The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War | David Halberstam

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War | David Halberstam | The Coldest Winter

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The Coldest Winter...

	The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War David Halberstam Hyperion, 2007 - 736 pages average customer review:based on 130 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A disappointing conclusion, but a good, informative read

As other reviewers have noted, this is not a comprehensive history of the Korean War. However as in most good historical works, the author is highly selective in the material he chooses to present. That material supports the author's main theme: the political failures that lead to the war, the personal failures that resulted in the creation of a debacle, and the failure to learn any lessons from the war that resulted in a repetition of the failures, even to this day.

The book draws to a rather abrupt, and for me disappointing, conclusion immediately after the events of Chipyongni with about 2 years left to go in the war. But on reflection I think the unsatisfying conclusion to the book simply mirrors the unsatisfying conclusion to the war itself.

The nugget of gold in this book is found at the end in the section called "The Consequences", and in the epilogue. A lot of food for thought there. And some interesting conclusions as to the consequences of the war for the rest of the century and beyond.

I came away with a much better understanding of this war, its causes and consequences. And it was an excellent read by a good author.

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The Coldest Winter

After his early work on Vietnam 'The Best and the Brightest', this is another masterpiece from Halberstam. His mixture of battle narrative and character analysis is irresistible; one really cannot put it down after Chapter 1 on the Yalu River and China's entry into the Korean War. It is also provocative and convincing about the errors of the late 1940s and early 1950s that led to so much grief for the USA, indeed up to the recent bogdown in Iraq. Much of Halberstam reads like Titus Livius, especially the Roman historian's account of the war with Hannibal.

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What a revelation

Shows the darker side of Douglas McArthur and some of his underlings. Makes you proud of the Marine general who stood up to McArthur's staff and saved the day. I recommend this book to any student of history. After Inchon it was all downhill from there with McArthur and some of his self serving actions.

The Coldest Winter: America the Korean War and

A great review of the history leading up to the war and the failure of MacAurthur's Headquarters which permitted such early success by the North Koreans and latter by the Chinese. It is too bad Truman did not relieve MacAurthur sooner, many thousands of lives could have been saved.
Roger L. Hatton
Col., USAF, Ret.

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Left Me Wanting More

I found the opening chapter of this book, which depicts the US soldiers blindly stumbling into well-prepared Chinese ambushes, to be utterly engrossing. Unfortunately, Halberstam couldn't keep it up through the book.

As a nice survey of the first few years of the Korean War and its underlying causes, this is a good book, but while Halberstam does a good job going into the political causes, with long chapters detailing the motives of MacArthur, Truman, Stalin, and Mao, I was disappointed that he didn't spend more time with the soldiers who were on the ground. Their stories were far more compelling, but Halberstam doesn't spend nearly enough time with them.

In addition, he glosses over the last few years of the war and the public's growing disaffection with it.

As a starting point for learning more about Korea, this works pretty well, but I thought the lack of clear focus was a disappointment.

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