Top Secret Tales of World War II

Rating:
Summary: Look Elsewhere
Review: None are top secret and some are inaccurate. This is a collection of short squibbs of just about everything you have already read about WW2. And in some cases author Breuer just gets its wrong: German magnetic mines, for example, were NOT as he says magnetic in the sense of being drawn the metallic mass of a nearby boat where they exploded on contact, but rather stationary and tethered and set off by the passing of a nearby magnetic field (when they worked, that is, which wasn't often). Worse, perhaps, the writing is on par with a 6th grader: one small section (the two pages of magnetic mines) calls these things "fiendish devices" and "infernal devices" within paragraphs. If you want to read good non-fiction on war, dump this and turn to John Keegan!

Rating:
Summary: Inaccurate and Boring
Review: None are top secret and some are inaccurate. This is a collection of short squibbs of just about everything you have already read about WW2. And in some cases author Breuer just gets its wrong: German magnetic mines, for example, were NOT as he says magnetic in the sense of being drawn the metallic mass of a nearby boat where they exploded on contact, but rather stationary and tethered and set off by the passing of a nearby magnetic field (when they worked, that is, which wasn't often). Worse, perhaps, the writing is on par with a 6th grader: one small section (the two pages of magnetic mines) calls these things "fiendish devices" and "infernal devices" within paragraphs. If you want to read good non-fiction on war, dump this and turn to John Keegan!

Rating:
Summary: Look Elsewhere
Review: This work is a mildly interesting collection of semi-familiar "tales." It is so poorly written that it reads like a first draft. Where was the editor?