by Gerald MacLennon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2017
A sometimes-gripping war memoir with a narrow focus.
MacLennon’s (Wrestling with Angels, 2016) Vietnam memoir draws from his experiences as a young Navy reconnaissance photographer.
Using his diary as a resource, the author recounts life aboard the USS Oriskany in 1967 when the aircraft carrier served to support the on-again, off-again bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese. Raised a Lutheran, the author drifted through high school in Fort Collins, Colorado, and finally, forced by his father, entered the Navy as a recon photographer. Most of this book concentrates on the author’s perspective on the increasing senselessness of the Vietnam air war, his personal spiritual searching, and his examination of Navy hierarchy from a grunt’s-eye view. “But here I am,” MacLennon writes, “riding on this steel behemoth—the most ominous killing machine ever conceived; a weapon of war with the innocuous name of carrier.” MacLennon’s life took a turn when he encountered Michael Goldberg, a helicopter pilot and lieutenant, the first Jew the author had ever met. The two struck up a friendship based on their mutual affinity for art and their spiritual yearnings, but MacLennon seemed baffled when Goldberg began to address the “not-so-subtle bigotry” he had experienced in the Bible Belt. The author’s exploration of his own racism, his discovery and adaptation of Buddhism, his willingness to be open to new ideas in the midst of war all give this memoir a strong core. And the straightforward prose suits the subject. The author’s frequent focus on everyday observations, however, becomes somewhat tedious and limits retrospective comments that might offer additional context and perspective on the war. MacLennon also includes some black-and-white photos.
A sometimes-gripping war memoir with a narrow focus.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-975633-33-2
Page Count: 332
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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