Come, come, Zoltan. An anonymous Kirkus review is "better"? More favorable, perhaps, because the job of a Kirkus reviewer is to sell the book, not to criticize it. And just what do you think the qualifications of the reviewer to discuss this subject were?
Now the negative reviews were indeed written by people who are truly qualified to discuss it. I know, because I just checked them out on <google.com>. <g>
Philip Jacobsen, whose review you so peremptorily dismissed, is a retired US Navy officer and an intelligence analyst, and has written widely himself on Pearl Harbor:
microworks.net
As for Stephen Budiansky, I'd run across his name before (read something he wrote about the Gulf War). He, too, is a widely-published intelligence analyst. It seems to me that the first few sentences of his review say all that needs to be said. In any event, it should be sufficient to make anyone who knows anything about what serious research involves suspicious of the book's conclusions.
Stinnett—-and several of his reviewers--make much of the supposed "official secrecy" that still surrounds the subject of America's breaking of the Japanese naval codes prior to Pearl Harbor. The relevant documents are however only "secret" to those who have not made a basic effort to find them. The documents are freely available at the National Archives....(and they completely refute Stinnett's thesis that America was reading the Japanese naval codes prior to Pearl Harbor).
I put the last half of the final sentence in parentheses, because to me the real sin here is not so much that the author drew the "wrong" conclusions from his research, but that HE DID NOT DO HIS RESEARCH IN THE FIRST PLACE!
So, who says that the reviews, rather than the book, were "found wanting"? The "that man in the White House"-haters?
I'm with Neo on this one...
Joan |
