Take his word for it: “War’s a bitch, wear a helmet.”
Staccato account of infantry combat in Iraq.
In November 2004, Army staff sergeant Bellavia led his men into the chaotic urban fighting described here. They were part of the successful recapture of Fallujah, a command base for Iraqi insurgents. Months earlier, the burnt corpses of four American contractors had been hung from a bridge in the same city. Written with military historian Bruning (The Devil’s Sandbox, 2006, etc.), this rapid-fire recreation of the block-by-block fighting captures perfectly the horror—and horrible peak-experience attraction—of war. In an era of high-tech weaponry, Bellavia puts us on the ground with modern-day grunts who could just as easily be fighting in World War II in Europe. They are filthy, hot, tired and dehydrated as they slog through rubble, broken glass and dead bodies to conduct risky searches of houses that may be “clean” or filled with booby traps and enemy soldiers. The frantic, present-tense narrative abounds with scenes and dialogue that make this account of battle read like a realistic war novel. Bellavia emphasizes the close bonds among disparate comrades, including Lance Ohle, master of the light machine gun, who talks like a gangsta rapper; Piotr Sucholas, the Michael Moore–loving liberal with ice water for blood; and Bryan Lockwald, the guitar-playing intellectual with wire-rimmed glasses and a handlebar mustache. The men enter homes through holes blown into walls by tanks, work their way to rooftops and engage a resourceful enemy, one of whom the author knifes to death in vicious hand-to-hand combat. Discharged in 2005, Bellavia finds he misses the feeling of importance and usefulness he derived from combat, returns to Iraq briefly as a Weekly Standard journalist, then comes home to try to repair strained relations with his wife and son.
Take his word for it: “War’s a bitch, wear a helmet.”Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-7471-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
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
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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