A tenacious personal memoir that sets a little-known record straight for the author.
A Vietnam War veteran’s diligent investigation of the 1968 attack on swift boat PCF-19, which concludes that the U.S. government erred in ruling the vessel and its passengers victims of friendly fire.
One can’t help but admire Steffes’s efforts to make sense of what he experienced during his first summer as a swift boat sailor along the border between North and South Vietnam. On June 15, 1968, he watched his fellow Swifties aboard PCF-19 sail up the coast toward the DMZ on a routine mission, only to discover by the early minutes of the next day that they had been attacked–four of the sailors had been killed and one was missing. A Board of Inquiry determined it was the result of friendly fire, but Steffes was not satisfied with the verdict. After a career in the Navy and more than 30 years of wanting to uncover the truth, Steffes sought to reverse what he alludes to as a politically motivated verdict. His investigation is more impressive than his delivery. The author uses the Internet, declassified Naval Archive records and interviews with eyewitnesses to, he hopes, correct history. In search of what really happened, Steffes took trips to veterans’ conventions and even returned to Vietnam with fellow sailors to try and make sense of the incident. He fully explains the role of the swift boats in missions, as well as corrects the illogical conclusion of the boat’s attack. Steffes’s is a moving story, both the experience at the scene in 1968 and his subsequent quest for the truth. But the book’s narrative is too often interrupted by reproduced documentary evidence, military terminology and errors in grammar and spelling. Swift Boat Down’s most valid contribution is its vivid description of a Swifty’s mission and Steffes’s take on the truth, which boosts his fellow sailors from hapless victims to war heroes. In order to understand the jargon and geography, however, the lay reader would need a list of military abbreviations and a Vietnam map for reference.
A tenacious personal memoir that sets a little-known record straight for the author.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5992-6613-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
At times slow-going, but the riveting period detail and dramatic flair eventually render this tale an animated history...
A murder that transfixed the world and the invention that made possible the chase for its perpetrator combine in this fitfully thrilling real-life mystery.
Using the same formula that propelled Devil in the White City (2003), Larson pairs the story of a groundbreaking advance with a pulpy murder drama to limn the sociological particulars of its pre-WWI setting. While White City featured the Chicago World’s Fair and America’s first serial killer, this combines the fascinating case of Dr. Hawley Crippen with the much less gripping tale of Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of radio. (Larson draws out the twin narratives for a long while before showing how they intersect.) Undeniably brilliant, Marconi came to fame at a young age, during a time when scientific discoveries held mass appeal and were demonstrated before awed crowds with circus-like theatricality. Marconi’s radio sets, with their accompanying explosions of light and noise, were tailor-made for such showcases. By the early-20th century, however, the Italian was fighting with rival wireless companies to maintain his competitive edge. The event that would bring his invention back into the limelight was the first great crime story of the century. A mild-mannered doctor from Michigan who had married a tempestuously demanding actress and moved to London, Crippen became the eye of a media storm in 1910 when, after his wife’s “disappearance” (he had buried her body in the basement), he set off with a younger woman on an ocean-liner bound for America. The ship’s captain, who soon discerned the couple’s identity, updated Scotland Yard (and the world) on the ship’s progress—by wireless. The chase that ends this story makes up for some tedious early stretches regarding Marconi’s business struggles.
At times slow-going, but the riveting period detail and dramatic flair eventually render this tale an animated history lesson.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-8066-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
Demonstrates how very thin is the gilt on the Golden State.
With humor, history, nostalgia, and acerbity, Didion (Political Fictions, 2001, etc.) considers the conundrums of California, her beloved home state.
Pieces of this remarkable memoir have appeared in the writer’s usual venues (e.g., the New York Review of Books), but she has crafted the connections among them so artfully that the work acquires a surprising cumulative power. Didion tells a number of stories that would not in lesser hands appear to be related: the arrival in California of her pioneer ancestors, the nasty 1993 episode involving randy adolescents who called themselves the “Spur Posse,” the fall of the aerospace industry in the 1990s, her 1948 eighth-grade graduation speech (“Our California Heritage”), the history of the state, and the death of her parents. Along the way she deals with some California novels from earlier days, Jack London’s The Valley of the Moon and Frank Norris’s The Octopus, and explores the community histories of Hollister, Irvine, and Lakewood (home of the Posse). She sees fundamental contradictions in the California dream. For one, older generations resented the arrival of the “newcomers,” who in their minds were spoiling the view. But as Didion points out, the old-timers had once done the same. More profound is her recognition that Californians, many of whom embrace the ideal of rugged individualism and reject “government interference,” nonetheless have accepted from the feds sums of money vast enough to mesmerize Midas. Water-management programs have been especially costly, but tax breaks for all sorts of other industries and enterprises have greatly enriched some in the state (railroad magnates, housing developers, defense contractors) while most everyone else battles for scraps beneath the table. Most affecting are her horrifying portrait of Lakewood as a community devoted to high-school sports at the expense of scholarship and her wrenching accounts of the deaths of her father and mother.
Demonstrates how very thin is the gilt on the Golden State.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2003
ISBN: 0-679-43332-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
