A captivating memoir that showcases the magic of people and connections made around the world.
This travel memoir offers a glimpse into major political events in the 1970s and 80s.
The young Wake didn’t travel much as one of nine children, but when opportunities arose in college, he made the most of them. Many years after the travels took place, Wake brings readers the tale of his travels around the world starting in 1976, when he had his first hitchhiking adventure to Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks. Throughout the years, he was present for Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in London, traveled around post-Mao China shortly after it had opened up to tourists, and visited the Philippines during the “snap election” between Ferdinand Marcos and Cory Aquino. Aside from that, he visited the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, spent a Christmas in Thailand, celebrated the first night of Ramadan in Indonesia, and camped on the beach in Greece. Wake includes everything you could want in a travel memoir: glimpses into many different geographic places and cultural differences, a narrator who makes connections with people in the places he travels to, and a healthy dose of good luck that allows him to be in significant places during their most memorable historical moments. While hinting at other adventures, this memoir is focused on the travels that brought the author to significant political events around the world, often by chance. Wake presents a unique blend of optimism, deification gratification, a strong belief in self-ability, and “being blessed by glorious serendipity” that brought him to each place at just the right time: “The best discoveries, the deepest mysteries, and the most memorable adventures always come from the people I meet while getting to and from the must-see sites.” Wake delves into each adventure in its fullest, learning languages, meeting people, participating in local cultural events, and creating memories to last a lifetime.
A captivating memoir that showcases the magic of people and connections made around the world.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781611536416
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Torchflame Books
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment—the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare—creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun- -are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? ``The bastards—they were good.'' His battle philosophy? ``...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break.'' After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six—a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to ``a senior American official'' about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks. Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 2, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-70390-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
Great fun.
The second installment of childhood recollections (after Opposite the Cross Keys, 1988) by mystery writer S.T. Haymon, who here evokes a sheltered 12-year-old's further encounters with life's earthier side.
Haymon's 1920's, upper-middle-class childhood revolved typically around school, home, loyal servants, and a pair of doting, well-educated parents—until age 12, when her father died and her mother decided to move to London. Refusing to accompany her, the precocious, comically self-confident Sylvia tried to limit this series of upheavals by insisting on remaining in Norfolk in the care of a favorite teacher—except that at the last minute her headmistress (already a sworn enemy) switched houses, arranging for two maiden schoolteachers to put Sylvia up in their house instead. Sylvia knew that the Misses Gosse and Locke were eccentric. What she didn't know was that the skinny, aggressive history teacher and the teary, puppy-like math professor were lesbians. Nor did she notice as Miss Locke's increasingly desperate infatuation with her began to lead the entire household toward destruction. Amusing characters abound—the gardener, Sylvia's only ally, whose faith in the value of a virgin's tips on the horse races led him to pay her for advice; the dour housekeeper who sang opera and downed bottles of gin; the art teacher's model who bewildered Sylvia with talk of "randy old dykes"; and the spiritual channel who informed her that her daddy was watching everything she did from heaven. Haymon's depiction of herself as an unusually clever, frequently petulant, and thoroughly practical young girl obsessed with filling her stomach while all sorts of passionate fireworks exploded around her evokes an era when secrets still existed and scandals were bursting to happen—and makes for slyly humorous, very British entertainment.
Great fun.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 1990
ISBN: 312-04986-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
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