Berent continues his highly detailed Vietnam War saga (Rolling Thunder, Steel Tiger), taking his Air Force flyers into 1968 and the Tet offensive. Quotations from Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, which they would probably like everyone to forget, open this volume that covers fewer than eight weeks of the war—the period of the final buildup to, and execution of, the single most important countrywide offensive by North Vietnam against South Vietnam. Captain Toby Parker, the gifted flyer who washed out of fighter training in a drunken fog, now flies forward observer missions in small propeller planes. When his reported sightings of North Vietnamese tanks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail are discounted by his superiors, he goes in for a closer look and photographs but is brought down and captured by the enemy. It takes the Special Forces to free him and to start the trip back to his base with the news that a really big action is underway. Major Algernon ``Flak'' Apple, shot down over North Vietnam, has been less fortunate. He is a prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton. Major Court Bannister, one shootdown short of becoming an ace (it takes five), has been pulled from the Hanoi bombing runs and sent to purgatory in South Vietnam after apparent violations of the Rules of Engagement. Lt. Colonel Wolf Lochert continues his one-man guerrilla war. And as the top brass continue to ignore the signs of a mammoth coordinated assault coming from the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, Lyndon Johnson hopes to deal with Ho Chi Minh like a fellow Texan. When the offensive finally comes, the surprised Americans and South Vietnamese stagger and then fight the enemy off. It's a military victory for the South—and a political and public-relations victory for the North. The high quality of Berent's reporting—as well as the professional insights that distinguished the earlier volumes— continues to make this one of the best Vietnam War fictional histories.
Pub Date: May 9, 1991
ISBN: 0-399-13603-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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