Tag Archives: Dave Grossman

Non-fiction, Reviews

Sheepdogs: Meet Our Nation's Warriors, by Rogish and Grossman

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If you have no capacity for violence, then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

I review a lot of books on this blog, and among those books a very small number genuinely move me – bring tears to my eyes. It was a bit of a surprise that a children’s book, Sheepdogs: Meet Our Nation’s Warriors, by Stephanie Rogish and Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, was one of those.

The passage quoted above doesn’t come from the body of the book, but from Col. Grossman’s famous essay, “On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs,” which is printed in the back. The bulk of the book (which I got free for review, for the record) is aimed at school children. It pursues the sheep/wolf/sheepdog metaphor in an extended manner, to help kids think about force and how to respond to the sheepdogs (police, soldiers, legal concealed weapons carriers, etc.) they may encounter. I didn’t care greatly for the illustrations, to be honest, but the text works very well.

If you’re the kind of parent (or teacher) who believes that guns are inherently evil, and that there is never any excuse for violence, even to save children’s lives, you won’t like this book.

If you’re a parent who wants your children to understand the legitimate and illegitimate uses of force, and who would be proud to see them grow up to be sheepdogs themselves, you will want to have it and share it with them.

You can order it from the US Concealed Carry Association here.

Non-fiction, Reviews

On Combat, by Grossman and Christensen

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It’s considered prudent of late to announce it when the book you’re reviewing is one you’ve gotten for free. I’ll not only admit, but brag, that I got Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s and Loren W. Christensen’s On Combat as a gift. Col. Grossman (whose Two-Space War books I’ve reviewed here and here) sent it to me in response to a question I asked him about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A book like this will be of no interest to some of you, and I think the authors would be the first to admit that if you’re one of them, it very likely speaks well of you. But for those involved with violence, whether as soldiers or police officers, or those who love them, or just armchair storytellers like me, this study is both valuable and fascinating.

The art of war has been studied since before history was written. Societies have learned, and passed on, the training and coping techniques necessary to help the warrior to conquer and survive. It’s only recently, as technology has altered the face of warfare in ways unimaginable to our ancestors, that it has become possible—and necessary—to figure out precisely what happens to people in a deadly fight, and what can be done to help them overcome one of the most traumatic experiences of life. Continue reading On Combat, by Grossman and Christensen →

Fiction, Reviews

The Guns of Two-Space, by Dave Grossman and Bob Hudson

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The Guns of Two-Space (available here, either as an e-book or a print-on-demand) is the sequel to The Two-Space War, by Dave Grossman and Leo Frankowski, which I recently reviewed). Alas, Lt. Col. Grossman lost his friend in science fiction publishing when Jim Baen of Baen Books died, and this volume (written with a different co-author and privately published), although excellent in many ways, does suffer for want of a professional editor.

The Two-Space War told how Lt. Thomas Melville assumed command of his ship’s crew on the death of his captain, and captured an enemy ship which he named the Fang. Through inspired leadership and flexibility in adopting new weapons and strategies, he managed to thwart (or at least delay) an attempt by the evil Guldur Empire to conquer planets friendly to earth and humans. Acclaimed as a hero and a savior by alien governments, Melville was less appreciated by the appeasement-minded Westerness (human) government, and at the end of the book was dispatched to patrol and deliver mail between the most distant colony planets. Continue reading The Guns of Two-Space, by Dave Grossman and Bob Hudson →

Reading

“This is what warriors did.”

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I’d meant to review Dean Koontz’ Your Heart Belongs to Me tonight, but it’s Veterans Day, and instead I’ll share a short excerpt from Grossman and Frankowski’s The Two-Space War, which I reviewed not long ago.

