Ian Baxter is a prolific author and has an impressive collection of photographs, many unpublished previously. The book follows the familiar Images of War format with brief introductions for each chapter followed by a lot of photographs to tell the story. After reading Ian’s book on Heinrich Himmler, the Architect of the Holocaust, I wanted to read, and learn more, about the mass deportation of some 438,000 Hungarian Jews. Ian Baxter did not disappoint. He illustrated how the Nazi final solution had become even more efficient and brutal in 1944 after the Hungarian change in government at the behest of the Germans. The Hungarian Jews, who until that time, were temporarily protected, were now open to joining their Jewish neighbors throughout Europe. Operation Höss was named after Rudolph Höss, the longest serving commandant of the Auschwitz camp system from 4 May 1940 to November 1943.

“On Thursday, 15 June 1955, thousands of people as usual were on the streets of downtown Buenos Aires. Some curious citizens had heard something about an air parade, and they were in the Plaza de Mayo looking up at the sky. At around 12:40 p.m., some Naval Aviation North American AT-6, PBY-5A Catalina and Beechcraft AT-11 planes appeared on the horizon, But they were not there for a parade; they were there to simply bomb Government House in an attempted coup against Juan Domingo Perón. This raid left behind more than 300 dead, 600 wounded and dead everywhere. The Army units that should have been mobilized to support the uprising never did. The coup attempt was aborted within a few hours. But unlike the bombing of the city of Guernica in 1937, the planes that bombed and the pilots who flew them were national forces. Perón would be finally overthrown three months later by the so-called Liberating Revolution.”

After the Battle (ATB) publications is a long lived publishing company that was recently acquired by Pen and Sword. For many years ATB published the quarterly magazine called, After the Battle. It recently was discontinued, but their many books use the same format of comparing photographs contemporary to the Second World War with modern views, hence the then and now moniker. They consistently publish articles and books of a very high quality. The images are superb, both contemporary and modern. They will be missed.

This is an amazingly detailed book authored by a Polish Ph.D. in Law, living in Japan, writing about Japanese advances in the eastern Indian Ocean. As if that isn’t intriguing enough, author Michał A. Piegzik covers a little known (at least to most Americans) subject in a much larger backdrop of Allied defeats in the early Pacific War, focusing on ABDA (American, British, Dutch, Australian) forces as they reeled from Japanese attacks in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Java, and Burma.

This is a new riveting tool from UMM-USA and adds to its growing line of modeling tools. The single wheel tool allows you to emboss fine rivet lines on plastic, resin, soft wood, and thin metal sheets. The black handle, about the thickness of a Bic pen, fit well in my hand and was comfortable to use.

I experimented with the tool on several different types of styrene and an old plastic kit. I used a thin plastic ruler on the flat surfaces and found that it was easy to emboss a row of rivets.  On some pieces of pieces of styrene I had to put more pressure on the tool due to the hardness of the styrene.  On curves surfaces I used a thin metal straightedge from an old drafting class – labeling tape would also work well.

I found the tool easy to use and I was impressed by the rivet lines produced.  I look forward to using it on some of my older kits where there are no rivets.