An account of a genuinely inspiring deed written as a breathless docudrama.
The story of a mission over North Korea in 1950 when, in an almost suicidally brave gesture, a Navy pilot tried to pull his friend from burning wreckage.
Given the subjects—pilots Tom Hudner, white, and Jesse Brown, black—many authors would be tempted to write an inspiring story of racial tolerance, the brotherhood of warriors, and patriotic sacrifice. Journalist Makos (co-author: A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II, 2012) yields to that temptation, resulting in worshipful biographies of two men who overcame adversity to achieve their dreams as Navy pilots, bonded despite vastly different backgrounds, and risked their lives for freedom. The book, writes the author, is “an inspirational story of an unlikely friendship. It’s the tale of a white pilot from the country clubs of New England and a black pilot from a southern sharecropper’s shack forming a deep friendship in an era of racial hatred.” Brown died in his plane, and the author’s interviews with those who knew him turn up only good things. He endured humiliating racial persecution but excelled at school, worked his way through college, enlisted in the Navy, and became the first black carrier pilot. Raised in a prosperous Massachusetts family, Hudner had an easier time achieving his dream, but Makos’ portrait of him is equally admiring. Their final flight took place to support Marines trapped around the frozen Chosin Reservoir, and Makos detours regularly for shorter biographies of several who fought and suffered on the ground. For more than half the book, the author describes peacetime service of a naval band of brothers: training, camaraderie, horseplay, etc. There follows the stories of two months of ground-attack missions culminating in the action that won Hudner the Medal of Honor.
An account of a genuinely inspiring deed written as a breathless docudrama.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8041-7658-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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.
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
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
