Rating: 
Summary: Understanding
Review: After reading this book it gave me a new understanding of my father who served in World War II. He passed way in 1984...I hope he found his peace....the demons of his war seemed to chase him up to the end.
Rating:
Summary: So worth it!
Review: Before I read this book, I had little interest in warfare. The title caught my interest and I figured I'd give it a shot.Even if you're a pacifist, even if war is the last thing you care to read about, this book is just an amazing read. It's a war book that reads like a novel with each story you read. You learn about the history, and you're learning about it first hand. I've never learned so much about World War II or Vietnam from the perspective of a real person. It's not just the facts, it's the emotions, it's every detail. I would reccommend this book to anyone looking for a good, emotional read, not just a war enthusiast.
Rating:
Summary: Understanding
Review: Fathers who fought in World War Two, sons who fought in Vietnam. They tell their stories in MIchael Takiff's book with honesty, poignancy, pain, and love. Perhaps the most striking of the many voices in this book are the father and son, who, through amazing circumstances, ended up flying helicopters together in a Dustoff medevac unit in VIetnam, where the father, also a WWII flying veteran, won the Congressional Medal of Honor. You can read this book striaght through, or, as I did, dip in and out for different stories and moments. Either way, chances are you will find yourself not wanting to stop as these veterans take you first to the front lines, and then back into their families and homes and sometimes even into their dreams. Compelling and moving.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing characters, great stories
Review: Fathers who fought in World War Two, sons who fought in Vietnam. They tell their stories in MIchael Takiff's book with honesty, poignancy, pain, and love. Perhaps the most striking of the many voices in this book are the father and son, who, through amazing circumstances, ended up flying helicopters together in a Dustoff medevac unit in VIetnam, where the father, also a WWII flying veteran, won the Congressional Medal of Honor. You can read this book striaght through, or, as I did, dip in and out for different stories and moments. Either way, chances are you will find yourself not wanting to stop as these veterans take you first to the front lines, and then back into their families and homes and sometimes even into their dreams. Compelling and moving.
Rating:
Summary: If you really want living history
Review: For the first 200 pages or so I wondered what the point of the book was. After that I figured it out. If you really want some "feel" for how men thought before, during, and after these wars, one way is to immurse yourself in their stories told first hand. By the end of the book I really felt like I had a better understanding of what people experienced.
Viet Nam was primarily a political war and many viewpoints are represented among those interviewed. It was nice not to have those opinions sanitized. I could not tell if their was an agenda to this book since many viewpoints were portrayed.
I felt I got my money's worth from just reading the chapters from the Novosels and Tarbells. You could make a great movie about the Novosels or Tarbells with no problem!
An unexpected thrill for me was reading the kind things said by Albert Tarbell about my uncle and our family. I knew that Albert had been interviewed for a book, but had no idea what he said until I read it. In real life you will not meet a nicer, humbler person.
If you are bored by living history, do not read this book. If you want to raise your level of understanding about what happened to the lives of men during and after wartime by a notch or two, this book is a valuable resource. (Dr. Phil Rosenkrantz, Cal Poly University, Pomona, CA)
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Stories that Need to be told
Review: For the many who have never been, and will never go to war, this book gives us the first-hand stories of "Brave Men, Gentle Heroes". These are stories we should hear and not forget, and they bring all our senses alive so that we can hear/smell/see with each teller as if we were there.
Rating:
Summary: A penetrating picture of the men who fought our wars
Review: Having treated veterans of WWII and Vietnam for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I recommend this book highly. Mr. Takiff has written a profound account of what war does to the human spirit. "Brave men, gentle heroes' is well written with interesting biographic details which add to the insightful pictures of our veterans. Hearing their own voices adds to the power of the message.
Rating:
Summary: It's like listening to everyone's grandfather...
Review: I have always been interested in history and the wars that come along with it. My grandfather served 30 years in the Navy and fought in WWII, Korea, and 'Nam. Because of all that time he had spent serving his country he felt that nobody else in the family should ever have to enter the military. I didn't know why until I read this book. The stories of the fathers and their sons were so vivid and grim and sometimes humorous. My grandpa would only ever tell me the humorous stories he had throughout his service. This book is like listening to a bunch of grandfathers and fathers tell their stories in a most intimate way. No glossing it over, just the raw truth. Now I understand why my grandpa refused to let me join the Navy after highschool. He had done enough for all of us. He didn't want us to go because of all of the trauma he still deals with! These men in the book are wonderful men. They're not perfect and don't claim to be. Read this book and reflect on the men and women in the military, past and present.
Rating:
Summary: It's like listening to everyone's grandfather...
Review: I have always been interested in history and the wars that come along with it. My grandfather served 30 years in the Navy and fought in WWII, Korea, and 'Nam. Because of all that time he had spent serving his country he felt that nobody else in the family should ever have to enter the military. I didn't know why until I read this book. The stories of the fathers and their sons were so vivid and grim and sometimes humorous. My grandpa would only ever tell me the humorous stories he had throughout his service. This book is like listening to a bunch of grandfathers and fathers tell their stories in a most intimate way. No glossing it over, just the raw truth. Now I understand why my grandpa refused to let me join the Navy after highschool. He had done enough for all of us. He didn't want us to go because of all of the trauma he still deals with! These men in the book are wonderful men. They're not perfect and don't claim to be. Read this book and reflect on the men and women in the military, past and present.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a celebration of our troops
Review: I read this book with great interest, having just finished Mike Jackson's exciting and inspirational Naked In Da Nang. This book also features Lt. Col. Jackson's story as well as his father's (Edmund Jackson served in World War II, hence the father/son connection). But I was terribly disppointed. Brave Men is disjointed and awkward and it seems to play to those who want to believe that veterans are semi-dysfunctional, given the horrific acts they experienced. Instead of humanizing our fighting men, Mr. Takiff's book seems hell-bent on showing only the grim and disturbing side of military service. While Jackson's book doesn't sugarcoat the realities of war, it maintains a very optimistic stance -- one that leaves the reader proud of our men in uniform, not concerned about sitting next to them on a bus!
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