Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly Good
Review: I picked up the Jessica Lynch book on a wim and found the book to be excellent. I had read Rick Bragg's "All Over But The Shoutin" and loved his storytelling skills. He tells the Jessica Lynch story in a very sensitive and honest manner. Again his storytelling skills are remarkable. I am so glad that I read this book so that I was able to see an entirely differnet side of the Lynch story. the real story.
Rating:
Summary: Honest and Interesting
Review: I found "I am A Soldier, Too" as an extremely honest and excellent story that I found hard to put down. Rick Bragg does an excellent job in describing the strength and courage of a young woman that was made into the face of the Iraq War. This world could use more people like that young women in it.
Rating:
Summary: "She is a hero, too"
Review: When I started reading this book, I must admit, I had preconceived ideas. After all the news on TV, I really didn't want to hear anymore about Jessica Lynch. By the time I was at page 10, I didn't want to put the book down. Jessica Lynch never asked to be a hero. She just wanted someone to get her out of a hospital bed where she was unable to move. She wanted someone to come to her and assure her that she hadn't been forgotten. She was imprisoned in her hospital bed and in her own body. She lived everyday wondering if they were keeping her alive just so Saddam could use her on TV. She thought she would never be found. She expected to die from infection, dehydration and starvation. But God sent and angel in an Iraqi doctor who decided she was going to go home. Our American soldiers risked their lives to get Jessica out........one of their own. When Jessica came home, she never expected, or asked for the attention she received. She says she is not a hero. The soldiers who rescued her are her heros. No matter what the news has said, most of it was media hype. Jessica never emptied the magazine of her rifle. She was unconscious the whole time, from the accident, until she woke up in the hospital. Rick Bragg is one of the very best authors of our time. Rick grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Alabama and can relate the story of this young mountain girl like no one else could. He knows of the hollows, the lightening bugs, the deep wooded hills. When Rick Bragg writes you feel like he is sitting at the table with you talking directly to you. No one could have told Jessicas story better!! If I could give this book 10 stars I would!! Rick Bragg deserves it. And, Jessica deserves them on her shoulder!!
Rating:
Summary: Exceeded Expectations
Review: My father sent me this book as a Christmas gift, because I am from West Virginia. I was skeptical -- thinking it would be too much like an after school special. It was an excellent read! It was straight-forward and sincere. I left WV after high school but will always have a connection to the state and the people. When the war started, I found myself surrounded by suburbanites in Dallas, people who liked to "philosophize" about war. War is so complex. I was insulted by their perspectives because they did not have relatives that fought on the front line. My mother-in-law never met her father who died in WWII before she was born. My father, step-father, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, cousins, and many friends and fellow schoolmates have served. My cousin just returned after being blown from the front of a tank in Iraq. He is recovering but may never be able to see out of his eye again. This is a typical story if you are from this part of the country. Jessica's story provides a perspective that is similar to that of many relatives and friends from high school from West Virginia who fought and lost something overseas defending our country. One person's dreams, courage, loss, and hope. I wish her the best. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read about war.
Rating: 
Summary: Lets Be Honest - This Book is Light Weight Stuff
Review: I admire Jessica Lynch for joining the army and going to Iraq. I was in the air force myself and never saw any heavy duty and I wonder how these people have the fortitude to deal with that situation. God bless them. Having said that, this book is essentially a 200 page biography about a 20 years old girl that had one close call in Iraq. It includes some nice photos and yarns about her home town and the folks there. But as a book it is not much for the money. Cannot recommend
Just two stars. My humble opinion. Jack in Toronto
Rating: 
Summary: Rick Bragg does it again~it's him that made this story great
Review: Rick Bragg is more than a Pulitzer Prize winner. He's a man who can take an ordinary story and make it seem extraordinary BECAUSE its ordinary. If you don't believe that, read All Over But the Shoutin' which is his autobiography and the follow-up to that which I believe is called Mamie's Man. This man takes an ordinary circumstance like his own upbringing and tells it with such realistic detail that you can SEE it in your mind's eye even when you can't relate to it. The Lynch story is no exception. She said herself that she's no hero. She isn't and Rick Bragg makes that so very clear and yet inspires you to believe that she REPRESENTS all the heroes because she is an ordinary gal who wound up in an extraordinary journalist's storyline. I hope Jessica is glad that Rick Bragg was chosen to do her story because I believe it represents the way it really was and that seems to be what Jessica wanted. Rick Bragg is the hero here for making her story shine the way she wanted it to; as a reflection of all the heroes who were there with her. Yes, by all means, read this book, but read anything you can get your hands on by Bragg while you're at it because he is truly a great American poet. Yes, I know he doesn't write poetry, but you'll feel like your reading beauty into the everyday life of just living when you have one of his books in your hands! PS - As for Shoshana, I'm sorry to burst the militant political axe-to-grind bubble of the Jesse Jackson wanna-bes, but she was simply second. This has nothing to do with black or white, gray or navy blue for that matter. She just wasn't the first to have this happen to her. Nobody has a clue who the second guy to cross the Atlantic by plane was either. Welcome to the real world.
Rating: 
Summary: You oughtta be in pictures
Review: They might wonder how much their country would appreciate the sacrifices they may be called on to make after seeing differences in the treatment received by Jessica Lynch and Shoshana Johnson after they returned home from their respective ordeals as POW's in Iraq.
