 So there are some things that I really like about John Poole and there are some things I find extremely annoying. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and we are back with another edition of Tactical Book Review. And today's book is The Tiger's Way, A U.S. Private's Best Chance for Survival by H. John Poole. This book was released in 2003 and that's gonna be somewhat important for the purposes of this review because that is mostly before the global war on terror. Yes, 9-Eleven happened in 2001 so it was definitely the early years of the global war on terror. However, we've learned a lot in the past 20 some years that may or may not be actually included in this book. There are some things that I really, really like about John Poole and there are some things that I really do not. This is my fourth John Poole book that I have read and honestly for me it's probably gonna be the end of the John Poole reading. This book is based around The Tiger's Way and so primarily here what he's trying to say is the Eastern way of fighting war and by Eastern he includes China, North Korea, Japan in World War II, North Vietnam and Vietnam, the Viet Cong in there obviously is part of that. Germany during World War II, World War I and Russia during World War II primarily. And in these Eastern way of fighting, he labels that all under The Tiger's Way. And if you've read other John Poole books, he mostly says a lot of the same stuff. These armies fight a different way. They use superior small unit tactics to overcome America's technological and firepower advantage and thereby they are much more adept at small unit tactics than we are and we should change to be more adept at small unit tactics. And he spends the whole book which is decently thick talking about that. I mean this thing comes in at, I don't know, 350 pages, something like that. So it's thick. Honestly, it could be about half as long and just as effective. Additionally, as I'm reading this book, I keep thinking about the war in Ukraine and I keep thinking about Russia is included in one of the people he lists here. Now granted, he primarily means Russia during World War II but he refers to them even into this book into the modern era as still doing these small unit tactics better. And if you've been following the war in Ukraine at all, the Russian small unit tactics in Ukraine have been abysmal, I mean abysmal. And the way that they've been able to win is they've just kind of taken the gloves off and just started blowing everything up, right? They've fought more American-like in that they've just sought to overwhelm their foe with firepower and destruction. So I have that in my head when he's talking about Russia and all these other armies. And all I can't help think is maybe these are paper tigers. Maybe John Poole is making this into a much bigger deal that all these other armies do so well and they're so good at these small unit tactics and there's so much better individual initiative which would be contrary to everything else in those societies that they do. I mean, obviously, initiative is not something I associate with communism and totalitarian societies but he's saying, no, in the army at the private level, you know, they have a much more individual initiative than American soldiers do who are just taught to follow orders and that's it. And, you know, those are just very counter-cultural, right? Like in America, you do what you want, that's the whole deal. And in the places he's referring to like North Korea or China, you know, they're very communist, totalitarian, shame-based societies where you're not just gonna step out of line and do something, right? So that's kind of weird. And I'm just starting to think maybe, God bless him, he's just off the mark here. Maybe John Poole's just off the mark as far as an actual real survey of the situation. And I guess we'll see if those major powers ever get in conflicts, like Russia has gotten in today and again, turns out that the conventional forces really aren't that great. Additionally, one of the things that I find super annoying is that he just gushes about the Eastern armies. And again, that, you know, Russia, Germany, Japan, China, North Korea, North Vietnam primarily is what he means in the Eastern armies there. And about how everything, basically the way he writes it is everything they do is superior from God and just amazing and wonderful and the Americans are incompetent idiots and all their technology doesn't mean anything. I mean, the way he talks about night vision devices is like night vision devices can be easily fooled and talks about weather conditions and stuff. And I'm like, listen, bro, I'm spending a lot more time under nods recently walking around and having night vision, it gives you a God-like advantage and power. It just does. I'm sorry, I'd rather take someone who's at, I don't know, 60, 70% training, whatever that means, right, compared to someone who's at 100%. If the 60% guy has nods and the 100% guy doesn't, I'm sorry, my money's on the 60% guy because night vision is that much of an advantage. So it feels really weird to me to be talking about how easily defeated thermal devices are. And I'm like, I don't know, thermal, again, it's pretty impressive. So this idea that you can just easily overcome all technology problems with just a little bit of field craft