstances leading to the famine, the exodus and the horrors suffered by the emigres -- not only in their homeland, but aboard the ships. For someone researching Irish family names, this is the book to read, if for no other reason than to provide excellent background information and conditions of daily life.

I make no apologies for the structural defects of this book, nor do I mean to suggest they should be ignored. They deserve criticism. Grammatical errors and poor editing are never welcome, however with History a factual mistake or contradiction is at best never acceptable, and at its worst can cause credibility to be questioned. I still recommend this book as the errors do not negate the events that took place, and as frustrating as they may be, they do not detract from the horror that was The Famine, nor the conduct of those involved. That the book did not gain a wider audience, possibly because of these faults is sad.

Ireland has been fertile ground for reprehensible behavior by England for over 700 years. Ireland too, at times has committed acts of violence via a variety of Catholic and Protestant groups. The dead, wounded, and the mutilated are all that either side has gained. The hatred exists to this day, and while violence has been calmer of late, a great period of time must pass before memories fade and forgiveness is accepted for apologies offered.

Prior to the ships in this book becoming "Famine Ships" many plied another trade as "Slave Ships", it is true that there were structural changes made, but beyond a certain point conditions become inhuman, period. The Potato Blight is often the only, or the primary reason given for the mass immigration that devastated the island. The truth is always more complex, it is no different here.

While starvation was rampant the food that was available, food grown right there next to those that were starving was exported to England. The English Landowners often paid for the cost of passage on these ships where so many died. These ships did carry the victims of Famine like they had carried the victims of slavery before. Transportation was almost secondary, how can it be anything else when conditions are created that are deadly by definition. It was cheaper to pay for transit than keep people alive on their ancestral land. And if they left they no longer had any use for land, so it was bought and accumulated by the same individuals that often paid for its owner's permanent eviction.

Ireland today is experiencing the return of some of the descendants of those that made that terrifying crossing. As a nation it has become one of the most prosperous in Europe by many economic standards, but that is not enough. Tolerance is not good enough, nor are plans of peace that neither party believes in their heart to be fair. It would be pleasant to site examples of hatred hardened by centuries of pain that have been put aside and new beginnings made. Perhaps the newfound economic health will help the process, perhaps not.

I hope for those who live there, be they Catholic or Protestant, that a way is found in a comparatively brief span of time to pause, heal, for apologies to be made, and accepted.

The lives & loves & political rivalries of the founding fathers are a fertile land for many recent books. Perhaps the most scandalous event in AM HIST survey books that involved these people was the Burr/Hamilton duel. Rogow's book brings the details behind their rivalry to the reader's attention. The book's weakness is that it is too heavy on historiography -- with Rogow trotting out all the the evidence & commenting on whether it is robust or not, the narrator's biases and so forth. Another weakness, I felt, was the heavy-handed & sometimes questionable use of psychobiography, especially in the early part of the book. A final weakness that affected readability was the fact that neither person, Burr or Hamilton, seems very likeable to our "liberated" 20th century eyes. That cannot, of course, be laid at Rogow's feet.

Despite the 3-star rating, I do recommend the book. So long as the reader can be patient enough to slough through the historiography -- or if you like that style of writing.

I found "Fatal Friendship" to be an original, engaging and well-written account of a fascinating and still largely unresolved incident in American history. The book was also refreshingly free of the typical "anti-Burr" bias that has been the norm from the 1800's through Fawn Brodie. Rogow did an excellent job of discussing the protagonists' differing characters in the proper historical context. History of this sort cannot be neatly tied up with simple black-and-white explanations (despite what the grammatically-challenged reviewers from Oklahoma and Kansas below would seem to prefer). Rogow deserves credit for tackling an interesting subject from a new perspective. Two very recent books, Kennedy's "Burr, Hamilton and Jefferson" and Fleming's "Duel," follow Rogow's lead in examining this period and these two Founding Fathers from a new angle, and also are higly recommended.

