Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The eccentric Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate, defiant of his British superiors, oddly dressed in a pith helmet and munching onions as if they were snacks, developed an impressive record as a champion of the underdog. A captain in Palestine in the 1930s, he helped Jewish settlers organize to protect themselves. Together with Emperor Haile Selassie, he marched into Addis Ababa to liberate Ethiopia from the Italians; while in Burma, he organized a guerrilla force that struck from the jungle to harass the Japanese. He was killed in mid-1944, when Britain began turning the tide against the Japanese in the Pacific theater. Taylor (A Piece of This Country) is clearly enamored of Wingate and has chosen to fictionalize his life in what he calls a docudrama, combining fiction with photos, maps and selections from actual diaries. These added details, however, don't make up for Taylor's exaggeration of Wingate's confrontations with his rivals in the British army, his poor dramatization of Wingate's travails or his mechanical dialogue. Wingate's story is still another fascinating account to emerge from World War II; Taylor's book is most interesting when he sticks to the narration of Wingate's campaigns. (March) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Orde Wingate was one of the most colorful and adored generals of World War II. He created and led a guerilla army that forced the Italians out of most of Ethiopia, and in Burma created a long-range penetration force to operate behind Japanese lines. He was greatly admired by Churchill, less so by his British army superiors. This biographical novel (or as Taylor describes it, ``docudrama'') covers Wingate's life from his 1930s exploits in Palestine to his death in Burma in 1944. It concentrates heavily on Wingate's mystical and religious beliefs and the psychological bases behind his distressingly high casualty rates. Good historical background in a variety of settings, and smoothly written, but too long.Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This fictional biography of the brilliant British strategist Orde Wingate covers his war career from guerrilla action in Palestine to splendid success in Ethiopia to its end in the China-India-Burma theater. The author (A-18, 1967; A Piece of This Country, 1970) is the son of Wingate's contemporary, the American general Maxwell Taylor. Just as the Burmese front in the war against the Japanese is a shadowy and forgotten affair to most Americans, so are the great names of that theater largely unknown. But, for all the action that may have been overshadowed by the war in Europe and the Pacific, Burma was the scene of vastly cruel warfare and one of the first successful Allied efforts against Japan in the war. The success came as a result of the daring and at first highly unpopular plans for long-range penetration laid by a British general, Orde Wingate. As is often the case, Wingate was very much of a maverick within the Royal Army, thanks to his appalling lack of skill at bureaucratic warfare and military politics. His egotism, suspicious nature, and inability to accommodate the weaknesses of his superiors created constant obstacles in his struggle to bring new thinking to the art of warfare. But despite Wingate's talent for self-destruction, his career went from dramatic success to dramatic success, notably in the daring but undervalued guerrilla action that led to the restoration of Haile Selassie's monarchy. Wingate's audacity and the telling description of high-level military decision-making make slogging through the memoir-ish prose worthwhile. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
