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MY FELLOW SOLDIERS

Name: MY FELLOW SOLDIERS
Author: Andrew Carroll
ISBN: 978-1-59420-648-1

GENERAL JOHN PERSHING AND THE AMERICANS WHO HELPED WIN THE GREAT WAR

by Andrew Carroll ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2017

A diverting view of some Americans' roles in this century-old conflict. For a more fine-grained focus on the ordinary man,...

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World War I as seen through the private writings of American participants.

Using Gen. John Pershing (1860-1948), the commander of the American Expeditionary Force, as a centerpiece, Legacy Project founder and bestselling author Carroll (Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History, 2013, etc.) sets the ambitious task of telling "the story of the American experience in World War I…primarily through the letters, journals and other personal writings that Pershing and his countrymen wrote throughout the conflict." The narrative features an eclectic cast of characters. Some were leaders famous at the time—e.g., President Woodrow Wilson and Gen. Leonard Wood—while others became famous later, including George Patton, George Marshall, and Harry Truman. Most were humble individuals caught up in the war: ambulance drivers, fledgling aviators, an Army nurse, and soldiers in all-black regiments who found themselves used as stevedores or seconded to the French army once they were "over there." The personal anecdotes are engaging and well-told; the selected written materials, particularly the ones from the ordinary people, ring with a down-home authenticity and an earnest moral naiveté impossible to imagine in 21st-century youth. However, even as Carroll limits his attention to writers directly connected to the war, his attempt to present the viewpoints of everyone from president to private, while putting it all in the context of the flow of events, necessarily restricts readers’ contact with most individuals to little more than a superficial introduction. Nor are the source materials always particularly helpful. While Pershing's tender letters to his young son and to female companions (his wife had died in a fire) help to humanize a man who cultivated a stony public image, they do not illuminate his conduct of the war or his professional relations with others; rather, they seem to stand to one side as unexpected curiosities.

A diverting view of some Americans' roles in this century-old conflict. For a more fine-grained focus on the ordinary man, see Peter Englund’s The Beauty and the Sorrow (2012).

Pub Date: April 4, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-59420-648-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
HERE IS WHERE
by Andrew Carroll

- BOOK REVIEW
BEHIND THE LINES
edited by Andrew Carroll

- BOOK REVIEW
WAR LETTERS
edited by Andrew Carroll

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

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This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.

It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.

Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.