An earnest tribute to unsung heroes.
Memorable account of the Iraq war as experienced by an Army captain and her husband, a helicopter pilot with the 101st Airborne Division.
Kate and Mike Blaise were deployed to Iraq in March 2003. She managed transportation for the 1st Brigade’s 327th “Bastogne” Infantry, which was attacked from within even before entering Iraq when a sergeant who had converted to Islam years earlier lobbed grenades into several tents, hoping to kill as many Americans as possible before they could “rape and murder innocent Muslims.” While Kate’s battalion set up camp at Qayyarah West (immediately dubbed “Q-West”), an abandoned Iraqi airbase that had been bombed by coalition forces, Mike and fellow Air Cavalry pilots provided much needed aerial support to the ground troops. The author’s straightforward prose gives readers an inside look at the difficult conditions in Iraq: wearing heavy gear in 130-degree heat; enduring fierce sandstorms that make breathing all but impossible; worrying about the possibility of biological attack. Life at Q-West was made bearable by the hard work of soldiers and civilians. A makeshift golf course sprang up amid charred debris, making the official list of the PGA; Kate started a newsletter, The Sandy Club Gazette, which boasted a popular French-bashing section; and Iraqi locals opened American-style pizza parlors. Tragically, Mike’s helicopter went down just days before he completed his tour of duty; Kate escorted his body home to Missouri and tried to adjust to her most difficult role yet—widow. Extensive information about the couple’s teenage years and initial Army service round out this story.
An earnest tribute to unsung heroes.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-592-40177-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2005
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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