Military buffs will give this high marks; general readers may find it hard to relate to the author’s relentlessly macho...
Memoirs from members of Special Forces tend to mix combat fireworks with a leavening of modesty, but O’Neal, writing with veteran co-author Fisher (with Tom Coughlin: Earn the Right to Win, 2013, etc.), dispenses with the modesty at no great cost.
True to the traditions of the genre, the author passed a miserable childhood. At 15, he stole his cousin’s birth certificate and enlisted in the Army. Sent to Vietnam in 1967, he found his calling and fought enthusiastically until his deception came to light. Discharged, he re-enlisted under his real name, repeated his training, returned to Vietnam and soon joined the elite Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol units. After two years of grueling patrols and battles, he returned to the United States and Ranger School in 1971. With the war winding down, O’Neal served on elite parachuting teams and taught hand-to-hand combat before joining America’s first anti-terror unit. Yearning for action, he left the Army to train troops for Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, who was fighting Sandinista guerrillas. This produced action but ended disastrously in the death of O’Neal’s family, with O’Neal himself barely surviving capture and torture. In 1981, he returned to the Army to help organize its Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School. After retiring, he continued to train Special Forces in his aggressive techniques. His personal life was less happy. He undoubtedly suffered a chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and often abused drugs both for PTSD and the pain of his many injuries.
Military buffs will give this high marks; general readers may find it hard to relate to the author’s relentlessly macho ethos, but they will find it hard not to admire his fierce dedication.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-00432-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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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