A blunt, spare autobiography from a past president of the American Fighter Aces Association. Carl neither minces nor wastes words in recalling a distinguished career as a US Marine Corps aviator, which began immediately after his 1938 graduation from Oregon State and ended 35 years later when he retired with the rank of major general. Having earned his wings in 1939, the author (now 78) was an early- bird arrival in WW II's Pacific theater. Flying F4F Wildcats in the unfriendly skies above Midway and Guadalcanal, he downed 16 Japanese planes. Sent stateside to be showcased as the USMC's first ace, Carl wooed and won his wife (then a Powers model). He survived a second tour in the Solomons, adding two more kills to his victory total, and ended the war as a test pilot. Adapting easily to the jet age, the author set a variety of altitude and speed records that (though long since broken) attest to his willingness to push the envelope, i.e., take experimental aircraft (and, it would seem, his own convictions) to, even beyond, their theoretical limits. He led photoreconnaissance flights over Red China in the mid-1950s and logged more than 100 missions in Vietnam. In the course of his lengthy service, Carl met and took the measure of many notables. While he remembers Joe Foss, Melvin Laird, Charles Lindbergh, and a host of lesser lights with fondness, the author has precious little use for Greg (Pappy) Boyington (of Black Sheep Squadron fame), Jacqueline Cochrane, LBJ, Ted Kennedy, Robert McNamara, and John Wayne. In a series of parting shots, moreover, he offers considered, if politically incorrect, pronouncements on gun control, the handling of the Tailhook sex scandal, women in combat, and other touchy issues. The dead-honest memoir of an accomplished military professional. The forthright text has 13 contemporary photos.
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55750-116-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
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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