The travails of young, white, blond Private Lynch were hyped off the charts by someone (neither the Pentagon nor the media will take credit), to the point where we were told she had been stabbed and had emptied her pistol trying to ward off her attackers. None of this was true. She was injured in a car accident.
On the other hand, Specialist Johnson, an African-American, had actually been shot in both legs by real assailants - a fact relatively few folks were made aware of.
Lynch came home to a parade covered live by all the national cable news networks.
No live-on-TV parade for Johnson.
Lynch, who is single with no children, will be receiving an 80% disability benefit from the military.
Johnson, who has a child, will be getting 30%.
Lynch, who claimed to have amnesia, and couldn't remember much of her ordeal, nevertheless had no trouble finding a publisher willing to give her a $1 million book deal to tell her story. The broadcast networks fell all over themselves to get an exclusive interview; Viacom offered her a program on MTV in exchange for a CBS News exclusive (Viacom owns both networks). NBC is making a TV movie about the rescue.
Johnson, we think, was interviewed by her hometown newspaper
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent and Beautifully Written Story
Review: First, I think Amazon should delete all of the reviews by bitter and politically motivated yahoos who admit they haven't even read the book. This is a book review site, not a political forum. That having been said, I HAVE read the book and thought it was wonderful. It's simply one soldier's story. Jessica Lynch could have been any of our sons or daughters. It's not exactly her fault that's she's petite, cute, blonde or white. Rick Bragg does his usual masterful storytelling here. His simple prose often reads like poetry, yet he never editorializes, but simply allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about the events as they occur. He does an especially lovely job of bringing Wirt County and that particular corner of West Virginia to life. At its core, this book is about the triumph of faith over reason, and one young girl's stoic courage in the face of great adversity. Bragg remains one of my two favorite living writers, along with Anne Lamotte. Jessica, we salute you. You may not claim the title of hero, but that's exactly what you are to myself and many others throughout not only America, but the world.
Rating:
Summary: RE: Shoshana Johnson, remember her?
Review: Not to mention Miss Lynch (bless her red, white and blue heart) got a nice heafty retirement plan, million dollar book deal, T.V spots out of the ying-yang, media coverage like she won the miss world pageant, yada yada yada. MEANWHILE Miss Johnson gets a retirement plan which is just enough to cover groceries each month, rehab for who knows how long. About 30 seconds in the news (after sports and weather), a column in the back of the local paper (after sports, comics and weather), and actually did some fighting. VERDICT Not surprising from a racist, facist, deceptive government and thier media propaganda machine. I wouldn't wipe my a$$ with this book even it there were no toilet tissue left on earth.
Rating:
Summary: Check This Out...
Review: The most serious cross-over between news, entertainment, and advertising may have occurred when the media began a bidding war to get the "exclusive" Jessica Lynch story. The Washington Post first broke the story shortly after Lynch was rescued after nine days in a six-story Iraqi hospital in April 2003. Using unnamed sources, the Post reported that Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk who was driving a water tanker, "fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed [a convoy of the] the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition." The unnamed sources also told the Post that Lynch "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting . . . She was fighting to the death . . . She did not want to be taken alive." The Post also reported that Lynch "was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in on her position." Other media quickly jumped on the story and reported not only was she was shot several times by her Iraqi attackers but was also tortured while in the hospital. A daring Navy SEAL/Army Ranger/Air Force rescue effort, against possible hostile fire, freed her after nine days in the Iraqi hospital. The Post, quickly followed by other media, reported, based upon the words of an Iraqi, that "four guards in civilian clothes stood watch at Lynch's first-floor room armed with Kalashnikov rifles and radios." The rescue came, according to CBS, when special forces "ran through a hail of gunfire." The media gave the story front-page play and top-of-the-news broadcasts for several days. There was only one problem-most of the story, piped to the media by unnamed sources, some in the Defense Department, and never verified by the media-was wrong. Lynch wasn't driving a water tanker but was a passenger in a Humvee; she never fired a shot, nor was she shot; her injuries were caused by being trapped by the overturned Humvee; the convoy wasn't ambushed-it had gotten lost, then was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade from a small group of Iraqi irregulars; she was treated well by Iraqi physicians; she wasn't beaten while held as a prisoner; there was no military opposition to the Americans' rescue operation; the Iraqis even offered to give the Americans a master key to the hospital. Lynch herself later said the military exaggerated what happened in the desert. In an interview on ABC-TV, she said the lies and use of unnamed sources by the media "hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about." Before the war, the American public "were told lie after lie" by the Bush administration, said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Rep. Henry Waxman was more specific: "They lied to promote public relations, from the Jessica Lynch ordeal to the president's campaign landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln-and about what war would cost our country." Lynch was quick to praise others who had died in the crash or who fought; one, a young soldier, would eventually receive the silver star for heroism-and almost no media coverage. But, the blonde-girl-fights-off-soldiers-and-survives-torture made a good story. So good that a CBS News senior vice-president, trying to get exclusive rights, wrote a letter to the Army that blurred the distinction between news and entertainment. In that letter, Betsy West wrote: "Attached you will find the outlines of a proposal that includes ideas from CBS News, CBS Entertainment, MTV networks and Simon & Schuster publishers. From the distinguished reporting of CBS News to the youthful reach of MTV, we believe this is a unique combination of projects that will do justice to Jessica's inspiring story."
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