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Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground
by: Robert D. Kaplan

List Price: $27.95

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Used Price: $2.91
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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.033573
EAN: 9781400061334
ISBN: 1400061334
Label: Random House
Manufacturer: Random House
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: September 04, 2007
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: September 04, 2007
Studio: Random House
Sales Rank: 242389

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
In this extraordinary book, Robert D. Kaplan lets readers experience up close the American military worldwide in the air, at sea, and on the ground: flying in a B-2 bomber, living on a nuclear submarine, and traveling with a Stryker brigade on missions around the world. Provided unprecedented access, Kaplan moves from destroyers off the coast of Indonesia to submarines in the central Pacific, from simulated Iraqi training grounds in Alaska to technology bases in Las Vegas, from army and marine land forces in the heart of the Sahara Desert, to air bases in Guam and Thailand and beyond.

Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts provides not only a riveting ground-level portrait of the Global War on Terrorism on several continents, but also a gritty firsthand account of how U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen are protecting sea-lanes, providing disaster relief, contending with the military rise of China, fighting the war in Iraq, and crafting contingency plans for war with North Korea and Iran.

Expanding on Kaplan’s acclaimed Imperial Grunts, the first volume of his exploration of the American military, which “offers the reader an enlightened way to understand what is happening in the world” (San Francisco Chronicle), Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts shifts focus to the Pacific, where emerging Asian powers present vexing diplomatic and strategic challenges to U.S. influence. In this volume, Kaplan completes his analysis of army Special Forces and the marines, while also taking readers into the heart of the myriad tribal cultures of the air force, surface and subsurface navies, and the regular army’s Stryker
brigades. Kaplan goes deep into their highly technical and exotic worlds, and he tells this story through the words and perspectives of the enlisted personnel and junior officers themselves–men and women who, as he writes, have “had their national identities as Americans engraved in sharp bas-relief.”

This provocative and illuminating book, like Imperial Grunts before it, not only conveys the vast scope of America’s military commitments, which rarely make it into the news, but also shows us astonishing and vital operations right as they unfold–from the point of view of the troops themselves.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Not as Good as Imperial Grunts
Though not as good a book as the author's "Imperial Grunts" this sequel is a very well-done work. As in the previous book, Kaplan visits U.S. military outposts, large and small, around the world, describing the quiet and usually effective efforts our elite troops are executing to keep peace and prepare, if necessary, for war. As another reviewer noted, this is primarily a military travelogue and Kaplan, who I believe is one of the premier travel writers of this or any other time, winnows out the fascinating and the exotic as he writes about the various U.S. posts and the troops who man them. Some of the chapters are very compelling, such as the one describing the "pilots" of the unmanned Predators, the one describing the B-2 bomber pilots, the submarine crews, the green berets and so on. ... Read More

Rating:

- Sequel to Imperial Grunts
As pointed out by several other reviewers, this book is a sequel to the earlier and better Imperial Grunts. Kaplan revisits some of the locales of the earlier book and reports tremendous progress in places like Columbia and the Philippines. He spends time on a nuclear carrier, a destroyer and a nuclear fast attack submarine. Those were the best parts of the book. He spends time with A 10 pilots on deployment to Thailand and provides well-deserved credit to these blue collar fighter pilots who fly the unloved but tremendously valuable attack aircraft. It was so unloved by the fighter mafia that runs the US Air Force that they were going to retire the plane. The Army, which depends on air support, and has no air wing of its own like the Marine Corp, offered to take over the plane and add it to ... Read More

Rating:

- A wonderful, informative and refreshing read
Compared to his earlier book, The Imperial Grunts, this one is not as good but it enhanced my view of the US Military much more than the "Imperial Grunts" since that book was mostly written about the ground forces deployed around the world. This one is about the naval, air forces and ground forces altogether but its emphasis is more on Air Force and Navy. It's a very informative book on the status of the US military and its future. Robert D. Kaplan is an able author with tons of knowledge about the past and he wonderfully mixes the past with present and then predicts the future to the best of his ability. I recommend his books to the military and political enthusiasts.

Rating:

- really bad
This is a really bad book. Kaplan plays toy soldier, hangs out with military units all over the world and comes back with no particular insight and nothing to say. Its the adventures of a military groopie or wannabe who gets to play without paying.

In as much as there is an argument, its the same one from Imperial grunts. We don't need a fighting army anymore and the special forces can do everything. And Kaplan still doesn't understand that special forces are special because they are small and that the concept can't be scaled up to infinity.

He talks about covering Africa with A-teams. But he doesn't understand that 95% of the people in the military are not suitable for A-teams and that cost is not what determines how many A-teams you have.

His evaluations ... Read More

Rating:

- I can't believe they killed trees for this.
With apparently unequaled access to all the branches of the U.S. Armed Services Robert Kaplan was unable to string his experiences together into readable form. I couldn't finish this book, and I hate not finishing books. The only reason I gave it two stars was because of the chapter on the A-10 pilots. hopefully my recycling this book will somewhat negate the damage done to the environment by publishing it. Sadly, the damage done to my wallet and my time will remain. If you really want to read this book I'll gladly sell you my copy.

Books : Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground