A mostly valuable testimonial of the Pacific campaign’s desperate brutality—will appeal to fans of The Pacific or Band of...
Pulpy yet engrossing account of the vicious combat encountered by U.S. Marines in the Pacific theater of World War II.
Though co-authored by Allen, the main voice is that of Mace, who is unapologetic about his politically incorrect perspective (he often refers to his Japanese foes as “Nips” or in equally unpleasant terms). The intensity of his combat experience has clearly stayed with him all his life; recalling friends he never saw again after certain battles, he notes, “I suppose dying is just another way of saying good-bye.” The author is disarmingly honest, as when the young soldier-protagonist visits a prostitute in order to lose his virginity before shipping out, and particularly in his vivid recollections of an oddly idyllic Depression adolescence in Queens, with no clue of the storm that lay ahead: “Where in the hell is Pearl Harbor? Nobody had the foggiest that 108,504 U.S. servicemen would have to die…to answer that question, to make things right.” Mace describes the war in tactile, often gruesome terms, suggesting that the Pacific campaign was remarkably filthy and grueling, as when he encountered “Japanese corpses [that] have congested this open area with open wounds, glossy red tripe boiling from naked bellies.” The tough-guy prose recalls James Ellroy, but the first-person perspective suggests authenticity with regard to the little-understood experience of the frontline rifleman in the Pacific theater. Young Marines like Mace contended not only with a formidable and little-seen enemy, but also with military bureaucracy, inter-service rivalries, supply problems and an unbearable physical environment. The author mingles increasingly dark humor with terror at the seeming randomness of violent death in war, yet the narrative also dramatizes the diverse humanity of the ordinary Americans who were sucked into the conflict. The book culminates in a poignant scene in which Mace visits the mother of a close friend who died in battle.
A mostly valuable testimonial of the Pacific campaign’s desperate brutality—will appeal to fans of The Pacific or Band of Brothers.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-00505-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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