Helpful votes received on reviews:
83% (5 of 6)
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Reviews
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The journalist author chronicles his observations of the cadets and staff at the military academy. He doesn't stick with one class from induction to graduation, opting instead for a sort of scatter-shot approach which allows him a wider view: the ability to check up on graduates after they've moved on to real Army officer status, or to observe the plebes (freshmen) being inducted at any given year, which allows the reader more perspective on the experience. (It's not in the least confusing.) Lipsky writes with the clear, simple style of a reporter, informative and inviting. He really gets into his subjects' heads, conveying all the cadets' and officers' thoughts, fears and dreams about… Read more
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The author is a Harvard-educated NYPD cop, son of an FBI agent, writing his memoirs seven years into his career on the force. Over the course of the book's 560 pages, he begins in Housing (drug busts in the projects), works with Narcotics, gets a feel for the midnight shift, sifts though the awful wreckage of 9/11 on Fresh Kills, and finally becomes a detective. Every so often, he interrupts his own story to tell some other facet of police or New York life, such as that of the real Serpico or the tale of the French Connection, stories of crooked and heroic cops and politicos of the past, the Black Panther cop-murder spree, and so forth. It's a very interesting book, with plenty of very… Read more
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A collection of pieces loosely based on the author's obsession, inspired by his biologist brother's studies, with literally running down a deer, as some say primitive men once did. In between the attempts to corraborate stories of Indian tribes who do this and trying to catch pronghorns in Wyoming, Carrier intersperses essays about his divorce, his attempts to produce radio segments on the road, his adventures in hitchhiking, and stories from global hot spots that he did for Esquire. None of these digressions in unwelcome, especially the latter, which are superb stories of the best and worst in human nature, of death and survival. Whether he's interviewing a Cambodian woman whose… Read more
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