THE GULF WAR CHRONICLES: A Military History of the First War with Iraq

Author Richard S. Lowry’s book The Gulf War Chronicles: A Military History of the First War with Iraq, fills in the blanks and answers many questions about Operation Desert Storm 1991. Chronicles starts with his reasons for writing this book and ends with a brief discussion about possible mistakes made by the Coalition after the guns went silent and gives a basic day to day accounting of the war in between. Lowry certainly does the dirty work in digging up the details in this detail oriented, if not stellar read.Operation Desert Storm was the first real crisis for the United States after the cold war ended. Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, a former ally of the United States, brutally attacked its neighbor Kuwait and destabilized the entire Middle East in fall 1990. Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm was the military reaction to that aggression. Lowry does an excellent job in piecing together the very complex puzzle of a very short but complicated war. Lowry’s Chronicles is an answer to the person that wants to know the details of this war. He notes the perception Operation Desert Storm is one of a vicious prolonged bombing campaign with our tanks and soldiers shooting Iraqis like fish in a barrel. Lowry presents the Iraqi’s in their true form; a large, well-supplied and very capable fighting force that was short of command structure due to nepotism and cronyism of Saddam Hussein. He argues that as the United States had been preparing to fight world war III, the Iraqi’s had become delusional and believed that WW I capabilities would be sufficient as long as they had a large enough army, something akin to the Chinese in Korea.Lowry also argues that although the Coalition acted in concert with precision and timing, mistakes were made and some coalition partners were not up to standards such as the Italians not being able to refuel their jets in flight which led to complications and missed opportunities. He also argues that a well-executed deception was more than partially responsible for such a one sided victory for the coalition, the most one sided in history according to Lowry. Chronicles is divided into chapters logically based on the evolution of the battlefield and is very well organized and easy to follow and it even has a section at the end of the book with a list of American dead.Chronicles is a very good, detail oriented read. Lowry although often dry and lacking creativity put together a very informative book that historians and casual readers alike can appreciate. As a veteran of Operation Desert Storm I felt the combination start to tumble as answers to long asked questions began to be answered. Richard S. Lowry is a military historian and the author of New Dawn, The battles for Fallujah, Marines in the Garden of Eden and US Marines in Iraq: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Great condition book, well shipped, As expected as far as reading goes, It is in Chronicle order.

As a previous reviewer already mentioned, The Gulf War Chronicles isn't entirely an all-encompassing account of the 1991 Gulf War - with material mostly coming from U.S. sources and from the U.S. perspective - but it's probably the best book that attempts to be that at the moment. Although the author's intent was to make the book a "factual military history", I sensed pretty much right off the bat a skewing of facts to give readers an even more favorable impression of the U.S. effort. In the first chapter, the reason given for the first U.S. casualty of Desert Storm, LCDR Michael Speicher (who I admire as a hero), was one of several things that hinted to me that this might be a big U.S. Military propaganda piece.The book makes the claim that the aircraft he was in was downed by a surface to air missile when almost all real evidence that exists - the wreckage that was found, accounts from members in his flight, and an account from the intel officer charged with determining the cause for the downed aircraft - has indicated that LCDR Speicher's plane was shot down by another aircraft. I got the feeling the account given in the book was an attempt to perpetuate the idea of U.S. invisibility in air combat, which made me wonder if I was going to get a lot more propaganda than a pure and balanced history of the war. Gladly, I didn't get that feeling as much as I thought would happen as I continued to read through.Overall, it's a great overview and military account of Operation Desert Storm, especially from the Coalition perspective. I purchased this book, however, thinking it was a completely comprehensive and balanced analysis of the war which is why it didn't quite fit the bill for me.

For me as a participant in the first Gulf War I found this book accurate in the areas I was familiar with. I bought this book to discover the other aspects of the war that I was not directly involved with. I enjoyed the direct and to the point style of the books delivery.

Fact based documentary on operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm!!

I was in 3rd Armored Division and must say this is the best book on the war I have read. It is about the battles not the politics. It's day by day accounts are extremely detailed. I learned a lot and it gives a great perspective of the whole war. I cannot give it a high enough recommendation.

I was in the Gulf War with the Big Red One. I keep a calendar diary while I was there and everything mentioned in the book was right on time and accurate. I learned a lot about what was going outside of my area while I was there. Not having Internet back then kept information flow pretty slow. A great read.

Very informative. Love how this book breaks the war down by individual days.

I bought this because I identified with the author's opening statement. He followed the First Gulf War on the news. The impression of the coverage was that there was a long period or air assault, followed by an invasion which included a tank battle, then it was called off becuase of events on the road to Basra. I felt the same. What really happened?Well, if you want to know what "really" happened, don't bother with this book. Although there are a handful of descriptions of individual encounters, it is not much more than a list of units, their dispositions and movements. It tells you nothing.Even worse, although the author says that the book was researched for a decade or more, he swallowed the whole "Brave Two Zero" story and sumamrises the key "events" as he chronicles the war. He even faithfully copies out the pseudonyms which "Andy McNab" gave to the rest of the patrol. Research? Not really. He couldn't even be bothered to read "The Real Bravo Two Zero."A proper account of the war, such as might be written by Max Hastings, is still very much needed.

Thorough. There are two sides to 'The Gulf War Chroniciles'; the straight narrative of events and reasons for going to war, and the 'trainspotters' guide to the logistics, statistics and actions of divisions, platoons and individual men and woman. A rich and dense coverage. At times the language jars. The desire to kill and the huge numbers killed starts to read like the stats for a computer game rather than men and women slaughtered.

great!