Waterstones Flight MH370
132 ratings
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Price: £7.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: On 8 March, 00:41, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport. At 01:19, the pilot bid air traffic control 'good night'. Two minutes later, the plane and its 227 passengers vanished from the skies. No trace has been found. The disappearance of flight MH370 has horrified people across the globe. In an age where a stolen smartphone can be pinpointed to any location on earth, the vanishing of a cruise liner and 227 passengers is the greatest mystery since the Mary Celeste. Experienced author and journalist Nigel Cawthorne has researched the case with incredible thoroughness, revealing the most compelling explanations behind the mystery gripping the world.
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9781784181123
Delivery cost: 0.00
ISBN: 9781784181123
Author: Richard Creasey
Rating: 5
Review: At first thought it seems to me to be just about okay for Flight MH370 to warrant countless hours of costly television time, thousands of articles in print, and an infinite number of words on the internet. But a book, written so soon, so fast. Are you sure? Well on reflection yes. Once you’ve got your head around how prolific is Nigel Cawthorne, and that thousands of professionals write as many words a day as he does - the only difference being they’re reporters whereas Cawthorne is an author - then it makes lots of sense. So in a word, if you glimpsed television, scanned newspaper articles or fished the net, then buy this book. It’s well worth it.
Author: rockstro
Rating: 1
Review: Many know that I’m an ardent follower of all things to do with commercial aircraft incidents, and have been for some years. I am also a technical writer; it goes with my job. So when Nigel Cawthorne’s little book about the disappearance of MH370 started to be punted about I felt compelled to buy it, even though I suspected strongly that it would be penned primarily for its sensationalism and not for its factual findings. As a result, no-one should be surprised that fact is lacking in this account. Cawthorne appears to be a moderately clever chap who makes a living writing by rote and, in his narrative, disinterest in his topic shines through. Based on this principle, he has discovered the knack of padding out minimal information to fill a 288 page tome when, in truth, he could have related his tale in 28 pages or fewer. Short of the decent details and data, Cawthorne has chosen to harp back to a host of aircraft incidents which bear little, if any, correlation to the destiny of MH370. Followers of accidents will already know the events to which he relates and won’t need them to be repeated out of context. Those who are only interested in learning more about the fate of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER will probably skip the interminable descriptions of these disparate events as they bear no relevance to the ongoing proceedings. There has been criticism aimed at Cawthorne, claiming that he has arrived at his own theory about MH370. In fact, he hasn’t. What he has done is carefully crafted his own thoughts to make sure that, at a later date, he can’t be accused of adding his own collection of red herrings to the already over-filled bowl of fish stew. I wasn’t expecting much of value from this book. Ergo, I wasn’t disappointed to find that it’s merely a collection of loosely bolted together comments and news items which have been appearing all over the Internet and broadcast on the news channels since 9M-MRO was first acknowledged to be missing. As a read, none of it flows, with topics jumping about with little apparent thought to their placement within the chapters. To make matters worse, the pages are littered with typos, endorsing the fact that it was written in a hurry and only proof-read in a cursory fashion. What’s the point of this version of events, and who gains? Certainly the readers won’t learn anything that can’t be gleaned elsewhere. And, overall, Cawthorne clearly seems to believe that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is little more than a licence to print money. That’s fair enough, as he writes for a living. But common-sense and a peppering of decency should have led him to desist on this occasion, particularly at this stage. He should have handed over the summarising of this incident in book form to those who know more about the subject and are qualified to make factual comment. Instead, he’s dashed out what he hopes is a quick money-spinner and, in the true spirit of schadenfreude, he will reap his own dishonourable rewards from a very public disaster.
