The White Sniper: Simo Häyhä Hardcover – October 19, 2016

I'm sorry to give this book such a terrible review. I suspect the translation from Finnish didn't help. The author started most sentences with the full name i.e. Simo Hayha was this or that. Then the next sentence would be the same where the author could have said and HE did this or that but no the author would say AND SIMO Hayha bla bla bla. It got very tiring. So much technical information...what guns were used by Russians for snipers, how units were set up. And Simo Hayha , Simo Hayha was strong and fit..must have said it 30 times in the book. It felt like a 5th grader was writing it. I was looking forward to reading about some of his assignments as the informative stated. Like another reviewer said..the author touted how many many hours he interview SIMO HAYHA but never told us much about him. I was really disappointed in this book. Such a hero but it was a terrible read.

Very bad book . Nothing about his actual day to day sniping. All you ever wanted to know about the Finnish/Russian war. his life before and after the war . Author said he interviewed him for years, why didnt he put some of that in his book???

The book is interesting, particularly if you've read histories of the Winter War between the Finns and Russians. To some degree it suffers from a what was probably a difficult translation, the repetition of facts and themes, and the fact that the protagonist was a very humble and private man. Overall it was a satisfactory read but not a page turner.

A little difficult read since this was apparently a translation from the original Finnish. But . . . . it was interesting to get the "take" of the greatest sniper of all time as to "what it takes." He was really a sum of a lot of seemingly different factors that are all covered in the book. Who would have guessed how being a "little guy" made a difference.

This book is well written, and the guy that it is written about is incredible. When you finish this book, you will wonder why this mans story is not more well known. It would make a great movie - but the hardest part would be convincing people that this really happened. Simo was a sniper who was so great at his job that the enemy would just shell or bomb the heck out of any area they thought he might be... and they failed to get him every time. He would do things like keep snow in his mouth so that the enemy couldn't even detect his breath to see him. Really a great story.

It's a pretty good book and it chronicles the most prolific sniper of WWII and his work during the Winter War between Finland and Russia. I'm not sure what I was expecting, and I believe there are other books on the same subject out there, but having not read them I can't compare.them. I do know I was interested in specific mission details that just weren't there, but given the time between the events and the book, I suppose that is to be expected as memories fade.

Very poor translation, I'm afraid. Might be good material here but it needed to be rewritten.

There's nothing like first-person interviews to dispel any misconceptions or myths.This book nails it.

Simo Häyhä is most successful sniper, by kills. The statistics are amazing: WWI soldier fired 1500 rounds, on average, per kill. The Vietnam War took that up to 20,000 per kill. Häyhä achieved a kill rate of 1.3 to 1.The problem with this book is that it is repetitive and lacks a cohesive timeline. In the hands of a professional writer, this story could be superb. Sadly it isn't.

Should have been such an intetesting subject, but this book jumped around all over the place and was very difficult to follow.The writer obviously had done his reasearch but was poorly applied I'm sad to say

This was a great book providing a lot of information about this amazing sniper. I will have to say though that the book could have been structured better and a further proof read would have been good. However I would recommend this book if you are wanting to know more of the remarkable Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä.

A good book about a remarkable Finish sniper who helped defend his country against Russian aggression. The book was well researched but at times was a bit repetitive. It clearly demonstrated the cost effectiveness of the sniper role.

The history of an impressive individual but damaged by the quality of the writer. Nevertheless, it is an interesting reading. It reflects a bit of the finish psyche a its brilliance to deal with a neighbor superpower.