First-person war stories served up by a participant in some of the most dangerous actions of the modern era.
A memoir by a Special Forces soldier whose career spans the period from the Iranian hostage crisis of the early 1980s to the post–9/11 Afghan campaigns.
Born in Iran, Lahidji grew up as a Muslim, though during his youth, the country was more modern and Western-oriented than in later years. After school, he moved to the U.S., where a relative owned a gas station, though he had to fulfill his military service before being allowed to leave Iran. In the U.S., deciding he wasn’t cut out for a business career, he reported to a recruiting office and asked to join the Green Berets. That was the start of a remarkable career, and his familiarity with the languages and culture of much of the Muslim world became prime assets. With the assistance of Pezzullo (co-author: Left of Boom: How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, 2016, etc.), Lahidji spins yarns of being stranded in Tehran after the Carter administration’s attempt to rescue the hostages failed; getting a distant look at Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan; fighting his way out of Mogadishu during the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident; and surviving a helicopter crash when it was shot down in Afghanistan. Throughout, the author offers plenty of energetically told stories of some very hot spots, and he tells them with the uninhibited style of a frontline soldier. There’s not a great deal of depth or fresh insight, but this is the story of a soldier, not a diplomat or historian. Anyone who enjoys an unvarnished, ground-level view of America’s military doing its job will find plenty of what they’re looking for here.
First-person war stories served up by a participant in some of the most dangerous actions of the modern era.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-12115-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2018
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
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