A rousing tale, full of sharp details and told in the harsh language of soldiers baptized in fire. (8 pp. photos)
The gripping combat memoir of a highly decorated American helicopter pilot’s Vietnam service.
Accounts of the Vietnam War often relegate the stories of US soldiers to the periphery and concentrate instead on political discourse. This may be understandable in light of the ambivalence with which most Americans viewed the conflict, but it has resulted in a somewhat sterile and Olympian history of the events. Alexander, a helicopter pilot repeatedly decorated for valor in Vietnam, desanitizes discussion about the war by sharing his candid memories of the jungle-carpeted battlefield. He begins with his Army enlistment (right out of high school) in 1963 and describes the climb through the ranks that culminated in his commissioning as an officer. Once he was promoted to lieutenant, Alexander pulled strings to get selected for flight school, hoping to bide his time until the war in Vietnam burned itself out. Just as American commitment to the region peaked, however, he completed his training and left his wife and two young daughters for the jungles of Southeast Asia. In this hostile environment he led a charmed life, repeatedly executing the most difficult aerial maneuvers under intense enemy fire yet never having a single bullet strike his aircraft. This combination of bravery, skill, and luck earned him respect from his airborne colleagues and from the infantry soldiers he supported. Freelance writer Sasser, himself a Vietnam combat veteran, does a credible job of helping Alexander find his narrative voice and adds a touch of journalistic authenticity to this honest and exciting memoir.
A rousing tale, full of sharp details and told in the harsh language of soldiers baptized in fire. (8 pp. photos)Pub Date: July 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26984-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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
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
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