Reviews for Historical and Pictorial Review of the Twenty-Eighth Division in World War II

The average rating for Historical and Pictorial Review of the Twenty-Eighth Division in World War II based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-17 00:00:00 Mar�a Del Consuelo Molina Airborne Warfare by Major General James M. Gavin is as close to a contemporary account of all major airborne operations in World War II as possible. Written in 1947, Gavin devotes 175 pages to detailing each major airborne operation from start to finish while also providing a personal assessment of each operation. General Gavin also provides a thought-provoking vision of future airborne operations. He opens the book by diving right into his experience commanding the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Sicily and concludes the book with his musings on the future capabilities of airborne warfare. This book is important to the overall canon of historical military literature, and the memory of World War II, airborne operations, and the actions taken by the paratroopers involved. The work is very important to the scholarship of the airborne experience in the Second World War as it serves as an in-depth account of every major airborne operation in World War II from one of its most legendary commanders. This book serves as a primary source document of an airborne commander’s record of airborne warfare and his thoughts on its future place in the American wartime arsenal. His thesis is correct in explaining that airborne operations evolved from their mistakes throughout the war but what he does not acknowledge is the arguably easier missions’ assigned to increasingly larger groups of paratroopers as the war progressed. Gavin’s assessment of the future of airborne operations somewhat misses the mark. Gavin predicts a greater need for airborne forces and airborne operations; however, the inverse has proven to be true. While the number of paratroopers in relation to the total number of active duty soldiers is in fact higher, the United States has conducted zero division-size parachute assaults since the end of World War II.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-18 00:00:00 Lee Martin Wolfe writes an interesting, hilarious, and opinionated account of how we ended up with all Those Buildings, i.e. those concrete boxes that look like factories that everyone understands are "art" but secretly thinks are really ugly. My architecture knowledge is pretty much limited to recognizing that architects design bafflingly expensive, utilitarian chairs (how bourgeois of me!) and that "Eero" and "Saarinen" are frequent answers to New York Times crossword puzzle clues. As a lay person, I enjoyed learning about the philosophical European architecture "compounds" with idealistic manifestos, their goal of designing for the proletariat and eliminating anything that reeked of wealth, and the havoc these white tower institutions wreaked across Europe and the U.S. (for instance, insisting that roofs must be flat in the middle of snow country). I also really liked that Wolfe doesn't pull any of his punches. He pretty much masters the art of rolling his eyes on paper by using italics, exclamation points, and quotation marks ("A color? Well, I mean, my God -- how very bourgeois!" -- only imagine this line with italics, which Goodreads does not allow). Some of Wolfe's best snark is also found in his photo captions: Under a photo of a typical steel-barred concrete structure, "The Dutch really knew how to bourgeois-proof a building." Under a photo of an austere retirement home with a single embellishment on top (a sculpture of a giant tv antenna as "a symbol for the elderly"): "It took us thirty-seven years to get this far." Amidst the snark are some good, thoughtful points, but I have to admit that my favorite things are how Wolfe keeps shouting, "How bourgeois!" every other paragraph, and also his photo on the back cover, in which he is wearing an all-white suit and white shoes. My 52nd and last book of the year!