Golembesky clearly admires the valor of his fellow Marines, but a conviction that the Afghan war has long been a costly,...
Grim account of wearying combat in Afghanistan by a Marine Special Operations unit.
Co-writing with prolific military writer Bruning (Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan, 2012, etc.), Golembesky presents himself as an unlikely Marine, a spiritual bohemian type who joined following 9/11. After multiple tours in Iraq, he still wanted to serve in Afghanistan. His specialty was also unusual: as a Joint Terminal Attack Controller, he was “authorized to control aviation ordnance,” utilizing GPS and other technologies to direct devastating airstrikes. Despite the Marines’ superior firepower and training, they appeared alienated from their mission due to restrictive rules of engagement, callous military bureaucracy and their sense that the brutal culture of Afghanistan could not be changed. The narrative focuses first on a rescue mission in which the Marines witnessed a horrific friendly fire incident involving American air power. Later, they deployed for an extended combat tour on a remote mountain spine, meant to divide a Taliban-heavy region in half yet compromised by a clique of powerful local Afghans who played both sides. As the battle unfolded, Golembesky noted that his comrades had “grown bitter and had given up on our role in Afghanistan….the way we were fighting bordered on the ridiculous.” The author writes perceptively about the complex social environment of Afghanistan, as when the Marines realized they were fighting in old Russian trenches against enemies whom the U.S. once armed. Similarly, they understood that most civilians would collaborate with vicious Taliban cells simply to survive: “[T]he margin between working with the locals and inadvertently providing intel to the enemy seemed razor-thin.” The depictions of combat are precise regarding weapons and tactics but also jargon-heavy, giving the action a video game feel.
Golembesky clearly admires the valor of his fellow Marines, but a conviction that the Afghan war has long been a costly, corrupted quagmire pervades this military memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-03040-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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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