Rating: 
Summary: Humility and Heroism
Review: Lomax is a common man has survived and overcome the most brutal of human sufferings. He shows that in all of us is the capacity for greatness. His language is to the point with a tone of a man that is reluctantly telling his story more for our own need to understand the POW experience than for any personal aggrandizement. As others have commented, there is a real gutcheck here. It is a true emotional rollercoaster and worth it.
Rating:
Summary: The poles of the soul
Review: This book explores the depths and the hights of human nature.In relating his incarceration and torture during WW2, Lomax shows just how bad people can be to each other. But when the book moves to the meeting and then reconciliation between torturer and prisoner, and Lomax reveals how the pent-up hatred was hurting both of them, we are taken to the other extreme of the human spirit, to a compassionate and healing place. Have a hankerchief handy for the book's climax - I promise you you'll need one.
Rating:
Summary: bravissimo for mr lomax
Review: We should be grateful for writers such as Lomax, and for books such as this. Remembering, with careful, understated accuracy, his experiences as a prisoner of war in Kanchanaburi during the infamous construction of the Burma Railway, also known as the "Death Railway", it is an honest and beautifully rendered document of tremendous suffering, tremendous pain and the transcending, liberating power of forgiveness. It reminds us of a time so recent, yet which seems to long ago, and which can so easily be revisited upon us. It is not a document of Japan-bashing or of bitterness or recrimination. It reminds that we are all capable of reat evil, and all capable of surviving great evil. It reminds us of the contradictory yet parallel strains of goodness and darkness that make us human. I feel like a btter person for having read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Parallel tracks
Review: We should be grateful for writers such as Lomax, and for books such as this. Remembering, with careful, understated accuracy, his experiences as a prisoner of war in Kanchanaburi during the infamous construction of the Burma Railway, also known as the "Death Railway", it is an honest and beautifully rendered document of tremendous suffering, tremendous pain and the transcending, liberating power of forgiveness. It reminds us of a time so recent, yet which seems to long ago, and which can so easily be revisited upon us. It is not a document of Japan-bashing or of bitterness or recrimination. It reminds that we are all capable of reat evil, and all capable of surviving great evil. It reminds us of the contradictory yet parallel strains of goodness and darkness that make us human. I feel like a btter person for having read this book.
Rating:
Summary: "The Railway Man" is not to be missed!!!
Review: You may think you've read enough harrowing accounts of someone's life as a prisoner of war, but what sets this memoir apart is the resolution of the author's searing memories of one Japanese tormentor in particular, and his life-changing efforts to find and reconnect with that man when both are in their 60s and beyond. Its an incredibly compelling and moving tale, from beginning to end, and beautifully written.
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