Across the countless centuries warriors have taken their cues from the “Old Sarge.” There was always an Old Sarge. He was the veteran of twenty battles, and he was calm. Weeping and becoming emotional at the memory of combat was not acceptable because, across the centuries, warriors found that the way to continue performing the desperate, wretched, debasing, dirty job of combat was by controlling your emotions, dividing your pain, and making friends with the memories. Every night, around the campfire, or over hot food with their messmates, this age-old process continued.

In these sessions the men also sorted out what had actually happened. In Alexis Artwohl’s twenty-first century law enforcement research, almost a quarter of the combat veterans she interviewed had memory distortions. They actually “remembered,” sometimes with vivid intensity, something that did not happen. And half of these veterans had experienced memory loss, with significant gaps in the memory of what happened. Left to their own devices, there was a tendency to “fill in the gaps” with guilt-laden acceptance of responsibility, sometimes even with a greatly exaggerated sense of guilt. “It’s all my fault.” “I let my buddies down.” “I was a failure.” These were the kinds of responses felt by many men after combat. Only their mates, the ones who shared the event with them, could help them fill in the holes accurately. And only their friends, their comrades who had shared the searing experience of combat, only they could give understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness of the events that had occurred.

Every day, day after day, this is what occurred. This is what warriors did.

Fiction, Reviews

The Two-Space War, by Dave Grossman and Leo Frankowski

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Not a flawless book, The Two-Space War has the definite feel of the debut of a series still finding its sea-legs.

Nevertheless, it’s a voyage worth completing, and I enjoyed it increasingly as I went on.

The set-up is kind of complicated, which slows down the action at the start. This is a standard problem in stories set in unfamiliar worlds, but I thought the authors did as good a job as anyone in weaving the info dumps into the narrative.

The premise is that humans have learned to travel to distant galaxies, by traveling through “Two-Space,” the second dimension. The trade-off is that all but the simplest early Industrial Revolution technology rapidly deteriorates in Two-Space. So the ships by which people travel there have to be wooden ships, similar to those of the Napoleonic era, with interesting differences.

As the story opens, Lt. Thomas Melville and a landing party are stranded on a distant planet, battling thirst and suicidal, ape-like monsters. They await rescue by their mother ship. They were recently attacked by a ship of the evil Guldur Empire, and their captain’s death has left him acting commander.

Through skill and military discipline, he manages to save his landing party from the apes. Shortly thereafter they are picked up by their mother ship, only to learn that the ship (their ships are sentient) is dying, and that the Guldur are coming in fast.

Lt. Melville determines not to take refuge on the primitive planet, but to employ a bold strategy against the Guldur ship. So begins a story that steadily builds in dramatic tension, and draws the reader both through suspense and with interesting, likeable, growing characters.

In some ways I found the world-building a little self-indulgent, by my personal reckoning. The universe Lt. Melville and his crew explore is notable for planets containing elves and planets containing dwarfs, and so (in this narrative) J.R.R. Tolkien is considered an actual prophet. His books are venerated as if they were Scripture. There are also numerous references to the “classic” writers of the 20th Century—such as Heinlein, Weber and Pratchitt. In this version of the future, Science Fiction is considered the highest literary form. Elements of Tolkien, Patrick O’Brien, and (perhaps) Kenneth Roberts rub together in this universe, not always seamlessly (in my opinion), but in the end the authors make it work.

I’m not sure what to say about religious matters (the future seems to be vaguely Christian, in a syncretist sort of way), or the issue of women in combat, which is addressed so eccentrically that it’s hard to draw a conclusion what the authors think.

But the real heart of this book is the battle scenes. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (full disclosure: he sent me a free review copy) is a retired officer of the Army Rangers, a former professor of Psychology at West Point, and a recognized authority on the physiological and psychological effects of combat on human beings. His descriptions of the experience of battle are as authentic as any you’ll ever come across, and they in themselves make The Two-Space War a moving and unforgettable read. I’m serious about this. The combat scenes are worth the price of the book all by themselves.

Once I got acclimated I was riveted. I recommend the book highly, and hope there’s a sequel.