Eagle Reviews

I was very disappointed with this book. I had read the great reviews, and it was a basic book that I didn't learn anything knew that I didn't know before reading this book.

I started this book hoping for some ideas to help me deal with my 2 stepdaughters' venture into adolescence. I love it! The authors' experience, insight into girls' feelings and actions and realistic advice on how parents can help their daughters through this difficult time in their lives are invaluable. It is a definite keeper. (I'm also making my husband read it!)

This book is easy to read and understand. While on the one hand it made me sad to realize my 8 year old is truly poised on the threshold of a new and difficult phase of life, it gave me insight, as well as some tools to use, to make this next journey easier on both of us. It emphasized how critical the pre-teen years are in establishing a relationship that can not only survive the turbulence of the junior and senior high years, but keep the fires of self-esteem and confidence burning in the face of "growing up." Useful, relevant and comforting, this is perfect reading for parents who worry that their daughters will be anything like they were as pre-teens!

Author Lucas is like many military historians. Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, and South African exploits are usually lumped in with "British" when relating events from WWI and WW II.

In this book, for example, not only does he pass off in a few words the monumental battle at Ortona, he refers - for the most part - to the attacking troops as "British."

Ortona was, is, and always will be an icon of the gallantry of the men of the 1st Canadian Division. Even the New York Times acknowledged the magnitude of this epic Canadian fight against the German paras, calling it "Little Stalingrad" in reports from the front.

If you want to read about the heroism on BOTH sides in that historic confrontation, seek out Mark Zuehlke's Ortona.

Lucas provides a comprehensive review of the action of the german fallschirmaeger in WW-II, probably one of the better currently available in English. Good section on Crete in particular. Does have sympathy with his subject, but this doesn't make it pro-Nazi (unless you are of the view that all German soldiers were Nazi's), just pro-german (or pro Fallschirmaeger). Doesn't deal with the establishment or organisation of troops but gets quickly into the action. Well worth the read.

This book is simply great. It gives a combination of personal stories and information on all the battles german Fallschirmjaegers were involved in. In every battle he gives a great overview and than the Germans and Allies situations. Than deeply summarizes what all the German paratroopers did in the battle. And than gives great personal accounts. Well done.

Even giving credit to the fact that this book was written by a pilot who was there ( Townsend served in 43 Squadron ), one cannot escape the conclusion that this is just another book about the Battle of Britain. And not the best, unfortunately...

English Ace, Peter Townsend's examination of the Battle of Britain. Cleverly written, Townsend follows the careers of both himself and his German opponents amidst the backdrop of WWII. Of particular note is his excellent discussion of the fledgling Luftwaffe and RAF during their formative years. "WWII Aviation Booklist" http://www.ampsc.com/~prophet/booklist.html

Peter Townsend is an eyewitness to one of history's two exciting air battles. One's the Battle of Midway--a fleet opposed invasion--the other's the Battle of Britain which was opposed by the RAF. In the Battle of Britain, the RAF was a multinational force. It had British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and other members of the British Commonwealth. There were also squadrons from the countries Hitler had ruthlessly conquered. Czechoslovakia, France, Poland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Norway. The Americans were also involved but the British tend to downplay our involvement. We had pilots over there. Many of them were survivors of the sinking of the British liner Athenia off the west coast of Scotland on September 3, 1939. Without them, Britain and the rest of the world, would have fallen prey to the iron fist of Adolf Hitler.

Set in rural Oklahoma, a fifteen-year-old boy comes to terms with his prejudice and the deadly consequences of telling lies. Dusty Hamilton is raised by parents who don't overtly descriminate, their brand of discrimination against Native Americans is more insidious and more difficult to eradicate: the silent watchfulness of distrust. Mrs. Hay handles the inner conflict between prejudice and the desire to do the right thing deftly, weaving a well plotted intriguing story. The execution is not as adroit, especially the dream sequences which fail to adequately establish the motivation for some of Dusty's actions in support of Native Americans early in the story, but the subject is understandably difficult to address and Mrs. Hay does a commendable job.

