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eiseneisen's review against another edition
2.0
I'm a big fan of author Stephen Ambrose. D-Day and Band of Brothers are 2 of the best military history books I've read. Americans at War is merely okay.
Americans at War consists of several essays on a variety of military people and topics, beginning with Ulysses S. Grant's siege of Vicksburg during the Civil War, ending with Ambrose's speculations on "War in the 21st Century" (Americans at War was published in 1997), and touching upon seemingly every military conflict in between. Unfortunately, I found fewer than half of the essays particularly well-written, insightful, or interesting. In some essays Ambrose completely fails to satisfactorily support his thesis, which is both surprising and disappointing in a historian and writer who has been as consistently superb as Ambrose.
I thought 2 essays were particularly interesting, "The Atomic Bomb and It's Consequences" and "A Fateful Friendship: Eisenhower and Patton." But beyond those essays, I wouldn't recommend Americans at War to anyone interested in military history, as there are dozens of far more worthwhile reads out there.
Americans at War consists of several essays on a variety of military people and topics, beginning with Ulysses S. Grant's siege of Vicksburg during the Civil War, ending with Ambrose's speculations on "War in the 21st Century" (Americans at War was published in 1997), and touching upon seemingly every military conflict in between. Unfortunately, I found fewer than half of the essays particularly well-written, insightful, or interesting. In some essays Ambrose completely fails to satisfactorily support his thesis, which is both surprising and disappointing in a historian and writer who has been as consistently superb as Ambrose.
I thought 2 essays were particularly interesting, "The Atomic Bomb and It's Consequences" and "A Fateful Friendship: Eisenhower and Patton." But beyond those essays, I wouldn't recommend Americans at War to anyone interested in military history, as there are dozens of far more worthwhile reads out there.
crowreader's review against another edition
2.0
Reading Ambrose in middle and high school set me on the path of becoming a historian—no doubt about it. His skill as a storyteller, as a crafter of narrative grabbed hold of me then and still, I'm sure, influences my writing today. Rereading this volume now, however, I'm struck by several things: 1) good lord have my historical interests changed in the decade-plus since I first picked up one of his books, as military history is nowhere near my wheelhouse now; 2) it is uncomfortably clear how much effort Ambrose expended to write historical actors whom he admired as heroes (often a "Great Man" of some sort); 3) generalizations flatten out his arguments in spots.
As for my specific impressions of Americans at War, it's a wide-ranging collection that suffers from some essay-to-essay unevenness in terms of depth, and some sections get carried away into the rhapsodic. He also gets extremely close to being a full-blown apologist for My Lai, which I didn't recall from my first reading. Unforeseen consequences of revisiting one's inspirations, no?
As for my specific impressions of Americans at War, it's a wide-ranging collection that suffers from some essay-to-essay unevenness in terms of depth, and some sections get carried away into the rhapsodic. He also gets extremely close to being a full-blown apologist for My Lai, which I didn't recall from my first reading. Unforeseen consequences of revisiting one's inspirations, no?
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