Rating: 
Summary: Jarhead: An appropriate title from a nonMarine definition
Review: I purchased this book after recently finishing "Keeping Faith", a story of a young man from a liberal family going through boot camp. I read some reviews and thought I was about to read a humorous book of the story behind the real "hurry up and wait" war. I was very disappointed.I don't care to debate the reviews that range from very poor to great of this book. Clearly, most have an agenda of being proud of the Marines or very liberal in their viewpoints. I just wanted to be entertained or learn something. But I quickly realized I was not be entertained. None of the stories were humorous as said by reviewers. This was an immature young 18 year old entering the Marines. Possibly the biggest disappointment is that very little of the book was about the Gulf War. 80% of the book is about basic Marine life stateside. Let me summarize: Follow orders as little as possible, argue and drink with other Marines, brag about female conquests. Sorry, that's not enough to be entertaining. After deployment to Saudi Arabia, at least there was some movement to discuss and his assignment as a sniper presented some knowledge of his importance. Eventually, he sees the enemy and some minor action but mainly he is seeing dead bodies. How these Marines react to these bodies may be interesting to some but not me. People died. War is hell. In summary, I can't recommend this book. It's not humorous and clearly not patriotic. If you dislike the military, there is still not enough meat for it to be entertaining to you. I recommend you take a pass on this one.
Rating: 
Summary: A soul-searching military autobiography
Review: Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle Of The Gulf War And Other Battles is the personal memoir of Anthony Swofford, a frontline infantry marine's who fought with the American forces in the Gulf War. Memories of an abusive boot camp, reflections on life at home, and the confrontation with the very real threat of death that is endemic to war itself fill the pages of this exceptionally well written and soul-searching military autobiography.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure trash
Review: If you were to remove the ...., words from this fairy tale account of life in the Marine Corps there would not be a story line. I am a former Marine, 1948-1952, and the picture that Swofford paints of life in MY Corps would have resulted in General Court Martial for all involved in the type of conduct he describes. I am offended by this persons attack on my beloved Corps. You, Swofford, are a disgrace to the Corps and should never, never, be referred to as a Marine. Oh, by the way Swofford, I am a Korean War veteran serving with the 1st Marine Division in Korea from September 1950 until November 1951. I was at the invasion of Inchon, the recapture of Seoul, the Chosin Reservoir campaign and other battles. Six battle stars, 3 Presidential Unit Citations, 2 Korean Presidential Unit Citations, Combat Action ribbon, USMC Commendation medal with "V" for the Chosin campaign. You want to compare notes on war dead, and combat? I helped bury my friends, and comrades at Koto-ri during the Chosin battle. If there was a lower rating for this book I would give it. You have dishonored thousands of Marines that made the ultimate sacrifice. Shame on you!
Rating:
Summary: edges of humanity
Review: Anthony Swofford is reporting from the edges of humanity where barbarism awaits; boys being trained as killers. And he lets us know that there is still hope because even a trained killer can think, feel and understands whereas the warlords in civilian outfits and government offices continue nourishing their interests with corpses of young boys and girls... As a college professor, I am going to adopt this book as part of my modern World Civilizations course.
Rating:
Summary: Plaintive drone
Review: As an author who is currently writing the biographical memoirs of his uncle who was a Marine(machine-gunner) and served in the battles of the Marshall Islands,Saipan,Tinian and Iwo Jima-I can not recognize the Marine Corps of which this author speaks. For the last year and a half I have interviewed my uncle and many of the Marines who served with him on the front lines of these brutal battles and not one of them has anything to say that remotely resembles Swofford's assertions.Most of these battles lost more men in five minutes than was lost in both Gulf Wars combined.Yet I have not heard the cynicism or bitterness from these heroes which seems to consume Swofford. The book entirely misses the essence of what I have come learn is the essence of a Marine. Swoffard certainly has no esprit. This book is a story less of the author's Marine Corps experience and more of his own demons and shortcomings.
Rating:
Summary: Real Patriots Don't Sugercoat
Review: Anthony Swofford's Jarhead couldn't be timelier. It provides a sobering perspective of Marine Corps life that flies in the face of the current neo-PC movement that lambastes anyone who dares to not brownnose our military or executive branch. The book is an honest account of one man's struggle to reconcile his sense of duty with his awareness that he is an expendable pawn in a game of dubious moral validity. The author's intelligence makes it impossible for him to blindly accept his role and mission without question. Nevertheless, military discipline and honor prevail and Swofford is able to keep his demons at bay while giving us a dramatic look into the alcohol fueled testosterone fest that is the life of a young marine. The fact that Swofford and his mates manage to take care of business in spite of their own opinions and emotional baggage (and the author's got a few steamer trunks worth) is a testament to their own character and the solid training and professionalism of the USMC. Swofford and his buddies are a sordid lot but this makes the book all the more compelling. It's nice to read about soldiers that have foibles just like the rest of us. The overprevalence of Saturday matinee idol-like characters in military literature (e.g. Tom Clancy) that are so squeaky clean you think they were grafted off of Ward Cleavers's leg gets a little tiresome after a while. The grunts in Jarhead are like any other group of young men. They are predisposed toward drinking and being obsessed with sex. Their ribald behavior makes the book a highly entertaining read but is definitely not for the faint of heart.
