The record speaks for itself; alienation and politicization lurk between the lines.
A modern warrior’s achievements and heroics culminate in opposition to a U.S. government viewed as breaking trust with military veterans.
Coram (Boyd, 2002, etc.) confesses in the preface to an “unbounded admiration” of Colonel (USAF) George “Bud” Day. His subject goes from a roughshod, undisciplined—even court-martialed—Marine recruit in WWII to the military’s most decorated veteran (his awards include the Medal of Honor) as a result of action as both an Air Force flying officer and POW in Vietnam. Indeed, the bulk of the narrative flits frequently into outright homage. It’s somewhat understandable when dealing with a military pilot who compiles an exemplary service record, gets a law degree in his spare time, hones legendary flying skills, survives two accidents of a type that killed all others known to be involved in them, leads a crucial combat squadron in Vietnam, then is shot down and not only attempts a nearly successful escape but becomes a notorious (to his captors) “hard resistor” surviving torture in the company of his fellow POW, now Senator, John McCain. Coram’s extended take on Day’s career pre-Vietnam tracks with steady military-family-man allegiances and no-B.S. character testimonials, and it’s certain to be more appreciated by fellow vets. An interesting theme does emerge post-Vietnam: an on-again, off-again association with McCain, who adopts a softer attitude than Day on POWs who did not actively resist and took an early release others declined; they also part on the Swift-boat veterans attack (denounced by McCain) on John Kerry. There are some blunt personal references to McCain in the book, particularly unflattering in the context of presidential ambitions. After two decades in retirement, Day leads an assault against the Clinton administration’s cutback of veterans’ promised medical benefits, characterized by Coram in a final, redundant reference, as “the mission God saved him for.”
The record speaks for itself; alienation and politicization lurk between the lines.Pub Date: May 3, 2007
ISBN: 0-316-75847-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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