Good Reads - My Book Report (please post your own)

THParent

THParent

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My DS suggested that I read The Warrior Ethos, by Steven Pressfield some time last school year, because it was required reading at USNA, and he liked it.

I saw it on the USMC Commandant's Reading List, so I thought to myself that with those two recommendations, it would be time well spent.

Not much time, I might add. It is less than 100 pages with fairly big print (which I appreciate at my age). It took me all of 80 minutes to read. I got a couple of pages into it, and said to myself: "this guy has to be a Marine". I looked at the bio on him in the back - and sure enough - he is. Well, the publisher refers to him as a "former Marine", but I can let that slide.

On to my book report, lest I digress.

It was an interesting read. I learned nothing by reading it, because I already knew exactly what he was saying, before I picked it up. Now, if I was a teenager, it would have been enlightening. At least, I think it would be. It is hard for me to relate to my younger self, since it was so long ago. I do agree that the Warrior Archetype does a lot to inform the archetypes that follow. As I matured into The Sage, and The King (both may be a little debatable), perhaps I passed on to my DS what I knew of The Warrior Ethos as he was growing up. Whatever that was, pales in comparison to what he knows now, having the experiences for himself. I know that he knows it (at least in part), because he mentions his friends and what he would do for them and what they would do for him. He is now living that archetype that will inform him and shape him so well to achieve whatever it is he wants to achieve, for the rest of his life. For now, the Warrior Archetype has seized him. Something inside him makes him want to jump out of an aircraft and blow stuff up. Something drives him to seek out that crusty Gunnery Sergeant (maybe that Red Hat at Pickel Meadows) as a mentor. A leader who will expect more, and make him do more, than he ever thought that he was capable of doing. He will seek out comrades in arms. People who have his back, just as he has theirs. Lifelong friends who are just as crazy as he is.

Yeah, I get it. I don’t want to do it again, but everyone should do it once.

If you served you'll like this book, but I don't think that it was written for us. I think it was written for people who know nothing about it. Either way, it is informative and a good read.
 
The Spartan king Agesilaus was once asked what was the supreme warrior virtue, from which all other virtues derived. He replied, “Contempt for death.”
 
Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century

This is a history of modern China, beginning with the Opium Wars and continuing up to President Xi's predecessor Zhu Rongji. It tells the history through the careers of China's most influential thinkers of the time.

Most interesting to me was the juxtaposition of Japan and China in the later half of the 19th Century. Japan, after the humiliation of Western encroachment, chose to embrace Western methods and thinking in a number of areas: military, technology, industrial, education, and political. They welcomed Westerners to Japan. They sent legions of students, civil servants and merchants to the West. The result was a rapid growth in the economy and widening of their sphere of influence. Conflict with neighbors and colonial powers was inevitable and culminated with WW2.

China was more deeply humiliated, deliberately in many cases. They tried to cherry pick very specific western methods which were met with resistance from the elites. There was abject hostility towards ALL foreigners, not just Westerners. It wasn't until the rule of Deng Xiaoping that China embarked on a similar course as Japan did 125 years earlier. The striking difference between the two experiences is that China deteriorated from a more self-exalted position and experienced an extra 100+ years of (in their minds) humiliation.

The reader doesn't have to get past page 23 to see the direct connection to current issues with China--from their nationalistic trade policies to their militarization of the South China Seas to their borderline imperial expansion in Africa and South America.
 
This is a bit off topic but @cb7893 's post reminded me of a "realization" I made in the last few days, given our current difficulties with China. The opium wars forced China to accept opium into their society. They had the largest economy in the world until this happened. Within ten years of the Opium Wars it is estimated China's GDP fell by half. I think China is currently engaged in an "Opium War" with the US, with the opium now coming in the form of Fentanyl. Just one man's opinion.

I now return you to your book reports, which I'm glad someone started.
 
My basement is a repository for my son's college text books and commandant's reading list selections. I had to excavate through some of that to find my copy of Biohazard by Ken Alibek. Dr. Alibek was the the former deputy administrator of Biopreparat, the covert biological weapons organization within the Soviet Union. He may have had the title of deputy administrator, but he was the chief bio-weaponeer. The book describes how he was trained as a physician and as an infectious disease expert, was assigned to develop agents of death. This bothered him according to his book and what he told the debriefers after his defection to the United States. Much of the book is a description of the Soviet bio-warfare apparatus and the processes of agent manufacturing. Nothing too technical but enough to keep the reader's interest.

He tells us that 20 tons of small pox was required to be on hand at all times. It was so important to the program that they never wanted to be caught short. One hair raising incident involved the agonizing death of a colleague who accidentally injected himself with a lethal, rare filovirus related to Ebola. A scientist named Dmritry Ustinov researching at Biopreparat’s base in Siberia, stuck himself with a needle as he tried to inject a guinea pig with Marburg virus. After three horrific weeks in a military hospital bed where his organs slowly liquefied, Ustinov died. Before he was buried, samples were obtained from his organs. Testing showed the virus was much more powerful and stable than the original strain. Orders then went out to replace the old strain with the new, which was called, in a move that the wry Ustinov might have appreciated, “Variant U.”

He mentions Bill Patrick who was his American counterpart. Later when Ken and Bill got together to compare notes and develop a friendship, they discovered their work somewhat paralleled each other. Bill stated, "It's amazing two countries so far apart could undertake such similar courses." Was it really a coincidence? Of course not. He goes on to tell of the KGB passing on intel to "Laboratory X" which worked on assassination weapons.

