Search - America's Splendid Little Wars: A Short History of U.S. Military Engagements: 1975-2000

I must say, this is the first book I have ever read that I feel was custom written for me. I was born in mid 1975, just after the US pulled out of Vietnam. For some reason, despite being well educated, my history classes over the years seems to skip many of the conflicts the US was involved with. Many of the conflicts I was too young to remember or too immature to notice and care.

If someone were to ask about the Mayaguez incident, I'd assume something happened in the city in Puerto Rico.

If someone mentioned something about Khmer Rouge, my guess would have been they were talking about a product made by Maybelline.

The Hostage Rescue attempt? A Chuck Norris movie vaguely touched on the subject.

Grenada? Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge.

This book is a 200 page documentary on the 15 conflicts fought by American soldiers between 1975 and 2000, starting with the SS Mayaguez incident and ending with Kosovo.

Through most of the conflicts discussed, I feel the author did an excellent job helping a history illiterate like myself. Typically, the author goes into some background into the whole conflict, discussing why and how tensions built up to the point of armed conflict. The author does an excellent job discussing the battle plans and strategy behind most of the conflicts.

I have to commend the author on his writing abilities. At times, the explanations of the military strategies got a little dull to me. However, the author is a very talented writer. When describing the battles, I fell the author did an excellent job describing the events with words. I felt as if I could have been watching it on TV.

The book is exactly what the title suggests, a chronological documentary of various US military conflicts. At times, I felt the book was slow reading, but overall, I thought it was an excellent resource on military conflicts that I knew little about and no one else seemed to pay attention to.