Claudia Pearson, GWN Book Reviewer

I would like to commend my aunt for the years of hard work that she has put into her book. It wasn't easy for her to do it but I am glad that she did. I know that this doesn't really go into detail about the book that she wrote but I figure that anyone who is dillegent enough to write a book and have it published between taking my cousins to their multiple events is well worth the read. I wonder what she is going to do next!!

Racial relations are often overblown and negative. Ms. Hay has managed to make understanding how the other side feels fun and engaging. The characters are memorable and realistic, and I still find myself thinking about them even days after devouring the story. Presents a wonderful story that kids are sure to enjoy, and all races can benefit from reading. Good read!

A group of Luftwaffe vets, having suffered the agony of surving WWII, gather round in the American south west to plot a bit of revenge. They gather together and restore and rearm a squadron of WWII fighter planes - legendary Messerschmit Bf-109f's - and wreak havoc across that part of the US. Meanwhile, an aging USAAF vet, who was captured and nearly killed by the German aces on the last day of WWII, spends his time nearby flying a restored Mustang. The Germans nurse a grudge against him, though it's merely symbolic - he's the last Yank they saw before the end of the war, and he's hardly risen to the sort of prominence that would make him an inviting target. Nevertheless, they tear off into their targets with the idea of saving some of their fire for him. When word of the resurrected Luftwaffe gets around (how could it not?), the yankee flier gathers a group of vets himself - more Mustangs and a solitary Spitfire, and it seems that the last air battle of WWII is about to be refought.

"Eagles" was an innocuous enough book - the violence is mostly on the level of the A-Team. I guess we're supposed to like these guys enough to be fascinated about them. The real problem for me was the lack of a central character - the author tosses in another, an investigator who tracks down the grayed eagles and tries to persuade them to end their flights, before being forced to join them. The flying scenes suffered because there's no single POV, but that's not unusual for technothrillers and similar books. But the book also wastes an opportunity to get into the "warbird" subculture, in which old combat aircraft and their stories are restored and preserved. Instead, once each side gathers their troops together, they begin to think as if they were back in WWII. Last of all, the book has a lught touch, which is fine, but it turns violent and sad by the end. Still, "Eagles" was a worthy read, if not a memorable one.

The author writes very well and the plot is a good one. Aging German pilots decide to challenge American Air Aces to combat one-more-time. Perhaps only a male reader would understand the "need" to re-fight a lost war with all the trappings of restored aircraft, uniforms, and military customs (all this might be lost on a female reader). A good tension-packed read wherein you cannot wait to see what happens next. Good editing would have cut this book 15% or so, since some scenes and conversations are repetitious, but that is my only criticism. I would recommend this book to my male friends without reservation.

Gray Eagles is an action-packed, thrilling book that I must say kept me reading. The rich details and gritty action is very realistic, and it takes the reader on a wild airplane ride. This is about a group of old Luftwaffe aces who decide to plot vengenace on a group of old American flyboys, and in the result, well I don't want to ruin the ending so I'll just leave it here for you to guess.

This biography of Curtis Le may is fairly comprehensive and favorable to its subject, the pilot who rose from being a lowly officer at the dawn of America's entry into WWII, to command the nation's military forces at the brink of global thermonuclear war. Le May's ideas on air strategy bucked existing tactics (like how aircraft are grouped, or use of evasive tactics during their attack runs), but results (at least in comparatively minimal casualty rate sustained by his B-17 unit in Europe) raised his fortunes. Soon sent to the Pacific to command a unit of the trouble-prone B-29, Le May's star rises even higher, setting the stage for his post-war commands of USAF-Europe, SAC and USAF Chief of Staff. His greatest post-war accomplishments were turning SAC from a shell of a command into a global-ready air arm. (Coffey dwells much on SAC's sheer absence of security, and the mock attacks by ersatz saboteurs - engineered largely by Lemay himself - who left notes like "there is a bomb in the suitcase I left in the hangar; it is set to explode at 6:05 am.") When taking over SAC, Lemay tested the unit by staging mock attacks with the rules stacked in favor of the attackers - and the results were still dismal. From turning SAC around, Lemay was primed for his tempestuous tenure as CinC-USAF. As the iconic cold-war air force boss, Lemay's frequently clashed with his boss, Maxwell Taylor (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) and the civilian administration (personified by Robert McNamara). Hot topics were the military policies of "gradualism" in Vietnam as well as procurement of the joint-service fighter, the F-111, and manned bombers to replace the B-52.

