Reviews for Mussolini's island

The average rating for Mussolini's island based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-10-25 00:00:00 Antoine Attier As much as I wanted to like this book it left me feeling cold. On the positive, several of the stories were interesting. On the other hand, an equal number were rather boring. The author's blend of superficiality and sensationalism often left me wanting more detail. Worse, I frequently found myself saying "citation needed." Others have drawn the parallels to the style of Cornelius Ryan and I find myself disagreeing. While Follain attempts to interweave narratives as Ryan does, this story fails to have the cohesion of a Ryan work. 'Mussolini's Island' contains remarkably little military detail and many of the personal accounts seem colored by time. Consider that Ryan performed his interviews during and immediately after the conflict. Here the interviews were performed decades after the fact and little seems to have been done to corroborate personal accounts with factual evidence. Ryan also does very well at building his narratives around a solid discussion of the historical campaign, he presents the big picture while beguiling us with stories. I was also troubled that in several instances where I fact checked the work, I found issues. The author tells us that Churchill referred to Sicily and the Italian boot as Europe's “soft under belly”. I knew this to be false just from my personal knowledge. Churchill referred to -The Balkans-, Greece and Yugoslavia, as Europe's “soft underbelly” (source US Army War College A170152, "Churchill's Soft-Underbelly Approach onto the European Continent"). The narrative account of the sinking of the hospital ship SS Talamba is very striking and leaves us understanding that thousands of servicemen and women were lost with the ship. But a search of the internet finds several sites claiming that only -5- crew members were lost as the ship sank. True, internet sites have been known to be wrong, but the disparity in numbers is striking. I can see where people would enjoy this book. It is approachable and tells a few interesting stories. However, for a more solid perspective on the Sicily campaign one would do well to look elsewhere.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-02-11 00:00:00 JEANETTE AVILA I've been doing a reading challenge and been updating my progress as I go along. So here are my thoughts at different stages in the book. Page 21: This is the first Military History novel I've read. The writing style is very straight forward, but still does a very good job of putting me in the heads of the people involved. Page 190: Definitely one of my favourites of the 10. I haven't read much WWII fiction before but this story has really brought to life what it meant to be on the front lines. And it may seem like soldiers are just drones in movies etc but they're real people too and most of them wouldn't want to be a part of it if they had a choice. And by some of the scenes it really shows you that truth is stranger than fiction and a hell of a lot scarier. Page 350 (completed): After readin this book you really get a good feel of horrible war really is, and what people had to go through to survive. If they were lucky enough to do so. I think everyone should have to read books like this to convince them that war is never a solution. History lessons at school just don't give you the same indepth feel like this book does. Overall a very well researched book and recommended to war buffs and regular readers too. Especially regular readers.