Though not without its anecdotal pleasures, much of Hurt’s memoir is serenely uneventful.
A retired airman reflects on his decorated and varied career.
Growing up in rural Iowa, Hurt lived the typical life of a boy raised on a farm. He helped his father with daily chores, like planting and harvesting crops and caring for livestock—all before heading to school—and was fortunate enough to have industrious, thrifty parents that got by, if not prospered, during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Like most young boys, and especially boys of his generation, Hurt was fascinated with flying, and he longed to become a pilot. After briefly studying aeronautical engineering at Parks Air College, war broke out, and Hurt decided to immediately enlist. Dissuaded by his father, who had just purchased a significant addition to his farm, Hurt agreed to stay home for the summer to help farm the new land. This proved a crucial decision, as Hurt would suffer a severe ear infection that ultimately required surgery, disqualified him from being an air pilot and, somewhat serendipitously, deferred his draft until the war was already over. Upon his recovery, Hurt began several unsuccessful business ventures and decided in 1948 to enlist, hoping for pilot training in the Air Force. After passing subsequent exams and serving in Korea as a transport pilot, Hurt embarked on a lifelong career in aviation that began successfully in the Air Force, then shifted to commercial flight with the Federal Aviation Administration and United Airlines. With such a long and varied career, Hurt naturally has some harrowing stories of flight to tell, like the time he was almost sucked out of an open cockpit when his parachute malfunctioned, but most of his tales remind readers that even piloting an airplane can be as tedious as any desk job. Hurt’s passion for flying, however, is endearing, and one cannot help admire the fact that to celebrate his 90th birthday, he plans to sky-dive with his wife and sons.
Though not without its anecdotal pleasures, much of Hurt’s memoir is serenely uneventful.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481181242
Page Count: 164
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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