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SHOOT LIKE A GIRL

ONE WOMAN'S DRAMATIC FIGHT IN AFGHANISTAN AND ON THE HOME FRONT

A gripping chronicle by a daring pilot with an indomitable spirit.

A memoir from an Air National Guard pilot who was shot down on a search-and-rescue mission during her third tour of duty in Afghanistan.

During her service, Hegar not only faced enemy fire, but also the hostility of some of her fellow officers, some of whom had difficulty accepting women in the military. Awarded a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in combat, the author’s active career in the military ended in 2009 as a result of injuries she suffered during the crash. Her courageous exploits also earned her the respect of her fellow officers. When she was no longer able to function as a rescue pilot, she applied to deploy with ground forces as a special tactics officer. Despite her unquestioned qualifications for the job, she was turned down because of a law that excluded women from ground combat, ending her career in the service. A civilian once again, Hegar returned to her home in Austin, Texas, married, and took on a job as a consultant on health issues, but her fighting days were not over. In 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union contacted her, and she enthusiastically accepted an invitation to become a plaintiff in a successful lawsuit against gender discrimination in the military. “The Ground Combat Exclusion Policy was a civilian-issued order in the first place,” put into effect to pacify opponents of the Air Force’s decision to lift the ban on “females in combat cockpits.” In response to the lawsuit, which was supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the policy of banning women from ground combat was reversed by the Defense Department in 2013. “The incontrovertible fact was that this current policy banning women from being in combat was not good for the military,” writes Hegar. “The commanders in the field fighting the actual wars had their hands tied by this policy.”

A gripping chronicle by a daring pilot with an indomitable spirit.

Pub Date: March 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-101-98843-5

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Dutton Caliber

Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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INTO THE WILD

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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)

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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