HOW TO READ AN AMAZON BOOK REVIEW
by Simon F. Schuster for CPW News Service
When it comes to reading book reviews on Amazon.com what can one make of the voting system that judges what is "helpful"?
Dr. Phil Itup of the Society for the Analysis of On-line Hidden Persuaders in Dover, Delaware said "we are a nation of joiners. Anyone who has seen The Amazing Randi's documentary An Honest Liar knows that Americans love being bamboozled. We don't just like a good carnival freak show, but we'll tell our neighbors to like it too. You've heard the old adage "You can't read a book by its cover?" Well, you can read one by its index and words....the ones it uses to spin the washer and the ones that get washed out," said Itup. "Contrast that saying with 'You have only one opportunity to make a good first impression.' That means that just after a book is released, before the dust settles, it must make a good strong showing. What is difficult to know is how many of the votes for and against the helpfulness of a particular review are coming from the staff of the book's publishers and from the general public. Now we know that political polls are conducted often on less than a couple of thousand respondents and projected across the whole spectrum of society and are generally accurate. That is probably true of a Tom Clancy novel released and reviewed by several thousand readers. Lesser numbers are harder to judge. That's why I like to take the reviews that have only a couple of positive responses, a vast majority of "not helpful" responses, but a good number of "comments". The devil.....and as The Amazing Randi has so skillfully shown us.....the truth.......is in the details....less in the initial responses. Time and unfolding evidence has a way of solving great dilemmas and this approach, for me, anyway, is Alexander's sword against the Gordian Knot of life's unexplained mysteries," said Itup.
Itup noted the recent review of Emma Sky's book on the Iraq War titled The Unraveling as an example of his method of analysis of Amazon book reviews.
2 of 16 people found the following review helpful
on May 21, 2015
How can a book on the unraveling of the Iraq War not make at least a passing reference to the soldier who is the focus of the first chapter in Christian T. Miller's book BLOOD MONEY, Col. Theodore "Ted" Westhusing? There is, likewise, no reference to Rudy Giuliani's New York police chief, Bernie Kerik, who was indicted and jailed for corruption and was considered for GWB's Homeland Security chief based on his work in Iraq security that surely turned the stomach of Westhusing?
General Wesley Clark has laid out the U.S. Neocon's policy coup in the Middle East...the bloody bath of war profits in an oil rich region. Now Emma Sky is working for the Jackson Institute at Yale? The problem is that Yale's place in the history of the U.S. Civil War is widely unknown by Americans so how can Yale and a Brit offer an academic launch pad for reaching the high ground? For Americans to understand our own history they must read the 1999 book VOYAGE OF THE FROLIC that links the Russells, Huntingtons, Tafts and Heards to Fred Bailey, aka Frederick Douglass, who was laying the hulls of Baltimore opium clippers before he became the spokesman for abolition of slavery that would replace one form of slavery with another.....with additional products and resources in the same Middle East where civil war is a handy policy for the racket of war . This is well covered in the 2015 book SULFUR, LEAD and POPPIES. A West Point U.S. Army Ranger recently asked the author of this one "oh, that's about the war in Afghanistan? "No," he was told...."it's about or own American Civil War. Not much changes."
What Emma Sky is, EXACTLY, cannot be clearly discerned from THE UNRAVELING, nor from her current associations.
Response From F. Hobbs:
What Emma Sky is, EXACTLY," is apparent to anyone who has read her book. She is an idealistic, liberal British Jew, who majored in the Middle East studies and spent a decade working for various NGO's mostly trying to help the Palestinians build institutions during the 1990's peace process. After her country joined what she believed to be an illegal, immoral war in Iraq, she patriotically volunteered to serve in the CPA to help fix the problems her country had created and to protect Iraqi citizens from occupation troops. While there, she discovered that the most idealistic and effective people trying to rebuild Iraq were dedicated officers in the US military struggling to provide security, who desperately needed and deeply appreciated her knowledge of the Middle East, political insights, negotiating skills and outspoken criticism. Talented and well-connected officers in the US State Department generally avoided serving in Iraq. She later volunteered to work in Afghanistan and returned to Iraq during the surge as General Odierno's political officer.
