Comments on: Book Review: War Games

By: Jim Barnes

Jim Barnes — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:12:43 +0000

I agree entirely. Good luck on the book!

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:10:27 +0000

I agree with all of the assessments made above, but I would add this. As a grad student myself, I’d give her a low grade on the book because it was poorly researched. Her questionaire had too few respondents, and she spent almost her entire time “in the field” with one unit. To truly see the hobby, she should have spent more time with other units, gone to the Midwest and the West Coast as well.
I also plan to write a book on the hobby, which will be better for 3 reasons;
I am a reenactor, it will be better researched, and unlike her, I get it.

-Chris

By: Matt Gillespie

Matt Gillespie — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:54:34 +0000

Thanks for the reviews, I won’t bother to read the pin-head’s book. I recall a History Channel special, several years ago, that was supposed to be about Civil War reenacting. The special quickly degenerated to a show about the Confederate Flag controversy and little about the hobby. Now this book. Will anyone get it right?
I’ve reenacted Civil War for 16 years and am starting WW1. I’ve served in the U.S. Army, taught school & coached 23 years, been a janitor and mechanic while in college and I have to say, as a group, reenactors are fine, honest people who complain far less than most groups. I’ve left 100s of dollars worth of stuff laying out at reenactments and have never once had anything stolen. There’s no way I could leave anything out at school or in the service, it would disappear in a heart beat.
I do hope that someday a prominate writer or film maker will do a work on reenacting and give the hobby its due.

By: Jim Barnes

Jim Barnes — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:23:17 +0000

Patricia,

Thanks for sharing that. There are so many things wrong with the book, that I know I didn’t say half the things I wanted to say. One of my sons came over yesterday (he’s a writer himself, just finishing up a Master’s in journalism)and read my review, then examined the book. He remarked, “Gee, Dad, it must have sucked to have read through all that!”

Couldn’t have expressed it better myself.

By: Patricia Patterson

Patricia Patterson — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 03:42:51 +0000

I read this book when it was first published. I actually met Ms. Thompson on one of her “immersion visits” at Ft. Indiantown Gap. I was not impressed, and I remain unimpressed.

Since Ms. Thompson needed a thinly covered subject for her doctoral thesis, reenactors, and reenacting groups were chosen for a close up look. Lucky us.

Here’s the thing: she never got it, not really. She saw everything through the eyes of a public school educated person with the pedestrian leftist bent of a certain time period. Sadly, she never learned to think outside of that box.

Apparently, through all her higher education in the world of “social science”, she never got around to Small Group Dynamics. So, the bickering she so roundly notes was a total revelation to her. Gosh, it’s never been to me, or anyone who ever spent time in small groups whatever the subject or task.

So, she spends seven years hanging out with various individuals and groups, and still never discovers the basic reasons that we do what we do. She plants her arrogance and self-importance first, and then “goes with the flow”. Bull. She wore the uniform, went to the field, smiled in our faces, joined our groups and in the end STILL was never with us, was not one of us through the good times and the bad. She was a tourist, an outsider, a fake.

It is to our credit that we accepted her, it is to her shame that she accepted that and then wrote what she wrote for personal gain.

Through college, my military service, the private sector and other hobbies, the best people I have ever met are reenactors. The strongest patriots, the hardest workers, the poets, the salt-of-Earth people, the historians, the fun-loving, the honest and even the rascals make us what we are.

Are there jerks, twits, and the truly weird in the mix? Yes, but go to any hobby or group and you will find the same. Ours are few and far between, and for the most part, we are self-policed.

Perhaps someday, someone will write a book that gives credit to the people that stand up and say, “Don’t forget them, the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who gave us our liberty”. Those who are fading fast and whose memory WE keep alive despite the silliness of an academic opportunist who never really got it.