An energetic read for sailors, SEALs, and the greater population of armchair SEALs.
A you-are-there–style narrative of the most extreme military training in existence, the Navy’s six-month Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) program.
Novelist Couch (Silent Point, 1993, etc.), an alumnus of BUD/S Class 45 and SEAL Platoon Commander in Vietnam, clearly brings the necessary fervor to this subject, as he understands why SEAL training is so severe, producing enormous attrition among the officers and enlisted men who attempt BUD/S each year. Couch follows Class 228 through every aspect of this strictly regimented training, conveying an unprecedented intimacy with the process, and documenting the camaraderie of men put to the test. The three phases of BUD/S combine harsh physical training (PT) and constant competition with the omnipresent escape route of Drop On Request (DOR), which allows overwhelmed trainees a face-saving exit, while insuring that each class is winnowed down to the most hardcore. The First Phase culminates in Hell Week—a period of sleep deprivation and constant, borderline-sadistic PT, much of it (like “drown proofing”) in the water, which forces many DORs, including those who must withdraw due to Hell Week–related injuries, but may return in a later class. Those who continue into Second and Third Phases learn SEAL specialties, from night swimming to tactical shooting and covert demolitions, while continuing with PT evaluations, and increasingly realistic combat and emergency simulations. The author offers a good historical understanding of the SEALs, whose group identity developed in the crucible of Vietnam, where their loss rates were high, and also some anecdotes of real SEAL combat missions, which demonstrate why such severe training is necessary. While Couch’s stylized macho prose (e.g., unease described as a “gut check”) is nothing if not appropriate to the material, the superior element here is the empathy and texture within his character depictions, of the earnest, youthful trainees (many of whom sooner or later DOR) and the merciless yet knowing instructor cadre.
An energetic read for sailors, SEALs, and the greater population of armchair SEALs.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60710-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
Wingo rather frothily admits that, like ``all good sea stories,'' her reminiscence of her stint in the WAVES has been ``embellished.'' Now a retired teacher and a Santa Monica community activist, Wingo remembers feeling like Joan of Arc at her enlistment in the WAVES (Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service) in 1944 at the age of 20. An Irish Catholic raised in Detroit, she attends boot camp at Hunter College in the Bronx, where the ``barracks'' are a five-story apartment building. Recruits are called Ripples (``Little Waves, silly''), and Wingo says that ``boot camp is like a harder Girl Scout camp'' where you learn that a ``misbegotten granny knot could screw up the whole war.'' Her bunkmates (the characters are composites) include Coralee Tolliver, a chunky ``hillbilly'' whom she despises (though Wingo later serves as her maid of honor), and Barbara Lee Corman, who calls everyone ``honeychile'' and juggles five ``fian-says.'' The trio gets assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago where they train on guns. Following a Navy Day parade in which Wingo, in full dress, rides astraddle a torpedo, she and her buddies are shipped out to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay to train the men in the Armed Guard for at-sea duty while they, as women, will remain ashore. Wingo falls for a tattooed sailor named Blackie (he calls her ``Toots'') until he admits he visits prostitutes because it ``saves the nice girls for when we want to marry them.'' She describes a chaotic V-J Day celebration and a whirlwind tour of New York City; and she offers an entire chapter about getting drunk and sick aboard a Russian ship anchored in San Francisco Bay. Jocular and occasionally appealing, this suffers from an almost complete lack of hard information or historical perspective on the very real contributions of the WAVES.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1994
ISBN: 1-55750-924-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A strongly argued defense of polyester.
Forget the bad music, embarrassing clothes, and sleazy sexuality: Schulman (History/Boston Univ.) is here to set the record straight on the disco decade.
After a preface that features an odd encomium of his own work (“It offers a rich, evocative portrait of the United States in the 1970s”), the author settles in to explore his thesis—i.e., “The Seventies transformed American economic and cultural life as much as, if not more than, the revolutions in manners and morals of the 1920s and the 1960s.” He begins with 1968, a year that witnessed assassinations, political unrest, and a surprising surge of support for George Wallace. He offers a devastating assessment of the Nixon presidency, but credits Nixon with the insight to recognize and exploit the shifts of political power taking place in the US (from the old North and Northeast to the new South and West). Schulman also assesses the demographic and intellectual forces that fractured the old “melting pot” consensus and created the now-pervasive notion that diversity is the highest social good. He also chronicles the emergence of the Christian right (“This parallel universe proved surprisingly vast”) and the rise of the New South. Schulman writes compassionately about Jimmy Carter—but recognizes his utter inability to lead the country. And, while he admits Reagan’s unquestioned contributions to the American resurgence, Schulman recognizes that “The Reagan recovery did little for working people.” Throughout the 1970s, Schulman maintains, there was a “southernization of American life” and a decline in social and political activism. The author devotes considerable attention to the popular culture (especially films, TV shows, and music) of the period, but he largely ignores serious literature and the other arts—and he is given to seeing much in little, as when he attributes great cultural importance to Evel Knievel’s farewell tour and to Billie Jean King’s whupping of the feckless Bobby Riggs.
A strongly argued defense of polyester.Pub Date: May 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-82814-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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