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
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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