Book Review – Chua, Day of Empire

Book Review Chua, Day of Empire

Chua, Amy, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Power and Why They Fall (2007 Hrdbk, 2008 ppbk. 396 pp.)

A paperback of this title was kindly provided by the publisher for review.

Warning: 9,000+ words ahead!

While drafting a 2006 chicagoboyz review of Yale Law Professor Amy Chua’s World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003), I was very impressed with the value of the concepts she introduced and her superior writing style. I had heard of her more recent book but the pace of the past few years had largely halted my book reviewing.

So I’m late to the game with Day of Empire (DOE). The publication of the paperback version of the book triggered one of Amazon.com’s oft-fatal “As someone who has purchased or rated X, you might like to know that Y has just been published …” notices in my In-Box. Based on World on Fire and Amazon’s summary blurb of the more recent book, it seemed well worth reading. I’ve purposely avoided reading any reviews of the book by other writers.

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Dresden, “Dresden,” and Obama’s Visit

Dresden, once known as “Florence on the Elbe” because of its beauty and culture, is now best known for its destruction by British and American bombers in February of 1945. “Dresden” is the name of a haunting movie, originally made for German television, about a love affair in the doomed city.

Dresden is of course also the German city that Barack Obama intends to visit–for reasons best known to himself–during his current trip to Europe. It seems like this would be an appropriate time to review the film (which I watched a couple of months ago via Netflix) and to use it as a springboard for discussion of the Dresden bombing and of the WWII strategic bombing campaign in general.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the film. I’ve tried to minimize the spoilers, but some are inevitable.

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Further to the previous posting

As Lex, probably wisely, decided not to have any comments on his posting about No. 230873 Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor I thought I would put up a link to my own posting on the subject.

May I just add that there is no need to worry about Her Majesty: she will survive this snub and continue serenely on her way. The last politician who thought he could supplant her in people’s hearts and minds was Tony Blair. Ha! That’s all I can say, to quote Bertie Wooster. Ha!

Elizabeth Windsor, Subaltern, Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service

“As Elizabeth Windsor, service number 230873, she volunteered as a subaltern in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service, training as a driver and a mechanic. Eventually, she drove military trucks in support roles in England.”

Queen Elizabeth II is the last living head of state who served in uniform in World War II.

Obama, Sarkozy and Brown do not want her in Normandy on June 6, 2009. It is unlikely she will be alive or fit to travel in 2014.

They are correctly afraid that they would shown up as the petty, trivial men they are if they had to stand next to her.

These three detestable men just became even more loathsome in my eyes.

The three of them are not worthy to change the bedpans of our World War II veterans.

Princess Elizabeth WW2

Jonathan adds: When I heard about the decision to uninvite the Queen, my first thought was, Who wouldn’t be thrilled to be in her presence and ask her about her life experiences and views on various historical figures and controversies? My second thought was that Sarkozy, whom the press reported as the instigator of the exclusion, is a jerk. But of course I was naive and Lex is correct. The President of France would never do such a thing on his own, nor is it clear what he would gain by doing it. He is merely the designated fall guy. This had to be a conspiracy, and a fairly transparent one at that, which makes the participants appear even worse — Brown in particular, but he couldn’t have done it without Obama’s cooperation. Midgets, the lot of them. Here’s hoping she lives to be 100 like her mother and outlasts them.

HMS Belfast

When I was in London recently I went to the top of the monument to the Great London Fire of 1666 (the site is cool; it has history information as well as a view from the top of the monument, updated every 60 seconds). From the top of this tower I saw what I was looking for – a great place to get a photo of the HMS Belfast, a British cruiser from WW2. The wikipedia site for HMS Belfast is a good place to start for information about this hard-working vessel – I was going to classify her as a “light” cruiser (due to the fact that she carried 6 inch main guns, while heavy cruisers carried 8 inch guns) but I read that after repairs from 1939-42 (after she hit a mine) she had been rebuilt and was the heaviest cruiser by tonnage in the British navy at the time, so I will just call her a cruiser.

While I have been to many museums in the United States that feature large WW2 and Korean era warships, such as the carrier Midway in South Carolina and the carrier Intrepid in New York, among others, there are comparatively few large ships that have been preserved in Europe and Asia. I believe (and semi-confirmed from this site, which is interesting) that the HMS Belfast is the only big-gun ship that has been preserved from the world wars in all of Europe. I heard a rumor (can’t find the link) that there even have been calls from Germany to bring back the Prinz Eugen (currently upside down at Bikini atoll, where she was blasted after WW2 in atomic bomb tests) back to Germany as a museum (very highly unlikely, of course).

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