and wit, I'm just like, I have a hard time buying that. He spends a lot of time talking about tunnels and how in the East they like to tunnel under things. You know, again, think Vietnam being a perfect example, right? They build all these tunnel complexes and stuff. And I'm like, well, there are certain places where you can't do that because the earth doesn't support it. Like, you know, you'd have to build like timber structures and you have to do a lot more to just tunnel into the earth. And Vietnam had tons of tunnels left over because they've been building them for a very long time. So it's not like they built that all from scratch right away. So should we, to completely negate tunnel fighting, should we not consider building tunnels? No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, again, there are special considerations and I don't think he gets into the details or the finer considerations of tactics like that. He just says, oh, tunnels good, build more tunnels. And I'm like, well, what if you can't? Like what if there are actual physical limitations there? The book that Poole needs to write is an updated Last Hundred Yards book. The Last Hundred Yards is probably my favorite Poole book because he actually goes through like tactics. Like he gives you battle drills and stuff to actually do to work on and says here, here's a tactical play that you could run. And we need more of that. I think that's what Poole needs to write next. And I don't know if he ever will, but that would be the book that I would certainly be interested in reading if he wrote it because this continued gushing about how great the Eastern armies are and how proficient their tactics are and how poor the US army tactics are. It's one, I'm not even sure if it's true. Two, it comes across very fanboyish which just kind of gets annoying after 350 pages. And three, I really think that a lot of those things he complains about modern US military units do incorporate into their tactics. Things like deception and camouflage are much more of a deal now in the US army than they were. Now granted, things in the field are always different, but when you look at US army manuals and US marine manuals, they're incorporating some of the concepts he's talking about. So I have a tough time with pool at points because I'm like, I don't think your assessment of the situation is necessarily accurate. Now, all of that aside, I'm reading this book as an everyday American who just wants to be more proficient because I believe in the Second Amendment, I believe Americans should be equipped and ready for battles with the equipment and the knowledge and the tactics. So if you're me and you're like that, what does this book mean for you? There are some gleaning you can definitely take from this book and I would probably recommend the last 100 yards to you as the first pool book to read, but I might put this in as the second because he does a very good job of hitting on things like deception and having your small unit try to deceive the other small unit into doing something you want them to do so that you can have a tactical advantage. He does get off the rails a little bit here on some of his Eastern mythical arts, shall we say, things like hypnosis and he talks a lot about the ninja and basically how they're like this semi-demonic force of super spiritual power that I'm like, ah, okay, it's probably demonic. I probably agree with that point, but I don't think that's something we should emulate. I like pool because as an everyday American, I don't have access to the military industrial complex in the sense that I can't call in huge airstrikes and artillery and helicopters and all the supporting firepower. We just don't have access to that. All we have is us and ourselves, right? So in that sense, this book does give you some helpful pointers because, again, he's talking about small unit tactics. Now what you need to realize from the book is he's not gonna give you what to go do. He's gonna give you big concept ideas of these are what other people have done and maybe this is something you could sort of think about how to incorporate in your thing. But he does not draw the connecting points which I find frustrating at points and I wish he would. So all in, I think this book is certainly worth a read if you're into that kind of thing. However, if you've read several pool books before, I don't know if you're really gonna get a lot of value out of this. He seems to be very repetitive in a lot of his books which is one of the reasons I might just be done with him for the foreseeable future. I think the most important takeaway from the pool books is to get out and actually try some of this stuff. If you have some friends where you can get out and you can try sneaking up on each other at night, I think that would be a valuable exercise if you could work on his stalking lanes drill. I think that would be a valuable exercise to do. But again, by and large, these books get very repetitive and if you've read one, you've kind of read them all and I would recommend just going to do this stuff. I think that's where the real value comes in in the pool books is taking the concepts and then trying to get out and actually do some of it. So I hope that is helpful. I hope that gives you a better idea of The Tiger's Way by H. John Poole. Do brave deeds and endure.