Debut author Bowen recounts experiences as a U.S. Marine photographer and journalist, followed up by memorable communications stints with the Voice of America and the American Legion.
Subtitled “The Story of a Marine Corps Combat Correspondent,” Bowen’s illustrated memoir covers his experiences in and out of Vietnam. A prolific contributor of photographs and articles to military news outlets, Bowen has a polished, easy, just-the-facts style that makes for accommodating reading for both veterans and civilians. Son of a Linotype operator in Virginia, Bowen started early as a newspaper stringer but learned that without a college degree, he’d never evolve beyond freelancing. The Marines, which he joined in 1960, offered far greater opportunities, and Bowen shot pictures and told stories of corps life for a number of communications outlets, including the storied Leatherneck magazine. Often based in Okinawa, Japan (he also enrolled in and helped shape a prominent military-photojournalism–education project at Syracuse University), Bowen had a correspondent’s access not only to the span of the Vietnam War, but also to NASA (especially Skylab), the Jonestown cult massacre in Guyana, and the hostage crisis in Iran. The author is clearly proud of his Marine (and, by extension, American) heritage, yet he still keeps the lens cap tight over his own politics and emotions regarding some of the most bitter episodes in modern U.S. history. In his exacting prose, one senses Bowen setting his Marine officer/gentleman discipline aside only occasionally, when he vents frustration as an “overqualified” job-seeker in the 1980s when young novices rose above the proven, accomplished vet (fortunately someone at Voice of America got Bowen his next major gig, and he was back doing communications on behalf of Uncle Sam). The final quarter showcases Bowen’s photography—images that portray American soldiers (especially in the Vietnam theater) without losing sight of their humanity. If the writer seems to be holding back a bit on his feelings, these photos speak volumes for him.
An epic, solidly reported memoir even if it tends to keep the more polarizing elements out of the picture.Pub Date: March 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-2013-1
Page Count: 412
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
Did you like this book?
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
