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BADASS

Name: BADASS
Author: Ben Thompson
ISBN: 978-0-06-211234-7

ULTIMATE DEATHMATCH: SKULL-CRUSHING TRUE STORIES OF THE MOST HARDCORE DUELS, SHOWDOWNS, FISTFIGHTS, LAST STANDS, SUICIDE CHARGES, AND MILITARY ENGAGEMENTS OF ALL TIME

by Ben Thompson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2013

The maundering rhetoric, all “dudes” and “balls-out” and “badass,” gets old fast, but Thompson’s grasp of history is solid....

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History for the Ted Nugent set—a follow-up to Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live (2009).

In order for a historical moment—in amateur historian Thompson’s hands, almost always a desperate battle—to be worthy of consideration in this catalog of mayhem, it has to involve high stakes, impossible odds and a blaze of glory. On the last point: “The difference between a heroic victory, a valiant last stand, and a crushing defeat is often measured by the badly outnumbered side’s ability to launch a balls-out attack at exactly the right moment.” That’s probably not the way they’d phrase it at West Point, but Thompson’s compendium includes some sterling examples of bravery under fire, some very little known. One, for instance, involved a Russian paratroop unit that fought nearly to the last man in Chechnya, taking out nearly 10 foes for every paratrooper lost. “The Chechens were so impressed by this bold act of bravery,” writes Thompson, “that they named a street after the Russian unit in the Chechen capital of Grozny—no small gesture considering how much these two groups hate each other.” True enough. Many of the author’s other case studies leave their names emblazoned on streets and other places, from Alcibiades to Napoleon to Wyatt Earp, but others are nearly forgotten—e.g., the Nazi fighter ace who later became a consultant to the U.S. Air Force and the unfortunate participants in what Thompson judges to be “history’s dumbest battle,” evidence of which the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire later discovered and was “left trying to piece together…like those dudes in The Hangover.”

The maundering rhetoric, all “dudes” and “balls-out” and “badass,” gets old fast, but Thompson’s grasp of history is solid. Think of it as Thucydides for video gamers.

Pub Date: March 12, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-06-211234-7

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS
by Ben Thompson & Erik Slader ; illustrated by Tim Foley

- BOOK REVIEW
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
by Ben Thompson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
by Ben Thompson

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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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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)