Arnold Rogow's "A Fatal Friendship" does not set out to villify Aaron Burr, nor does it exhalt Alexander Hamilton unduly.
Instead, it accurately gauges parallel events of their unique relationship, as befits a historian. Readers should remember Rogow is a psychologist, first and foremost, and thus he is permitted to speculate as to Burr and Hamilton's motivations. Rogow consistently qualifies any statements he makes, without overstatements or hyperbole. Therefore, any reader who wants a simple parable of good and evil will be greatly disappointed.

While a history undergrad, I purchased this book simultaneously with Thomas Fleming's own interpretation, "Duel." I was pleased with both books, but I must say Rogow's writing satisfied more because of his more objective stance. Fleming seems to always nurture a slight, though forgivable, bias against Aaron Burr. It is refreshing to see a just assessment of that unprincipled, infuriating, but somehow likeable rogue. As for Hamilton, Rogow ably commends his great political contributions, but also reminds us of our "flawed giant"'s scandalous affair with Maria Reynolds and scurrilous smear campaigns against Federalist president John Adams. Finally, Rogow portrays Hamilton as the true instigator of the vendetta leading to Burr's final challenge and the duel of 1804.

Aaron Burr was no saint, but neither was Hamilton an angelic martyr for the Republic. Two complex historical figures with a tangled common thread. Rogow's study has helped us unravel a Gordian knot of American history. A pity "A Fatal Friendship" is now out of print.

I am familiar with Michael Neufeld's earlier work with the Paper-Clip interviews on audio tape on file at NARA. What is enigmatically missing from these interviews (and the book) is what these pro-Nazi scientists knew about BERGKRISTALL/ESCHE 2 Guzen II at Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Yes the ME-262 jet engine was engineered and stored there but some very interesting mind boggling technologies were developed there with the help of Jewish slave labor. These slaves were murdered to eliminate any oral historical record of this new strange technology and the Nazi otracirites. Eventually in May of 1945 the invading US 41st Recon Squad 11th Ard Div 3rd US Army liberated the camps. But Russians got to this technology in the tunnels before the US forces could as our boys did not know what they had found until the O.S.S. went over photo recon much later.

By November 1947 the Russians had scooped up and exploited as much as they could and eventually dynamited the tunnels leaving us with nothing but scrapes. To this day they still have unfettered access to this technology but we caught up to them (so to speak) by bringing these Paper-Clip boys to Wright Field (Wright-Paterson AFB today)in Dayton Ohio. This was the real beginning of the Cold War Space Race.

In the Neufeld interviews you will learn of some NEW things you never knew before about the Pennemunde Boys like Project Wasserfall (i.e, submarine fired missle system), the Washington and Brooklynn Rocket Program (V-9 or the V4a bastard rocket - first attempt at ICBM). Maybe some day soon someone will discover the connection between Kplt. Hellmut Neuerburg's U-869 REAL mission from Kriegsmarine and this Wasserfall project! (i.e., a Type IXC/40 submarine that accidently sunk itself with an acoustic T5 torpedo off the coast of New Jersey halfway between Brooklyn and Washington DC in early 1945 near the end of the WWII.)

If you want to know a lot of technical information about the German rocket program in World War II this is the place to start. Neufeld has a grasp of the technical side of the program like no other historian, however his writing style leaves much to be desired. A good plus of the book is that he includes diagrams of the missles as well as a couple sections of pictures that give the reader an idea what the things and places he writes about look like. I found being able to visualize certain things makes understanding it much easier. He also includes an appendix with a chronology of the German rocket program that readers will find helpful for quick short references to each successive rocket in the program. Overall this is an excellent book, I give it 4 stars instead of 5 only due to Neufeld's writing style which makes this book tough going in some sections that include lots of boring, and in my opinion, overkill, technical detail.

The book covers both the political and technical matters of the V-2 (A-4) missile development. As the book is intended for a general audience the coverage of the technology is sufficient for the purpose of the book but not extremely detailed. This is also clear from the title of the book. The description of the political background and military situation is done in a very clear way. The list of references are extremely detailed and it is obviuos the the author has outstanding knowledge of the subject. The important persons are described in what I consider a very balanced way. I recommned this book to anyone wanting to learn about the inner workings of parts of the German WW2 military and political system as well as a the technology of these rockets. An excellent companion is the V-2 by Walter Dornberger which of course must be read with some caution due to the position of its author and time of publication.