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BLACK OFFICER, WHITE NAVY

Name: BLACK OFFICER, WHITE NAVY
Author: Reuben Keith Green
ISBN: 978-1-975747-54-1

by Reuben Keith Green ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 2017

A frank and detailed memoir of service in the face of discrimination.

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An officer recounts the obstacles he faced as a minority in the Navy in this debut memoir.

A black high school dropout who joined the Navy in 1975, Green retired two decades later as a decorated surface-warfare officer. There weren’t many black naval officers at the time, and Green is the first to tell readers that his was not a smooth ascendancy. The author uses his own story as a window into the institutional discrimination that he asserts has always characterized the Navy. While conditions have improved a bit since Green’s day, sailors who are female, LGBT, or from minority backgrounds continue to fight uphill battles to earn places in ships’ wardrooms, according to the author. Weaving between history and personal experience, Green’s narrative begins with Chief of Naval Operations Elmo Zumwalt’s efforts to reduce racism and sexism in the Navy and ends with Green going head-to-head with a discriminatory commanding officer in the 1990s. Along the way, he butted heads with all manner of obstacles and characters, discovered his aptitude for engineering, excelled in a system that viewed him with hostility, contended with ship explosions and helicopter crashes, and helped bend the arc of history a little closer to justice. “Unlike most sea stories,” writes Green, “this one is largely verifiable, has a mostly happy ending, and, as most old sailors would say (but not quite this way), every word of it is true.” Green has a natural raconteur’s ability, telling his story with candor and humor: “I have been in several David versus Goliath battles, created a few tipping points, and have often had the dog’s perspective, having been occasionally treated like one. Sometimes I wonder if” Malcolm Gladwell “might have been secretly following me around.” Much of the book’s drama takes place in the world of naval bureaucracy and protocols, so it does not always make for the easiest or most exciting reading. That said, Green’s account skillfully confronts the racism he faced head-on and makes no apologies for the status quo. His eloquent warnings for what he sees as America’s current crisis in leadership underscore the fact that, for the Navy, plenty of troubled water still lies ahead.

A frank and detailed memoir of service in the face of discrimination.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-975747-54-1

Page Count: 348

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)