Wlll Harvey exposes himself as a conspiracy theorist, not a credible reviewer of this book. Ms. Sky's book is the candid story of her experiences: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Emma Sky probably left Iraq before Westhusing arrived in the country - and certainly long before he became disillusioned by corruption - and returned to Iraq two years after his suicide. Her first tour overlapped with Kerik's, but he worked on rebuilding the police and the Ministry of the Interior, while she spent her time in Kirkuk (whose oil both Sunnis and Kurds wished to control) and representing Kirkuk in Baghdad. About the time Sky left Iraq for the second time, Yale (an institution that makes conspiracy theorists salivate) received a $50M gift from a former pharmaceutical-exec alum to create an new International Relations Institute "to help and inspire service in our young people today and create globally engaged leaders". Read her book and it will be obvious why she was asked to join.
For the record, I know Emma Sky only through her book.
Response from W. Harvey:
It is not credible to ask why Ms. Sky did not include in a book on the unraveling of the Iraq War which even Brzezinski said "was a bamboozle based on absolutely false evidence," two significant personalities related to both the U.S. military's top leadership AND the 911 city upon which the invasion was based? Why Sky does not even mention Westhusing or Kerik? This author did not create Yale's Pavlovian peccadilloes. It created its own reality and myth quite apart from the real and imagined conspiracy theorists, but no more than Robert Merton at Harvard with Black Scholes and his credit default formulas. Why say "talented and well-connected officers in the US State Department generally avoided serving in Iraq," unless they knew damn well it was a bamboozle? That being so, then the very premise of an "unraveling" just came unraveled!
21 Days....no response from F. Hobbs......
Response to F. Hobb's silence:
Dear F. Hobbs,
Also, Emma worked closely with head of MI-6, John Sawer, who for the Downing Street Memo issued some mild resistance that Ray McGovern called little more than a "hiccup". Have you read the CIA's Ray McGovern's 2012 article "Downing Street Memo": Redux? In it he is asking if a similar cooking of the intelligence that we saw with Iraq by the Brits is being brewed up for Iran by Sawer. Does Emma envision a similar post-Iran invasion unraveling and if so, why not tell us NOW? If this is "conspiracy" theory stuff......who was conspiring when you line up the British and U.S. players in the development of the Downing Street Memo? Was Iran-Contra a "conspiracy"? British and U.S. opium policy in China that led to the Boxer Rebellion? The Gulf of Tonkin affair? Tuskegee Experiment? Hiding the fact that Big Tobacco hid the health effects of smoking for decades? That the U.S. Civil Defense lauded the use of lead-based paint (see film "The House In The Middle"....available on-line) at the same time we were developing the "MAD Theory" of mutually assured destruction and the same lead producers who made our bullets wanted to see it in gasoline or paint 50 years after its use was banned in Europe? What qualifies as a "conspiracy" and what does not? Have I nailed it, Mr. Hobbs?
W. Harvey
ADDENDUM 7/14/15
On 7/14/15 an update to the Will Harvey review of The Unraveling had been made. It seems that after the posting of the above comments 3 of 17 readers had found the review of the book beneficial. Harvey had apparently reread Mr. Hobbs' rebuttal and found there a reason to lay out Ms. Sky's actual timeline on her presence in Iraq to see if it countered Hobbs' assertion, proving an overlap with Col, Theodore Westhusing's tour of duty. His update read:
Dear F. Hobbs,
From The MacMillian Report at Yale with Marilyn Wilkes interviewing Ms. Sky..... Sky states emphatically "I went to Iraq in 2003 as a senior civilian representative of the Provisional Government in Kirkuk and I stayed through the surge in 2007....." She did return, but this clearly put her there when Westhusing was there when he died in 2005, so your statement...."Emma Sky probably left Iraq before Westhusing arrived in the country - and certainly long before he became disillusioned by corruption - and returned to Iraq two years after his suicide."........well, that's flat wrong according to Ms. Sky who in the same interview said that she wrote the book to pay tribute to those who died there. How strange that the highest ranking U.S. military officer to die there is not mentioned in her book given that she sees the war as a mistake and that he had seen first hand the darker elements of the war and spoke with authority about it.....like, say, a Henry Van Ness Boyington or a Smedley Darlington Butler. Ms. Sky's interview by Marilyn Wilkes is available online for a clear and concise record of the timeline.
