Rating: 
Summary: decent memoir, bad history book.
Review: I started to read this book and at first, found it interesting. THen gradually, I became aggravated because this is really NOT a history book, but a memoir. If you are looking for information about the war and the man who dropped it, a sample of it is in the book, nothing more. I couldn't finish it.
Rating: 
Summary: Very touching
Review: I was very touched by Bob Greene's book "Duty: A Father, His Son and the Man Who Won the War." Greene writes with an amazing eloquence and is able to maintain a smooth balance among his reflections of his father, his conversations with General Paul Tibbets and his own thoughts about war, family and life. As a result, he produces what I consider to be one of the best insights into the "Greatest Generation." He examines what motivated them to win the war by looking at their childhoods, their backgrounds and the values they were taught. He shows how both his father, Tibbets and many other servicemen were able to rely on their values to achieve victory against Germany and Japan. For instance, Tibbets was able to organize a bomber squadron that consisted of 1,800 men in order to complete his mission in delivering the atomic bomb to Hiroshima. He was able organize this group with incredible efficiency and secrecy. Could many 29 year-olds do that today? In the end, these men were honorable individuals who followed orders, did the best they could and did it right. I thank Bob Greene for saluting his father, Tibbets and all other World War Two veterans with this fine book. I read it in one day . . . I just couldn't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: About Our Dads
Review: I was very touched by Bob Greene's book "Duty: A Father, His Son and the Man Who Won the War." Greene writes with an amazing eloquence and is able to maintain a smooth balance among his reflections of his father, his conversations with General Paul Tibbets and his own thoughts about war, family and life. As a result, he produces what I consider to be one of the best insights into the "Greatest Generation." He examines what motivated them to win the war by looking at their childhoods, their backgrounds and the values they were taught. He shows how both his father, Tibbets and many other servicemen were able to rely on their values to achieve victory against Germany and Japan. For instance, Tibbets was able to organize a bomber squadron that consisted of 1,800 men in order to complete his mission in delivering the atomic bomb to Hiroshima. He was able organize this group with incredible efficiency and secrecy. Could many 29 year-olds do that today? In the end, these men were honorable individuals who followed orders, did the best they could and did it right. I thank Bob Greene for saluting his father, Tibbets and all other World War Two veterans with this fine book. I read it in one day . . . I just couldn't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Very touching
Review: I was very touched by Bob Greene's book "Duty: A Father, His Son and the Man Who Won the War." Greene writes with an amazing eloquence and is able to maintain a smooth balance among his reflections of his father, his conversations with General Paul Tibbets and his own thoughts about war, family and life. As a result, he produces what I consider to be one of the best insights into the "Greatest Generation." He examines what motivated them to win the war by looking at their childhoods, their backgrounds and the values they were taught. He shows how both his father, Tibbets and many other servicemen were able to rely on their values to achieve victory against Germany and Japan. For instance, Tibbets was able to organize a bomber squadron that consisted of 1,800 men in order to complete his mission in delivering the atomic bomb to Hiroshima. He was able organize this group with incredible efficiency and secrecy. Could many 29 year-olds do that today? In the end, these men were honorable individuals who followed orders, did the best they could and did it right. I thank Bob Greene for saluting his father, Tibbets and all other World War Two veterans with this fine book. I read it in one day . . . I just couldn't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: A unique, insightful perspective
Review: I've always loved WWII history, especially how it affected the common GI. Bob Greene had always hoped to meet "the man who won the war",Gen. Paul Tibbetts, the man who piloted the Enola Gay on the fateful flight that would ultimately end the war. The retired general happened to live in the same town as Bob Greene's father, living a life of relative anonymity. In fact Bob Greene had tried previously to interview him with no luck. But as his own father is dying Gen. Tibbetts suddenly agrees to see him. What Bob Greene discovers about the man who dropped the atomic bomb is how much in common he has with his own father. This is basically the story of two soldiers, one who by a single act in history, the dropping of the atomic bomb, gained fame (or notoriety as some would see it) and how that act affected his life at that time and ever after. And it is the story of Bob Greene's father, an ordinary GI who achieved the rank of major in the wartime Army, but after the war ended put away all traces of his service, never talked about his army experiences, never joined any service-oriented organization and went back to the civilian world after the war and continued his life as if it had never been interrupted. He married, raised a family and worked hard. In other words, both men did their "duty" in and after they left the service. It's a touching tribute to a father by his son and brings a down-to-earth perspective to the decision about the Enola Gay mission, without simplifying it in the least. After reading this book I can see why these men are called "the greatest generation" and how the sacrifices they made are too often taken for granted.
Rating:
Summary: About Our Dads
Review: If you're father was in the service for WWII or if you've lost him, this book will hit the spot. Bob Greene's writing will show you how your Dad's generation thought about things and why they never wrote books about it, signed movie contracts for "their story" or ever complained about it.If you've lost your Dad and he wasn't a WWII vet,you'll still understand him better---his motivation and family dedication. The books will make you cry in several spots---not for the story but for yolur own Dad.
Rating:
Summary: Duty is Provocative!
Review: In this memoir of three lives connected by history, proximity & family ties are the many stories, often intimate & achingly personal as well as deeply historic of one warrior's memories of a mission that changed the world & a son's final attempt to grasp his father's sense of honor & duty. A haunting tribute to ordinary heroes in an extraordinary time asked to perform their duty in saving the world from evil. Bob Greene has woven together an absorbing book of discovery of things momentous & minute about the timbre of duty from a bygone era: his father's army trunk containing the debris of those young & distant years; the 50 years his parents had attended the Saturday football games at Ohio Stadium & traveling with Paul Tibbets,who Bob's father & his generation call the man who saved the world, to Branson, Missouri for the last Hurrah of the Enola Gay crew & another son's gratitude.
Rating:
Summary: A hero doing his duty: an insight, perhaps, into your Dad
Review: It takes a lot to stay focused on a mission as complex as the one that faced Paul Tibbets. The historical FACT is that most strategists at that time - and most fair-thinking historians today - estimate that the US alone would have lost more than 500,000 lives, and the Japanese manyfold that number should the requisite invasion of the home islands ocurred. Tibbets mission in putting the bomb on the target precluded that horrific requirement, thereby saving untold lives. More important though, this book is also a device for the author to understand his father's own, unheralded heroism, and to understand his fathers generation. If you are a baby-boomer who only vaguely recalls your Dad's WWII service, read this book and get an insight into him and his generation.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book on the man behind the dropping of the bomb.
Review: Mr Greene has written about two men that are very dear to him, his father and General Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay. Both men are true heroes and served this country well. Mr. Greene deftly mixes information gathered in numerous interviews with General Tibbets, with information about Bob's own father who served in WWII. The book brings to light fascinating facts about the pilot and crew that came together in the famed B-29, The Enola Gay, and dropped the first atomic bomb. The personal interviews of the crew that were conducted recently in Branson help to explain what the crew felt at the time and how they feel over 50 years later. In an era when many people try to ignore the past or rewrite history, this look at one of the most significant events of this past century should be required reading.
Rating:
Summary: For any son or daughter of a father who had been to war
Review: My father fought in the Pacific in World War II. As I read this book I suddenly began to understand a lot of my father's personality. I felt like my father was talking to me as Bob Greene's father talked to him. It was like reading two books in one as it told the story of Paul Tibbets, the man who ended the war. I realized how fortunate we were to have men like him to guide us through the terrible ordeal of world war. The book is outstanding in its prose and its structure. It delivers the goods.
|
