The author concentrates on the fighting and does a fine job communicating the camaraderie, adolescent horseplay,...
A colorful memoir of a pilot who had a great deal of fun during his career, which included 726 career combat hours flown and service throughout the world, including Iraq during both wars.
Hampton emphasizes that he performed a fighter pilot’s most dangerous assignment—and it wasn’t air-to-air combat, which is probably a dying profession. He was a Wild Weasel, a member of the group of first planes sent into a conflict whose mission it is to suppress surface-to-air missiles. Barely mentioning his personal life, the author delivers 300 pages of aviation fireworks and strong opinion—noncombatant airmen, politicians and most foreigners do not come off well—accompanied by a torrent of technical details and military acronyms that will mystify military buffs but not discourage them. Hampton is not shy about recounting brushes with death, many of which involved mechanical failure, bad weather or human error (occasionally his). Though the Iraqi air force struck fear into no one’s heart, the author’s accounts of fending off anti-aircraft missiles during the 2003 Iraq invasion provide the book’s most dramatic combat experiences; however, none of the enemy missiles reached their targets. As a result, Hampton never describes a routine occurrence in memoirs of earlier wars: the deaths of comrades. A patriot and a warrior, the author expresses incomprehension that America’s crushing victories over evil Saddam Hussein have brought so little satisfaction.
The author concentrates on the fighting and does a fine job communicating the camaraderie, adolescent horseplay, conservative politics and hair-raising incidents of service in the elite macho fraternity of American fighter pilots.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-213035-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
A slim volume packed with nourishing nuggets of wisdom.
Life lessons from the celebrated poet.
Angelou (A Song Flung Up to Heaven, 2002, etc.) doesn’t have a daughter, per se, but “thousands of daughters,” multitudes that she gathers here in a Whitmanesque embrace to deliver her experiences. They come in the shape of memories and poems, tools that readers can fashion to their needs. “Believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things,” she writes, proceeding to recount pungent moments, stories in which her behavior sometimes backfired, and sometimes surprised even herself. Much of it is framed by the “struggle against a condition of surrender” or submission. She refuses to preach or consider her personal insights as generalized edicts. She is reminded of the charity that words and gestures bring and the liberation that comes with honesty. Lies, she notes, often spring out of fear. She cheated madness by counting her blessings. She is enlivened by those in love. She understands the uses and abuses of violence. Occasionally a bit of old-fashioned advice filters in, as during a commencement address/poem in which she urges the graduates to make a difference, to be present and accountable. The topics are mostly big, raw and exposed. Where is death’s sting? “It is here in my heart.” Overarching each brief chapter is the vital energy of a woman taking life’s measure with every step.
A slim volume packed with nourishing nuggets of wisdom.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6612-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.
Gornick’s (The Odd Woman and the City, 2016) ferocious but principled intelligence emanates from each of the essays in this distinctive collection.
Rereading texts, and comparing her most recent perceptions against those of the past, is the linchpin of the book, with the author revisiting such celebrated novels as D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Colette's The Vagabond, Marguerite Duras' The Lover, and Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris. Gornick also explores the history and changing face of Jewish American fiction as expressions of "the other." The author reads more deeply and keenly than most, with perceptions amplified by the perspective of her 84 years. Though she was an avatar of "personal journalism" and a former staff writer for the Village Voice—a publication that “had a muckraking bent which made its writers…sound as if they were routinely holding a gun to society’s head”—here, Gornick mostly subordinates her politics to the power of literature, to the books that have always been her intimates, old friends to whom she could turn time and again. "I read ever and only to feel the power of Life with a capital L," she writes; it shows. The author believes that for those willing to relinquish treasured but outmoded interpretations, rereading over a span of decades can be a journey, sometimes unsettling, toward richer meanings of books that are touchstones of one's life. As always, Gornick reveals as much about herself as about the writers whose works she explores; particularly arresting are her essays on Lawrence and on Natalia Ginzburg. Some may feel she has a tendency to overdramatize, but none will question her intellectual honesty. It is reflected throughout, perhaps nowhere so vividly as in a vignette involving a stay in Israel, where, try as she might, Gornick could not get past the "appalling tribalism of the culture.”
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-28215-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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