WH
Henry Van Ness Boyington was a U.S. Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor recipient turned journalist who doggedly followed the military corruption of the time and General Smedley Darlington Butler was a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner who had said in his book War Is A Racket that "I had been a goon on three continents" for the "National City Bank Boys." The place of both men in the history of the development of the U.S. military industrialist complex is explored in the 2014 book, Sulfur, Lead and Poppies.
-Simon F. Schuster
General Wesley Clark has laid out the U.S. Neocon's policy coup in the Middle East...the bloody bath of war profits in an oil rich region. Now Emma Sky is working for the Jackson Institute at Yale? The problem is that Yale's place in the history of the U.S. Civil War is widely unknown by Americans so how can Yale and a Brit offer an academic launch pad for reaching the high ground? For Americans to understand our own history they must read the 1999 book VOYAGE OF THE FROLIC that links the Russells, Huntingtons, Tafts and Heards to Fred Bailey, aka Frederick Douglass, who was laying the hulls of Baltimore opium clippers before he became the spokesman for abolition of slavery that would replace one form of slavery with another.....with additional products and resources in the same Middle East where civil war is a handy policy for the racket of war . This is well covered in the 2015 book SULFUR, LEAD and POPPIES. A West Point U.S. Army Ranger recently asked the author of this one "oh, that's about the war in Afghanistan? "No," he was told...."it's about or own American Civil War. Not much changes."
What Emma Sky is, EXACTLY, cannot be clearly discerned from THE UNRAVELING, nor from her current associations.
Response From F. Hobbs:
What Emma Sky is, EXACTLY," is apparent to anyone who has read her book. She is an idealistic, liberal British Jew, who majored in the Middle East studies and spent a decade working for various NGO's mostly trying to help the Palestinians build institutions during the 1990's peace process. After her country joined what she believed to be an illegal, immoral war in Iraq, she patriotically volunteered to serve in the CPA to help fix the problems her country had created and to protect Iraqi citizens from occupation troops. While there, she discovered that the most idealistic and effective people trying to rebuild Iraq were dedicated officers in the US military struggling to provide security, who desperately needed and deeply appreciated her knowledge of the Middle East, political insights, negotiating skills and outspoken criticism. Talented and well-connected officers in the US State Department generally avoided serving in Iraq. She later volunteered to work in Afghanistan and returned to Iraq during the surge as General Odierno's political officer.
Wlll Harvey exposes himself as a conspiracy theorist, not a credible reviewer of this book. Ms. Sky's book is the candid story of her experiences: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Emma Sky probably left Iraq before Westhusing arrived in the country - and certainly long before he became disillusioned by corruption - and returned to Iraq two years after his suicide. Her first tour overlapped with Kerik's, but he worked on rebuilding the police and the Ministry of the Interior, while she spent her time in Kirkuk (whose oil both Sunnis and Kurds wished to control) and representing Kirkuk in Baghdad. About the time Sky left Iraq for the second time, Yale (an institution that makes conspiracy theorists salivate) received a $50M gift from a former pharmaceutical-exec alum to create an new International Relations Institute "to help and inspire service in our young people today and create globally engaged leaders". Read her book and it will be obvious why she was asked to join.
For the record, I know Emma Sky only through her book.
