Book Reviews

Title: Beyond Hell and Back: How America's Special Operations Forces Became the World's Greatest Fighting Unit
Authors: Dwight Jon Zimmerman, John D. Gresham
Genre: Non-Fiction, History
Reviewer: Weymouth Symmes

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B0046LUGWG

The accounts of seven pivotal special operations from Vietnam to present day that were instrumental in the creation of Special Operations Command.

Title: The Book of Weapons: Tools of War Through the Ages
Author: Dwight Jon Zimmerman
Genre: Non-Fiction, Reference
Reviewer: Rob Ballister

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B003W8GQ4Q

The Book of Weapons is a sequel to the award-winning The Book of War. It covers the history of weaponry from the earliest most primitive instruments of destruction up to the technologically advanced weapons wielded today. Following in the profusely illustrated format of The Book of War, this history is organized chronologically, and is a fascinating survey that reveals the incredible array of arms, animals, methods, and concepts that were forged, fashioned, manipulated, subverted, and even seduced, into becoming the means to bring defeat and destruction to an enemy.

Title: The Blackened Canteen
Author: Jerry Yellin
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Jack Woodville London

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1421890194

This book is about five Americans: Jack O'Connor, Monroe Cohen, Ken Colli, Newton Towle, crewmen on B-29's and were killed in a mid-air collision on June 20, 1945 and buried by Fukumatsu Itoh alongside the 2,000 Japanese killed in the raid, and Richard Fiske, the bugler on the battleship West Virginia when it was sunk at Pearl Harbor. It is also about three Japanese: Hiroya Sugano, 12 years old when his city was bombed in 1945, Takeshi Maeda, the navigator on the torpedo bomber that sank the West Virginia, and Fukumatsu Itoh, a city councilman and Buddhist priest. Only two survive today, Dr. Sugano, who is 74, and Takeshi Maeda, who is 89.

The Blackened Canteen is written by story teller, Jerry Yellin, with many voices. It shows that he has listened to the cultures of both his land of birth and the adopted land of his son.

Title: The Traiteur's Ring
Author: Jeffrey Wilson
Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery
Reviewer: Bill McDonald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1936564173

A man who has spent his life defending his country discovers that fate has presented him with an even higher calling. Ben Morvant is not what you would call ordinary and as a Navy SEAL, he never expected an ordinary life. But when a routine mission to protect a local village in a war-torn region of Africa goes terribly wrong, Ben is presented with truths beyond what his military training and experience have prepared him to accept. With his dying breath, a village elder passes to Ben a gift--a simple ring, unremarkable except for its ever changing color and the feeling of power emanating from within.

Soon after accepting the ring dark visions begin to haunt Ben's dreams. Images of pain and death, of evil and destruction. But some of the visions are hauntingly familiar. Soon Ben must return to his childhood home in Louisiana to face a dark secret from his past, one that may explain why he has the power to heal with a touch of the hand . . . or kill with a single thought. After discovering the truth about his family and himself, he comes to realize that he is a soldier in a greater battle than he could ever have imagined. And if he cannot find a way to wield the power concealed within him, the forces that prey on mankind's anger and fear will destroy not only him, but everything he holds dear.

Title: Piercing the Veil
Author: Eric Wenttz
Genre: Fiction, Thriller
Reviewer: Pat McGrath Avery

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1935278789

A warrior with the constitutional forbearance of a diamond and the intellectual agility of a Delphic oracle, Lieutenant Commander Grant Chisolm leads his exceptionally trained and equipped SEAL team into the heart of darkness. His quest to rescue hostages taken by the charismatic and cunning leader of a major insurgency in sub-Saharan African forces him to confront the irrationality of malevolent genius, bureaucratic quackery posing as government, and the link between a man's past indiscretions and present death and destruct