A satisfying stream of travel, training, horseplay and nuts-and-bolts military minutiae along with the usual fireworks.
Another macho memoir of a special-forces badass but with a charming, mildly exotic British overlay.
Following the convention of military memoirs, Maylor, with the assistance of Macklin (My Favourite Teacher, 2011, etc.) describes an aimless youth (bored at school, heavy drinking, etc.) before he found himself after joining the marines in 1992. These were Royal Marine commandos, so readers will encounter the traditional sadistic training regimen designed to select those able to endure extreme pain, exhaustion and humiliation. Peacetime warriors kill few bad guys, but Maylor toured the world, enduring surprisingly grueling exercises from the arctic to the jungle, plus unpleasant tours in Northern Ireland before joining the snipers in 1995; military buffs will enjoy his description of their highly technical instruction. After years with no action in sight, he quit the service, married, returned to his native New Zealand, found earning a living difficult and joined the Australian army, where he repeated sniper training. The book is well past the midpoint when his unit arrives in Afghanistan, but it is worth the wait as the author paints a vivid picture of the experience during which his unit patrolled, fought and sniped with varying degrees of success until it was ambushed in one of the biggest battles involving Australian troops. Sticking to his role as a soldier, Maylor shows mild sympathy for Afghan civilians, no hatred of the Taliban, love for his comrades, satisfaction with his performance and no claim that he was fighting for a noble goal.
A satisfying stream of travel, training, horseplay and nuts-and-bolts military minutiae along with the usual fireworks.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-64541-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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