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THE HOUSE OF PURPLE HEARTS

STORIES OF VIETNAM VETS WHO FIND THEIR WAY BACK

This putative examination of a homeless shelter for Vietnam veterans in Boston is actually an overheated, patronizing, stereotype-strewn portrayal of the ``plight of Vietnam veterans.'' In his first book, journalist Solotaroff examines the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans by looking at its founder, Ken Smith, and five severely disturbed clients. These include a suicidal, alcoholic ex-Marine who is tormented by what he did in Vietnam and is now fighting for the custody of his daughter; and an embittered, war-obsessed, former Army tank commander who ``loved his tour in Vietnam'' so much that he built a military-style bunker in his basement and stayed up nights in his backyard listening for the Viet Cong. Although the unique shelter's story deserves to be told, Solotaroff is the wrong chronicler. In an attempt to pay tribute to Vietnam veterans—for whom he once had ``contempt''—the author does them a great disservice by making wild generalizations based on interviews he conducted with several dozen emotionally scarred men. He claims that ``almost a million soldiers'' came back from Vietnam ``with the disastrous psychic affliction called post- traumatic stress disorder'' but neglects to mention that fewer than half that number still suffer from the disorder. In Solotaroff's world, virtually every Vietnam veteran is a hateful, wife-beating, drug- or alcohol-addicted menace to society. He describes them as ``haunted, death-hardened men, many of them carrying rapes and murders on their rap sheets'' and ``monsters of random cruelty, ruled by the edict of their hair-trigger moods.'' Such men exist, but so, too, do two-and-a-half million Vietnam veterans (of the nation's 2.8 million) living ordinary lives whose biggest problems include thinning hairlines and bulging bellies. Horror stories that reinforce the Hollywood- and mass-media- created image of the screwed-up Vietnam veteran. (Author tour)

Pub Date: May 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-06-017076-X

Page Count: 224

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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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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