Authentic narratives of the men and women of the armed forces who have sacrificed for their country.
True stories of the men and women who put their lives in danger to defend the United States from terrorists.
Combat-decorated former Marine North (Heroes Proved, 2013, etc.) and former Marine and FBI agent Hamer take readers on a tension-filled ride from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Vietnam to the living rooms of the American men and women who serve and protect their fellow Americans. "This book is about celebration, not devastation,” writes North. “It's about men and women and even children who triumphed over their individual tragedies." What the authors reveal are the personal stories told by the enlisted and their spouses and families as they prepare to leave on long deployments as well as what happens upon their return. Trained to sweep for IEDs, the soldiers conduct some of the most dangerous work in Afghanistan, where any disturbed dirt might hide an IED. Living in sweltering heat and eating dried rations, each day on patrol is taut, and each story places readers on edge as the tension builds toward the inevitable, that one step that changes everything. The men and women venture out "whole" only to return missing one or more limbs or, in some cases, not to return at all. Often newly married or with a baby on the way, these warriors are suddenly confronted with new challenges as they face painful surgeries and amputations, months of hospital stays and rehabilitation, and the process of learning to live with multiple handicaps. Despite all this, they often agree to do it again. Supplemented by color photographs, the stories are straightforward, honest testimonials to the courage American troops display on and off the battlefield.
Authentic narratives of the men and women of the armed forces who have sacrificed for their country.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1432-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
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
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