Unfortunately, whether or not you're familiar with the subject of this book or air warfare in general, you're likely to put it down feeling like a lot is missing. In generally historical terms, "Iron Eagle" seems insufficiently critical of Lemay. Even if you're predisposed to favor Lemay, the book will still sound like apologia. Coffey writes constantly about how the general was misquoted on such subjects as the use of nuclear weapons in Korea or Vietnam or the no-1st strike policy, without satisfactorily explaining what the general did mean or the context in which his statements were made. Also, though taking Lemay's foes to task for being inaccurate in quoting him, Coffey remains a bit inexact himself. McNamara and his circle at DoD are repeatedly called "Whiz Kids" (probably because of their reliance on burgeoning information technology, statistical analysis and other space-age ideas in decision-making) so often that it seems that Coffey believes that that was their official name. At times, it's not clear what the source of the misquoting is - whether deliberately created or innocently spread by Lemay's enemies. Historically speaking, Coffey spends more time re-telling history than placing the historical weight where it belongs. In WWII, bombers fly missions, absorb losses and burn down Japanese cities, but never conveys the gravity of these missions on those who flew them or were targeted by them. Coffey deals slightly with the use of the a-bomb against Japan because Lemay didn't think the bomb necessary (the war was nearly over, and Lemay had accomplished his primary goal of whipping the buggy-prone B-29 into shape), but this is still a huge error. The consequences for the next world war (which loomed closely even as the existing one still raged) together with liquid-fueled missile technology proven by the Germans meant that aviation technology was about to take a massive turn. It's impossible to believe that the bomb itself, used in combat, would have little interest for him. (On a more practical level, having learned of the bomb, security reasons forced Lemay from flying any more combat missions.) Lemay's fliers themselves withstand not only brutal combat conditions but brutal training as well, but Coffey, though repeatedly stressing the training, doesn't dwell much on what that training was, what standards Lemay set, and how he observed them. After the war, Coffey similarly charts the General's political battles, but the gaps are obvious. The general is popular on capital hill, we're told, but little else on those warm relations. (Coziness with congress seems only a counterpoint to the thinly-veiled hostility Lemay received from the White House). The pivotal issues in this period involve both the Cuban Missile Crisis, procurment of a sucessor to to the B-52 and a multi-service fighter, and the manned bomber v. missiles controversy. In Cuba, Coffey goes little further than telling the story without getting to the egos underneath. Neither the fighter (soon to become the F-111) nor the bomber (the eventually cancelled B-70) rise above being the issues of budget battles in Coffey's pages - their merits as aircraft seem to have escaped him entirely, and one wonders whether we should be grateful that the government eventually against Lemay's advice (the F-111 evolved into a superb multi-role strike fighter, while Lemay's B-70 would have been made obsolete by high altitude missiles and interceptors. The debate over missiles and manned bombers is also a murky one - Lemay seeks both manned bombers and missiles for the nuclear triad, and this middle-ground is never explored. Also neglected are the B-47 and B-58, the controversy over the Northrop Flying Wing, the non-use of B-36's over Korea, advances in air defenses, or any mention of Russian innovations. Lemay's tenure covered those years reckoned as a golden age for military aviation, but Coffey seems to miss that entirely. None of the aircraft really come alive in Coffey's pages. For all of its size, "Iron Eagle" says less about Curtis Lemay than you'd find in a few pages of William Anderson's memoir "To Fly and Fight". In that book, the author recalls having to brief the General on the troubled parasite-fighter program. "That's the craziest idea I've ever heard, crazier than any of that stuff that comes out of Edwards Air Force Base......but keep working on it." If only the General edited this

