markm reviewed The coldest winter by David Halberstam
Review of 'The coldest winter' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Halberstam’s 2007 history of the Korean War is excellent. He balanced political and military views of the war and chose the political and military battles to discuss with the adeptness of the experienced Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and historian that he was. The first third of the book is political with mini-biographies of McArthur, Truman, Acheson, Mao, Kennan, Kim Il Sung, Syngman Rhee, Ridgway, and others. If you’re eager to read about the war itself, this may slow you down, but Halberstam used the novelistic technique of starting the book with the disastrous battle at Unsan out of temporal sequence to draw you in.
Besides whatever intrinsic value it has, reading this history is an antidote to the current blather about the uniqueness of our political divisiveness, the politicization of the media, and the megalomania of our leaders. Here the reader can read about the posturings of Douglas McArthur, his support …
Halberstam’s 2007 history of the Korean War is excellent. He balanced political and military views of the war and chose the political and military battles to discuss with the adeptness of the experienced Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and historian that he was. The first third of the book is political with mini-biographies of McArthur, Truman, Acheson, Mao, Kennan, Kim Il Sung, Syngman Rhee, Ridgway, and others. If you’re eager to read about the war itself, this may slow you down, but Halberstam used the novelistic technique of starting the book with the disastrous battle at Unsan out of temporal sequence to draw you in.
Besides whatever intrinsic value it has, reading this history is an antidote to the current blather about the uniqueness of our political divisiveness, the politicization of the media, and the megalomania of our leaders. Here the reader can read about the posturings of Douglas McArthur, his support from Henry Luce and Time magazine, and the pervasive lobbying power of the Nationalist Chinese and Chiang Kai-shek.
