- Hardcover: 248 pages
- Publisher: Crown (May 26 1990)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0517576902
- ISBN-13: 978-0517576908
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
As a new Marine second lieutenant, Brady, one-time publisher of Women's Wear Daily , joined Dog Company on the front line in Korea on Thanksgiving Day 1951 and departed the following Fourth of July with his hide intact. During that time he learned how to lead an infantry platoon in combat and later served as executive and intelligence officer of the company. The action sequences--patrols, ambushes, prisoner-snatching raids--are vivid and memorable, conveying the unique flavor of the second year of the "peculiar war." Giving the memoir distinction, however, are the author's comments on those he served with, the prickly relations between Marine officers and enlisted men, and the differences between Marine and Army troops. Brady's ingenuous account of how he learned to lead men in combat while he was scared to death is appealing. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
YA-- A compelling account of Brady's year as a Marine lieutenant in the Korean War. This fascinating book packs twice the whallop for being both an informative and judicious look at America's "forgotten war" as well as a page-turner. That more Americans were killed (54,000) in this stand-off than in Vietnam is a fact few young people are aware of, and in these times of increased interest in reassessing our rationale and methods in Vietnam, the Korean war holds a remarkable series of parallels that will leave readers wondering how we could have repeated so many mistakes. Brady has an engaging style, placing poignant memories of lighting up in the trenches with his buddies alongside suspensefully drawn incidents of two-bit and grand-scale skirmishes in which those same buddies are carried off the field on stretchers. An insightful look at the changes that even a so-called liberal young man goes through in the peculiar human and male rituals of war adds to an already rich and satisfying book. --Catherine vanSonnenberg, San Diego Public Library
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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First Sentence
The Korean War, which President Truman called a police action and Averell Harriman "a sour little war," and which today is largely forgotten, began forty years ago, on the morning of Sunday, June 25, 1950, when 90,000 North Korean troops pushed across the 38th Parallel and came south. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The Korean War, which President Truman called a police action and Averell Harriman "a sour little war," and which today is largely forgotten, began forty years ago, on the morning of Sunday, June 25, 1950, when 90,000 North Korean troops pushed across the 38th Parallel and came south. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
90 day wonders with life and death decisions,
By
This review is from: The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea (Paperback)
James Brady's vignette, haunting, poignant, reflective, should take its place along side of William Manchester and John Keegan. The story he tells is not how it should have been, it's not even how he would have liked it to have been. It's like it was. Brady is like any other 19 year old, brash, filled with adventure, drunk on promise and the illusion of immortality. Then he signs up with the Marine Reserves if not avoid, then to postpone his own appointment with destiny. Unfortunately, destiny has a mind of its own, and a few years later he finds himself the Platoon Commander of a Marine Rifle platoon on Hill 749, in the winter of 1951, in Korea.Brady doesn't judge. I like that most about his reflections on a horrible war in a freezing place. If you want to hang Truman, MacArthur, Eisenhower, and John Foster Dulles, this is probably the wrong book for you. It is brilliant but it tells only the story of one man-boy's experience placed in charge of 40 men in combat. To some extent we look down on those boys. We judge them, forgetting that like us, they too were caught in the flotsam of other people's decisions. Although with most of us, the whole world doesn't subsequently judge us. War's change, the technology of killing becomes more sophisticated, sides change, enemies become friends, and bad guys become good guys. Frequenly we forget that it's the young men who take the fire. The greatest homily to Brady and the only self serving remark he makes would be truly understood by a few. When he leaves the fields where 54,000 died, he says, "I hadn't lost any men . . " Brady reminds us that young men are faced with terrible decisions when politicians, frequently never in harm's way, put them into unexplained and perhaps unnecessary combat. We should not judge those boys. And we should not judge them after they become men. 5 stars. A sobering read.To Jim Brady, if no one told you, welcome home.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dissapointed with this book,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea (Paperback)
I really felt this book gave too much detail. I found the authors writing style to be too dull.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea (Paperback)
This book provides a very written account of a young man's experience with the Korean War. It starts with his introduction at a green infantry officer to departing as an intelligence officer. The excellent narrative describes what it was like to serve in different parts of Korea in different seasons.
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