bloguldesefe
Very good style, but very boring story
Very good style, but very boring story
In itself, it could have been a very good memoirs - the human side is honest and engaging.
Unfortunately, the book is slightly dragged down by the fact the author is not an intelligent person (naive at best, way less than smart most probably) and greatly dragged down by the strong propaganda content and approach, by the several episodes completely lacking believability (obvious and technically ridiculous lies, such as an already damaged ground attack plane shooting down 4 enemy dedicated fighters, alone, or 2 crappy I16 going against 6 much more modern Me109 and winning the fight, and more in this vein) and the typical hateful Russian schizophrenia: when a Russian shoots down Germans, great hero, amazing brave, what a guy and so on; when the enemy shoots down Russians, they are always "scum, vultures, jackals".
The enemy is also never Germans (or Romanians, Italians and so on) they are always all fully "Hitlerites, Fascists", and of course plenty of "scum", "crawling" and so on. Among those scum were my grandfather (returned, but fucked up) and grandmother's brother (KIA) and they never called the Russian enemy anything else than soldiers or humans, even in private talks, just like many other ww2 (Romanian, so Axis) veterans i read or spoke to, including ground attack pilots (so the exact same thing as Egorova, minus the blind hatred). They actually pitied those they bombed, while this author always and strongly enjoys it.
Overall, a potentially good book brought down by propaganda, ridiculous "hunter's stories" and blind hatred.
In itself, it could have been a very good memoirs - the human side is honest and engaging.
Unfortunately, the book is slightly dragged down by the fact the author is not an intelligent person (naive at best, way less than smart most probably) and greatly dragged down by the strong propaganda content and approach, by the several episodes completely lacking believability (obvious and technically ridiculous lies, such as an already damaged ground attack plane shooting down 4 enemy dedicated fighters, alone, or 2 crappy I16 going against 6 much more modern Me109 and winning the fight, and more in this vein) and the typical hateful Russian schizophrenia: when a Russian shoots down Germans, great hero, amazing brave, what a guy and so on; when the enemy shoots down Russians, they are always "scum, vultures, jackals".
The enemy is also never Germans (or Romanians, Italians and so on) they are always all fully "Hitlerites, Fascists", and of course plenty of "scum", "crawling" and so on. Among those scum were my grandfather (returned, but fucked up) and grandmother's brother (KIA) and they never called the Russian enemy anything else than soldiers or humans, even in private talks, just like many other ww2 (Romanian, so Axis) veterans i read or spoke to, including ground attack pilots (so the exact same thing as Egorova, minus the blind hatred). They actually pitied those they bombed, while this author always and strongly enjoys it.
Overall, a potentially good book brought down by propaganda, ridiculous "hunter's stories" and blind hatred.
A meandering flood of interesting little historical anecdotes, but going nowhere. There is no structure, central thesis or some overarching conclusions (as in Sapiens for ex.) and not even a clear stream of thoughts. So, good to grab the attention of high schoolers or first year students, but nothing more.
A meandering flood of interesting little historical anecdotes, but going nowhere. There is no structure, central thesis or some overarching conclusions (as in Sapiens for ex.) and not even a clear stream of thoughts. So, good to grab the attention of high schoolers or first year students, but nothing more.
Boring, unstructured, superficial, way too skematic and way too one-sided (lacking objectivity, which is a must for a history book). Also,horribly naive towards Communism (i grew up in a stalinist dictatorship, i know what communism is).
Boring, unstructured, superficial, way too skematic and way too one-sided (lacking objectivity, which is a must for a history book). Also,horribly naive towards Communism (i grew up in a stalinist dictatorship, i know what communism is).