Response from W. Harvey:
It is not credible to ask why Ms. Sky did not include in a book on the unraveling of the Iraq War which even Brzezinski said "was a bamboozle based on absolutely false evidence," two significant personalities related to both the U.S. military's top leadership AND the 911 city upon which the invasion was based? Why Sky does not even mention Westhusing or Kerik? This author did not create Yale's Pavlovian peccadilloes. It created its own reality and myth quite apart from the real and imagined conspiracy theorists, but no more than Robert Merton at Harvard with Black Scholes and his credit default formulas. Why say "talented and well-connected officers in the US State Department generally avoided serving in Iraq," unless they knew damn well it was a bamboozle? That being so, then the very premise of an "unraveling" just came unraveled!
21 Days....no response from F. Hobbs......
Response to F. Hobb's silence:
Dear F. Hobbs,
Also, Emma worked closely with head of MI-6, John Sawer, who for the Downing Street Memo issued some mild resistance that Ray McGovern called little more than a "hiccup". Have you read the CIA's Ray McGovern's 2012 article "Downing Street Memo": Redux? In it he is asking if a similar cooking of the intelligence that we saw with Iraq by the Brits is being brewed up for Iran by Sawer. Does Emma envision a similar post-Iran invasion unraveling and if so, why not tell us NOW? If this is "conspiracy" theory stuff......who was conspiring when you line up the British and U.S. players in the development of the Downing Street Memo? Was Iran-Contra a "conspiracy"? British and U.S. opium policy in China that led to the Boxer Rebellion? The Gulf of Tonkin affair? Tuskegee Experiment? Hiding the fact that Big Tobacco hid the health effects of smoking for decades? That the U.S. Civil Defense lauded the use of lead-based paint (see film "The House In The Middle"....available on-line) at the same time we were developing the "MAD Theory" of mutually assured destruction and the same lead producers who made our bullets wanted to see it in gasoline or paint 50 years after its use was banned in Europe? What qualifies as a "conspiracy" and what does not? Have I nailed it, Mr. Hobbs?
W. Harvey
ADDENDUM 7/14/15
On 7/14/15 an update to the Will Harvey review of The Unraveling had been made. It seems that after the posting of the above comments 3 of 17 readers had found the review of the book beneficial. Harvey had apparently reread Mr. Hobbs' rebuttal and found there a reason to lay out Ms. Sky's actual timeline on her presence in Iraq to see if it countered Hobbs' assertion, proving an overlap with Col, Theodore Westhusing's tour of duty. His update read:
Dear F. Hobbs,
From The MacMillian Report at Yale with Marilyn Wilkes interviewing Ms. Sky..... Sky states emphatically "I went to Iraq in 2003 as a senior civilian representative of the Provisional Government in Kirkuk and I stayed through the surge in 2007....." She did return, but this clearly put her there when Westhusing was there when he died in 2005, so your statement...."Emma Sky probably left Iraq before Westhusing arrived in the country - and certainly long before he became disillusioned by corruption - and returned to Iraq two years after his suicide."........well, that's flat wrong according to Ms. Sky who in the same interview said that she wrote the book to pay tribute to those who died there. How strange that the highest ranking U.S. military officer to die there is not mentioned in her book given that she sees the war as a mistake and that he had seen first hand the darker elements of the war and spoke with authority about it.....like, say, a Henry Van Ness Boyington or a Smedley Darlington Butler. Ms. Sky's interview by Marilyn Wilkes is available online for a clear and concise record of the timeline.
WH
Henry Van Ness Boyington was a U.S. Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor recipient turned journalist who doggedly followed the military corruption of the time and General Smedley Darlington Butler was a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner who had said in his book War Is A Racket that "I had been a goon on three continents" for the "National City Bank Boys." The place of both men in the history of the development of the U.S. military industrialist complex is explored in the 2014 book, Sulfur, Lead and Poppies.
-Simon F. Schuster
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