Peter Harclerode

Fighting Dirty by Peter Harclerode I am deeply conflicted about this book. On one hand I have been reading military history for 15 years now, so at this point it is unusual to come across any new operations to me. This book does manage to provide some of those. For instance, I was unaware of the American and British attempts to supply an anti-Communist resistance in Albania in the late 40s.

Unfortunately, the book’s writing style leaves a lot to be desired. It comes off like a giant encyclopedia article crammed full of names, dates, acronyms. This is tiresome after 20 pages and downright exhausting after 500. There is also a lack of context. For instance, in the battle of Algiers it is mentioned that torture was used by the French but there is no connection drawn between this, the loss of French public opinion and Charles de Gaulle’s decision to negotiate. Instead it is described as being purely based on de Gaulle’s own view that the war was unwinnable.

Also, the Gulf of Tonkin incident is described, both of them, without comment that the second one was probably, as LBJ put it, “them hunting whales.”

So I can’t really recommend this, but I will be mining the bibliography.… (more)