Fire and Ice : The Korean War, 1950-1953

This is an unimaginative handbook of facts about the Korean War. It is not a history of the war.

This book is full of facts of the Korean War. It would be a good first book for someone interested in the Korean War. A plus for the book (in my opinion) was that one of the co-authors was an infantry officer that fought there during the conflict.

I really enjoyed this book. Well researched.

I realize I'm not in agreement with all the other reviews here, but I just wanted to throw my $0.02 in. The impression I got from reading the other reviews was that this book would read something like Churchill's "Second World War" series: sort of a narrative or story covering the war. Instead, for the most part, this book is a reference book. It's got tons of information in it, but it's organized into battles within time periods. It's hard to explain. I was looking for something that said we did x because of y which resulted in these battles. Then, we did x' which led to some other battles. Instead it said something like in year x we fought battles a, b, and c. In year y, we fought battles d, e, and f. All the information is there, but the "story" part of the "history" feels lacking.

If you're studying the Korean War, I do agree that this is an excellent book. But, for a more "entertaining" study, I'd try something else (what that would be, I don't know).

Being familiar with some of the author's other works, I tracked this one down as well. As expected, the level of detail and obvious meticulous research were as I expected. Another successful and vivid portrait of a very gripping historical period from an author who clearly knows his history. The wealth of little details interspersed throughout the mandatory historical details make this a true pleasure to read.