Despite his sincerity, Martinez lacks Swofford’s writing skills. Consequently, his book may appeal only to those whose...
A profane, testosterone-laced paean of love for the Marines and America and hatred for its enemies, which include Saddam Hussein’s army and Americans who oppose the war.
Martinez describes his adolescence in Albuquerque as a lawbreaking, school-hating, pugnacious gang member who, at the age of 17, abruptly decided to join the Marines. Readers may chuckle at his description of boot camp, which, with its sadistic discipline, fierce male-bonding enforced by mutual suffering and violence and contempt for non-Marines, seems a better organized version of the author’s gang. Bitterly disappointed to see other Marines sent to Afghanistan after 9/11, Martinez and his unit were thrilled to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His unit endured an exhausting month of intermittently bitter combat during which Martinez won a Navy Cross for heroic action during an ambush. From day one of the invasion, the author refers to the enemy as terrorists and points out how greatly they outnumbered his men, but readers may be most impressed with the Marines’ crushingly superior firepower. Martinez’s company suffered two wounded soldiers, but their rifles, tanks, artillery and aircraft killed scores of enemy soldiers and razed innumerable buildings to the ground. With victory achieved, his unit returned to the United States. When its presence in Iraq was required the following year, he could have accompanied it, but his term had expired, and he did not re-enlist. Although clearly a man who loves his country, Martinez spends considerably less time illustrating what he loves than denouncing what he hates: Americans who don’t deliver unqualified support of America’s wars, which include “hippies,” “liberals,” John Kerry and Anthony Swofford (author of Jarhead). He repeatedly denounces Jarhead, but the Marines in Swofford’s bestselling 2003 memoir, despite their adolescent horseplay, were vividly entertaining characters—and no slouches as warriors.
Despite his sincerity, Martinez lacks Swofford’s writing skills. Consequently, his book may appeal only to those whose uncritical love of our fighting men matches his own.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-307-38304-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown Forum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© 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.
