Semper Fi

View other editions of Semper Fi.
View books by H. Avery, Sr. Chenoweth, Brooke Nihart.

A Classic - Rated
The subtitle of this book is not a marketing exagerration--this IS the defnitive illustrated history of the United States Marine Corps from its founding to the 2004 battle of Fallujah. It is worth purchasing just for the photographs and paintings alone (from the Marine Corps official collection). Chenoweth was a Marine Corps Reserve officer and writes the majority of content; Nihart was a serving Marine officer and adds small articles. This book is huge and bulky and not the most comfortable to read, but I learned all sorts of anecdotes I never knew about Marine Corps history as well as military tactics and technologies that the Marines were first or early to exploit. Chenoweth takes a very pro-Marine stance in his book and this sometimes is to the detriment of putting the contributions of other services or Allies in perspective. My one disappointment--which prevents me from awarding five stars--is that after the section on the Vietnam War, Chenoweth seems to rush through the modern era. Whereas in the previous chapters he had painstakingly detailed Marine commanders and units, he rushes through operations like Panama and Haiti without any detail. He also begins to make a slew of mistakes regarding which Army special operations forces participated in particular contingencies and even a few Marine unit titles seem garbled. Considering the quality of what went before, these errors stand out. But I still recommend this book very highly.