Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II is a 1998 memoir by Belton Y. Cooper. The book relates Cooper's experiences during World War II and puts forth an argument against the US Army's use of the M4 Sherman tank during the war instead of the M26 Pershing. Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II is a 1998 memoir by Belton Y. Cooper. The book relates Cooper's experiences during World War II and puts forth an argument against the US Army's use of the M4 Sherman tank during the war instead of the M26 Pershing. Death Traps has received mixed reviews since its release; the way Cooper described his experiences during the war has been praised, but the book also has received significant criticism—for example, the historian Steven J. Zaloga, who says he has talked with Cooper many times, and that Cooper wrote the book with a ghost writer, from memories, all without consulting sources. Nevertheless, Zaloga does not call the book "terrible", but " a terrible source if it’s the only thing people read" as "it’s a very limited perspective on US tank operations". Publishers Weekly wrote of Death Traps in 1998 that, "Without a doubt, this is one of the finest WWII memoirs ever written by an American junior officer," and predicted it would become "required reading for anyone interested in armored warfare." In the foreword to the book, Stephen E. Ambrose wrote, "Cooper saw more of the war than most junior officers, and he writes about it better than almost anyone." The Library Journal wrote: "[Readers] will be left with an indelible impression of the importance of the support troops and how dependent combat forces were on them.” A post on TankandAFVNews.com (a website maintained by a non-academic historian) is critical of the book and the reliance it has garnered online and in media coverage Writing in the Air and Space Power Journal US Air Force Major Gary Pounder described the book as "well worth reading" but "not without its faults," citing a dearth of maps and illustrations, and describing Cooper as being at times a "plodding writer" with a tendency to rehash statistics that have already been covered in previous chapters.