I was the senior of 25 corpsman at the Marines' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force in 2000-2001 after the unit moved to the DC area. The US started getting nervous and concerned enough to get us closer to the capital in case of a chem/bio attack. I attended all the courses of course and one day at USAMRIID we were assembled in the auditorium for a guest speaker. The speaker was Dr. Ken Alibek. He spoke for several minutes in his thick Russian accent about his career and the biologicals he produced beside small pox which were anthrax, tularemia, Ebola, Marburg, Q fever, and others. He got to the point when he and the US were working on the same agents and just when I thought my day couldn't get any better, Bill Patrick walks out onto the stage. I could go on and on about the next hour or so with those two but it boiled down to them discussing the race to develop biological weapons and the pressure placed on them to get there first. I highly recommend the book which I bought a few days later. I hunted down Dr. Alabek and went to his office and convinced the receptionist I wasn't a phycho and just wanted an autograph. The thumbnail shows his autograph to me which I got close to 20 years ago.
 

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THParent said:
My DS suggested that I read The Warrior Ethos, by Steven Pressfield some time last school year, because it was required reading at USNA, and he liked it.

I saw it on the USMC Commandant's Reading List, so I thought to myself that with those two recommendations, it would be time well spent.

Not much time, I might add. It is less than 100 pages with fairly big print (which I appreciate at my age). It took me all of 80 minutes to read. I got a couple of pages into it, and said to myself: "this guy has to be a Marine". I looked at the bio on him in the back - and sure enough - he is. Well, the publisher refers to him as a "former Marine", but I can let that slide.

On to my book report, lest I digress.

It was an interesting read. I learned nothing by reading it, because I already knew exactly what he was saying, before I picked it up. Now, if I was a teenager, it would have been enlightening. At least, I think it would be. It is hard for me to relate to my younger self, since it was so long ago. I do agree that the Warrior Archetype does a lot to inform the archetypes that follow. As I matured into The Sage, and The King (both may be a little debatable), perhaps I passed on to my DS what I knew of The Warrior Ethos as he was growing up. Whatever that was, pales in comparison to what he knows now, having the experiences for himself. I know that he knows it (at least in part), because he mentions his friends and what he would do for them and what they would do for him. He is now living that archetype that will inform him and shape him so well to achieve whatever it is he wants to achieve, for the rest of his life. For now, the Warrior Archetype has seized him. Something inside him makes him want to jump out of an aircraft and blow stuff up. Something drives him to seek out that crusty Gunnery Sergeant (maybe that Red Hat at Pickel Meadows) as a mentor. A leader who will expect more, and make him do more, than he ever thought that he was capable of doing. He will seek out comrades in arms. People who have his back, just as he has theirs. Lifelong friends who are just as crazy as he is.

Yeah, I get it. I don’t want to do it again, but everyone should do it once.

If you served you'll like this book, but I don't think that it was written for us. I think it was written for people who know nothing about it. Either way, it is informative and a good read.
Click to expand...
 
I'll save you all a few dollars and post the book right here:

https://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Por...e_Warrior_Ethos.pdf?ver=2018-10-12-135250-303

My problem with this "warrior culture" stuff is it doesn't explain the historical success of the citizen soldier. The non-professional. The soldier who was a happy civilian six months before seeing combat.

King George III's magnificent legions were basically ground down by a bunch of motivated American farmers with muskets loaded with nails. Napoleon ordered a levy en masse and mobilized a million Frenchmen from every walk of life, turned them into soldiers overnight & nearly conquered all of Europe, with all their professional armies filled with 20-year men. The US Civil War saw some of the bloodiest battles in human history up to that time - none of which were fought with professional armies. The World Wars were fought with conscripts. Israel has a rather small professional military, but every citizen is a soldier in some manner or other.

Parris Island has a pretty good history of turning pimply-faced teens just home from the prom into well-prepared riflemen in just 13 weeks (less in the 20th century's wars). Plus many an 18 year old who has never held a weapon becomes a sharpshooter in just a few weeks. None had to be raised from birth as a warrior.

As for all that lavish praise of Sparta, Alexander the Great, Japan's Bushido, Rommel leading from the front, etc.? They all ended up losing. Spartan collapsed. Alexander's empire didn't last long after his death. Japan's Bushido ethos led to the Bataan Death March, Nanking - and Hiroshima. Rommel's leading from the front was inspiring & a gear story, but would Ike have led the Allies better from a foxhole in the Ardennes or in the rear, where he could get a clear picture of the entire front?

Then again, I have to agree with Pressfield's lament about only 1% serving while 99%+ "support the troops" and "thank them for their service". But the answer to that isn't the professional military caste (like the Spartans or the Bushido) but, unfortunately, the draft. Both the US and the Confederacy entered the Civil War proud to employ only volunteers - they changed their mind within 2 years. The British Empire alone among major WW1 participants went to war without conscription. That ended quick enough. By 1918 the were calling up 50 year olds.

On a final note, Steven Pressfield's "The Afghan Campaign" is an utterly tremendous epic to be read and re-read. Much better than his awful initial novel "The Legend of Bagger Vance" (aka The Magic Southern Black Man in the vein of The Green Mile and others) which made him some money, became an even worse Matt Damon movie, making him a boatload of even more money, so he then write meaningful, better books.
 
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