Though the writing lacks polish, readers interested in elite military forces could hardly ask for a more honest rendering.
A West Point graduate looks back on his training and experiences as a Green Beret.
What does it take to succeed as a member of the Army Special Forces? Author Wong (Yellow Green Beret Vol. II, 2012) found out when he attended West Point in the late 1990s and then set out to join the ultraelite Green Berets. After completing several years of arduous training, he achieved his goal and later earned two Bronze Stars for military service in places ranging from the Philippines to Iraq. In order to realize his aims, he had to meet challenges that included grueling physical education classes at West Point and navigating the U.S. Army bureaucracy. His book makes clear that the route to joining the Special Forces has no shortcuts and that dismissal from the program lurks around every corner, but the experience can bring unique rewards. Writing in a conversational tone, Wong describes the excitement of being an Asian-American in the military: “I stated who I was and that I was there to see Colonel King (cool name by the way—he’s a colonel, and he’s a king).” Although the breezy prose style at times works against a robust understanding of complex situations, the book offers a realistic look at a military institution romanticized by movies and other forms of popular culture. The author seems to have no agenda beyond the obvious: telling the story of a man who tried hard, failed many times but persevered even if the results didn’t always live up to expectations. The author and his comrades in arms spent years perfecting military tactics, at times only to face tedious PowerPoint presentations, indifferent authority figures and arbitrary rules instead of action. Peppered with information on the Iraq War and the U.S. involvement in the Philippines, this book leads an informative expedition into a much mythologized part of the military, headed by an author who’s never been afraid to fail.
Though the writing lacks polish, readers interested in elite military forces could hardly ask for a more honest rendering.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463529499
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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