by Joe Klein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 2015
The compelling story of a continuing mission, rendered with sympathy and verisimilitude.
A savvy political observer presents his report on some veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan after they return home.
With characteristic episodic verve, Klein (Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid, 2006, etc.) tells of a few stalwart fighters who apply the skills they learned in the military to address civilian needs worldwide. Now, their continuing mission (“Charlie Mike” in military jargon) is the easing of misfortune at home and abroad. The devotion to his fellow fighters is what impelled Eric Greitens, a potent Navy SEAL and Rhodes Scholar with an Oxford doctorate, to organize a veterans’ group called The Mission Continues. Reading of the earthquake and chaos in Haiti, former Marine Jake Wood formed Team Rubicon and outfitted a forward operating base, complete with relief supplies, in a matter of days. For these former soldiers, public service is always the objective, and they deliver those who are best trained to effectively organize, deploy, and accomplish truly difficult jobs. These include veterans of elite units, sniper schools, recon intelligence, and other military organizations, and they readily transfer their unique abilities to civilian needs. And they care. Klein’s brief personal stories of these extraordinary men and women whose lives were marked by war are enlightening and powerful. He graphically depicts their training, their war experiences, and their efforts to cope with civilian ignorance. PTSD is often rampant, and many are haunted by the losses of buddies during combat. The most common hazard at home is suicide. Romances sour, and friendships and family relations suffer. The fellowship is often all that mattered—that and the job. “What worked was work,” writes the author. Ever the insightful reporter, he captures the conversational rhythm and vernacular of these remarkable warriors who have refitted their service to civilian life.
The compelling story of a continuing mission, rendered with sympathy and verisimilitude.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7730-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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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