A tale of impressive endurance, not enhanced by the surfeit of machismo.
Amped-up memoir of an elite warrior determined to fight on for his country, even after giving up a limb.
The Army Rangers are renowned as the original Special Operators, whose roots, according to Kapacziewski and co-author Sasser (Sanctuary, 2013, etc.), go back to pre–Revolutionary War frontiersmen. The author joined the military in order to become a Ranger; he describes handling the Ranger Indoctrination Program, similar to the Navy SEALs’ notorious “Hell Week,” with aplomb. “Rangers would be deployed to combat zones almost constantly” in the years after 9/11, he writes. “This was the best time in all history to be a Ranger.” Yet he bemusedly notes that “[n]othing went wrong” on his first tour of Afghanistan in 2002. Kapacziewski saw combat in repeated tours of Iraq, but he clearly enjoyed both the experience of war and the opportunity to marry an all-American girl at home, Kimberly (who provides narrative counterpoint). At first, under Special Ops’ protective canopy, the author felt charmed: “No one ever seemed to get hurt on our side.” He notes that modern accouterments like satellite phones, the Internet and Skype “made the war seem less dangerous.” But his luck ran out in Mosul in 2005, when a grenade came through a hatch of a Stryker vehicle, resulting in severe injuries to his arm and leg. His difficult rehabilitation makes up the narrative’s final third, with the twist that Kapacziewski’s mulish determination led to a unique triumph: “Almost a year and a half after amputation, I was back on the line as a squad leader…the first amputee to return to full combat duty.” Yet despite all his experiences, the author seems to have issues with the topics of masculinity and service: He makes clear to readers that any modern man who’s not an Army Ranger is probably a “sensitive, touchy-feely” effeminate pseudo-male.
A tale of impressive endurance, not enhanced by the surfeit of machismo.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1250010612
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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