This biography of Gen LeMay is an easy-to-read, informative book about Gen LeMay's life and career. Coffey's use of narratives to give the reader an insight to Gen LeMay's character make the book an enjoyable read. He does not bog us down with a lot of mundane details, and as a result, certainly some details about Gen LeMay's life and career are left out or not delved into. More attention is paid to his early career and his World War II accomplishments and not as much to his years as SAC commander and CSAF. The conflicts and controversies he was involved in as CSAF are not analyzed in depth. However, this is probably not the purpose of this book; the purpose is more of an introduction to Gen LeMay. "Iron Eagle" is a must read for Air Force personnel in order to get know one of the generals who had such a powerful effect on the Air Force and US national defense. Those interested in military history and good stories about military leaders will also find this an interesting read.

Iron Eagle is an intensely interesting biography of one of the pivotal military thinkers of the 20th Century. It is doubtful that, without Curtis Lemay's incredible forsight and military genius, WWII would have ended as soon as it did. The air campaign against Germany was going poorly until Lemay deivised the effective method of bombing that became the standard throughout WWII, Korea, & Vietnam. This book is a must for anyone who wants a true perspective on those who shaped the United States Air Force. Sadly this biography and "Mission With LeMay" are two of the very few accounts of LeMay's career and his tremendous contribution not only to the Air Force, but to the United States. Because he was such a politically incorrect thinker, most of what he has done for his country has been swept aside by revisionist historians. Truly an excellent book, well worth the reading.

An accomplished diver who lives happily with her mother and stepfather in Florida, Sandy is startled by the appearance of her biological father. Frederick is a crack-pot archaeologist who having lost his professional footing with colleagues due to his Atlantis theories wishes to discover the 20th century equivalent to Schliemann's Troy. He convinces Sandy to lie to her parents, meet him on the Greek Isle of Thera and dive in the treacherous expanse of sea that houses a live volcano. For Sandy this beomes an experience of polarizing emotions---while the Minoan traces on the island speak to Sandy in a way she does not quite understand, the precarious position of Thera, between two tectonic plates, keeps her permanently unbalanced as does the flirtatious relationship that develops between her with Jim, a young archaelogist working for the competition and the father-daughter tie she feels despite the seemingly insensitive actions of her father.
Intermingled with the usual Barbara Michael's mix of historical data and romance, is the coincidental reunion of Frederick, Sir Christopher (another archaeologist), a mysterious woman with an equally mysterious name---Kore, and an ex German officer who shot Frederick and Sir Christopher's companion on Crete during the German occupation in WWII.
Although the modern sensibilites alloyed to the island's ancient past makes for a climate fraught with electricity, I felt that Sandy's overtly feminist opinions adversely dated what could have been a more timeless narrative. Instead of everywoman, Sandy epitomizes the 70s working woman, quick with a retort that ensures an immediate knee-jerk defense reaction.
Otherwise the novel was a good read about an interesting subject.

I am amazed. Michaels' has proven that a little research can go a long way. This novel was really very good. The plot weaves together like a well-designed tapestry of mystery and intrigue. This one hooked me so well, I have a new passion for underwater archaeology."

I have been a fan of this author's Elizabeth Peters books for a long time, but this is the first of her Barbara Michaels books that I've read. It is just as exciting and suspenseful as her Peters books. I especially loved the Greek archaeological background.

Great book for small children - especially those who want to do things themselves and be very independent, but aren't quite there yet.

Great book for small children - teaches them that they can do many things on their own, but may sometimes need a little help. Good for that age where they want to be independent, but not quite ready yet.

