by Mike Dowling with Damien Lewis with Damien Lewis with Damien Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 13, 2011
A unique testimonial from today’s professional, highly specialized military, with a clear extra appeal to animal lovers.
Straightforward telling of an unusual wartime narrative: the reintroduction of the Marines’ Military Working Dog (MWD) teams to frontline combat for the first time since Vietnam.
With the assistance of Lewis (co-author: Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse, 2011, etc.), Dowling, who deployed to Iraq in 2004 with a German shepherd named Rex, notes that he and several others were “guinea pigs…we’re to learn how to take K9 units into the heart of war once again.” Upon arrival at the Marine base in the “Triangle of Death,” the author was dismayed to discover the dangerous, shifting nature of the Iraq war’s early years. Although commanders were initially bemused by the MWD teams, Dowling and Rex soon found themselves on combat patrols, where the author had to rely on the subtleties of Rex’s tracking abilities, but also protect him from gunfire and other hazards. Adding to the tension of the wartime narrative, Dowling breaks with chronology to look back at his working-class youth and the family issues that compelled him to excel in the military. He also examines the intricate training program for the dogs, underscoring the discipline involved in this arcane specialty and the bond between soldier and dog. While there are frequent moments of emotional button-pushing (including many imagined “observations” from Rex), Dowling’s approach offers a clear-headed view of the improvisational nature of combat in Iraq, and the brutal difficulties with which American military personnel contended. Fortunately, battle-hardened Marines quickly nicknamed the dog “Sexy Rexy” and adopted Dowling’s aggressive approach to the hazardous missions.
A unique testimonial from today’s professional, highly specialized military, with a clear extra appeal to animal lovers.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-3596-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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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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