Rating:
Summary: Not a Chronicle, More of a Monotonic Litany
Review: I was looking forward to reading this book, based on the reviews on the back cover. Unfortunately, I didn't check what other readers had to say, and this should be a must for this book. After reading the first chapter, I realized that this was going to be a long read, due mostly to his whinning style that distracts and bores the reader: hardly the warrior spirit. If you want to be his shrink, then this book is for you. Otherwise, skip it. I gave it two stars because some parts were interesting, but overall, this is not a good book. I find disturbing his general irreverent attitude towards the Corps. Notice two things: (1) none of the critics on the back cover had military background that I know of, and (2) he refers to his fellow brothers in arms as "marines" (not as "Marines"). That's a sample of what's inside.
Rating:
Summary: The Evil That Men Do
Review: The negative reviews here of Swofford's book expose the grotesque, degenerate foundation of American "patriotism": All information that fails to fit the received (and brutally enforced) "truth" must be a lie, a distortion, a plea for sympathy, the product of diseased consciousness, an embellishment-all of which are phrases that some of the 116 (to date) reviewers have used to describe Swofford's memoir. The minds that plan and carry out wars, and the sad masses that swallow their propaganda as though it were mother's milk, cannot permit themselves a complex thought; all moral questions must be reduced to binaries and, thus, if something is not entirely true, it must be entirely false. Even supposing, for the sake of argument, that Swofford's account contains some "literary" enhancements or even that he wholly fabricated some scenes (neither of which I believe), the ring of truth is sufficient in his book to give pause to any reader who has somehow managed to maintain a permeable mind despite the brain rinse that American mediaculture attempts to force on every citizen. What Swofford says about being a man-and about the military's vast effort to conflate being a "killer" with successful masculinity, which is, in turn, spuriously connected to "real" Americanism-is true knowledge that any man who grew up in this country knows natively. What he says about the process of trying to make 18 year olds believe, as our government did in Gulf War I, that their service was meant to "protect" democracy is heartbreaking-and is supported by decades of war literature written by other men & women who were also "there." If Swofford is lying, so are Tim O'Brien, Dalton Trumbo, Michael Herr, Harold Moore, Robert Peterson, Erich Remarque, Lynda Van Devanter, Ron Kovic, Tim Barrus, Alan Cornett, Dan Hallock, Larry Heinemann, Charles Nelson, Philip Caputo, Bernard Fall, John Laurence, Frederick Downs, Mark Bowden ... the list goes on and on. But Swofford's detractors would insist that they must all be liars, too. Just as anyone must be a liar who sees the folly in the US government's sixty-year-old policy of trying to bomb the world into obedience. I cannot help but wonder why so many who describe themselves as veterans in their reviews would expose Swofford to the cruelest of all responses to the returning soldier: "I don't believe you." I wonder, too, why there is so much concern about Swofford's honesty here, when it is indisputable that honesty is a word unknown to those who plan and execute (but never fight in) wars, most particularly the one in which our country is currently engaged. Though I wish there were no marines in Iraq today, if they must be there, I hope there is an Anthony Swofford among them. Someone has to tell us a way through the propaganda; someone has to live to remind us that waging war in the pursuit of peace leaves in its wake only victims, never victors.
Rating:
Summary: Bottom 10% speaks
Review: This was a difficult book to read because lacks mature analysis. In the military, platoon and company leaders complain that 90% of their time is taken by the bottom 10% of the Marines, which are those who think being a punk and being tough is the same thing. Swofford appear to be one of the 10%. Swofford lays the "troubled youth" on thick. An adolescent thinker, Swofford spends more time talking about drinking, acting suicidal/homicidal and other complaints than on thoughtful analysis of the topics he raises. A Marine reading the book will see this fast. There are a host of better books, so do not be lured in by a desire to learn about the Gulf war. Read Webb's Field of Fire for a look into a Marine's mind. wait for a good Gulf war book.
Rating:
Summary: A marine's story of adolescent bravado as well as fear
Review: Remember the Persian Gulf War in 1991? Desert Shield? Desert Storm? We saw it happening in front of our eyes on CNN. But we only saw part of it. Well, with this memoir written by an ex-marine who was still in his teens at the time, we get a taste of what it was really like. Anthony Swofford's narrative moves back and forth through time. He writes about his childhood in a military family. He writes about a funeral for a buddy years after the war. He writes about the sand and the fear and the camaraderie of the men. But, most of all, this is a coming of age story. And we get to know the brash and wisecracking young author by his macho posturing and one-upmanship in his story telling. There's adolescent bravado of course. And there's also a truth here that is rarely seen by the public. This memoir is startlingly honest, the writing clear and sharp. I found myself totally involved and just couldn't put the book down. The author takes the reader right with him as he goes through boot camp, has his many exploits with women, competes with his fellow marines about everything and trains as a sniper. He has to deal with his feelings about life and death and then experiences total terror when the bullets begin to fly. Later, when the Iraqi corpses are strewn all over the desert, he does some serious thinking about the meaning of it all. I particularly enjoyed the author's fresh young voice. I felt I got to know him well. He's too good a writer to not share his talent with the world and I look forward to reading more of his work. Recommended.
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