This was my introduction to Mary Wesley. I liked this book very much and I intend to read Wesley's other books. A Dubious Legacy kept my interest, my attention and was responsible for the discreet smile I presented throughout its reading. For, indeed, the doings of three couples through several decades in mid 20th century -- the subject under scrutiny in this comedy of manners -- was portrayed with humorous detachment and unwavering perspicacity. Ms Wesley is very good at placing her characters within the axioms of each decade's mores and develops insightful cameos of each era's preoccupations.
This is a short novel, a succinct book, developed in a fast tempo, keeping all along a mystery we hope to unveil. The central characters look at first as banal as they can be, but soon we realize appearances are misleading. These six upper middle class friends in the English country side are the source of great social commentary made by an ironic and warm narrator, a painter as it were, using few incisive strokes. The result is great fun and speedy reading, a book which I would recommend to anyone wishing to be intrigued and entertained.

A Dubious Legacy is the second book written by Mary Wesley that I have read, and her writing entrances me. This book spans the period of 1944 through 1990 and focuses on the lives of the participants at what appears to be a straightforward dinner party. As the evening progresses, unexpected and unusual things occur. The book goes on to tell the story of the effect these events have on the lives of those present at this dinner party.

By slowly telling the story, uncovering information bit by bit, the writer creates a feeling of suspense. I was reluctant to put the book down, and felt slightly uneasy until I was able to finish it. I enjoyed the unusual characters the writer was able to create and felt that they were right at home in the setting of this novel. Mary Wesley also allows the reader to feel that they intimately know the characters by the end of the story. Somehow she is able to accomplish this with a minimal amount of detail.

I totally enjoyed this book and I have no qualms about recommending it to readers who enjoy the genre of comedy of manners. I am eager to read other books written by this author.

Captain Paul Baron is traumatized by the fact that he
killed his own brother in the Civil War. Assigned to a Fort in
the Dakota Territory, he drowns his sorrows in whiskey, and while
impaired is captured by Sioux warriors. Although the warriors
want to kill him, a widow named Yellow Leaf claims Baron as a
replacement for her elder son.
The captain reluctantly becomes part of the community,
taking the name Swift Warrior and eventually thriving in his new
life. His interpreter and instructor in the Lakota language is
Hope, whose white father abandoned her and her Sioux mother many
years ago.
Eagle Dancer is told in two parts. Part One deals with
Baron's struggle to forgive himself and to face life. Although
the attraction between Baron and Hope is present, they do not act
on their feelings until the end of Part One. Ms. Scott's
extensive research into the Sioux and the psychology of war
veterans is evident in this story. The scenes of Baron adapting
to life with the Sioux have a mystical quality, transporting the
reader to another world. These scenes steal the show, and the
romance takes second place.

Union Captain Paul Baron entered the military with plans to become a lifetime soldier expecting to serve out west when the war eventually ends. On the last day of the Civil War, Paul kills a rebel sniper. However, when he sees his victim, Paul's soul feels as if it has just been sucked out of his body. Stunned, he wants his honorable discharge immediately, but his commanding officer 'persuades' him to remain with the Army by helping Paul turn into an alcoholic.

Out west, Paul is the lone military survivor of a battle with the Lakota. He is taken prisoner and welcomes the chance to die. However, the Indian Hope lives up to her name as through her, Paul meets depressed Yellow Leaf, whose son recently died. Yellow Leaf adopts Paul and through these two Lakota women, Paul begins to reclaim his life, but has doubts about spending eternity as an Indian even if he loves his two saviors, one as a mother and the other as his soul mate.

Theresa Scott has written her best novel to date with the exciting Reconstruction Era tale, EAGLE DANCER. The story line is deep as the Lakota and White ways of life conflict especially through Paul. The lead male character is three dimensional as the audience can feel his angst over that final killing that haunts his essence. Hope has her own internal disunity to deal with especially her love for the former enemy of her people. Fans of absorbing historical romances starring strong characters from different lifestyles will find Ms. Scott's strong story simply stupendous.

Harriet Klausner