An evenhanded, tasteful, just-the-facts time capsule of one American soldier’s Vietnam experience.
First-time author Burchik recounts his 1968-1969 tour of duty during the Vietnam War—service he documented exhaustively with his photography talents.
Many Vietnam War books, particularly memoirs, can be bitterly agenda-driven, determined to take an edgy political position while offering emotional catharsis of the Born on the Fourth of July (1976) kind. Veteran-turned-author Burchik’s plainly told ’Nam flashback is a breath of fresh air (as opposed to “the smell of Napalm in the morning”). Only in the epilogue do readers get an understanding of how this narrative came to be: Burchik, an avid photographer, made thousands of images on black-and-white and color film during his 12-month tour of duty, material he only recently finessed into slide-show presentations. The book’s easy-flowing, natural structure came out of his penning detailed, chronological captions for what his impassive lens captured, complemented by the regular letters he wrote home to his future wife. The book, though illustrated with Burchik’s snaps, is not a picture album but rather a solid record of the New Yorker’s volunteering for the military (growing up in a milieu of Catholic Eastern European refugees, he was strictly anti-Communist) and arriving in Vietnam in the summer of 1968 to find U.S. forces embroiled in a frustrating war of attrition. No ground was gained as Viet Cong and Americans nibbled away at each other in furtive ambushes and mortar attacks. The corruption of South Vietnamese forces led to regular looting of the villages they were supposed to be protecting, turning the countryside’s sympathies to the enemy. Meanwhile, the American public’s support was flagging (the author welcomed Nixon’s election, feeling that Tricky Dick had a plan). Burchik writes warmly of the Vietnamese people although sparingly about their history that led to this war. The most action Burchik saw seems to have come in the early months of 1969, as a VC-inflicted injury on the platoon leader got the author promoted to acting sergeant; his biggest kill was dropping an angry water buffalo. Although complimented by a superior and offered, in desultory fashion, a chance to “re-up” and become a career officer, Burchik was glad to get out of Vietnam on schedule, feeling as though it was only through luck that his 12 months in country ended without injury. Some readers may wish for the Sturm und Drang that other war memoirs have made of death and battle, while others might appreciate the unfiltered, reasoned point of view of a humble foot soldier in an unpopular conflict.
An evenhanded, tasteful, just-the-facts time capsule of one American soldier’s Vietnam experience.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692276297
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Sharlin-K Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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