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Summary: Riveting narratives about fathers and sons
Review: If you are a student of history, or you are into family dynamics, or you just like a compelling story, this excellent read is for you. The author interviewed father and son pairs who are World War 2 and Vietnam War vets about their lives and experiences. These stories are riveting and moving, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes horrifying but always vividly descriptive. If you were alive during these wars, or if you weren't, you will also get a thoughtful historical perspective from the narratives and from Takiff's excellent commentary.
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Summary: listening to our Veterans
Review: Rebeccasreads highly recommends BRAVE MEN, GENTLE HEROES as a treasure. Warriors telling their memories, fathers & sons thinking about the time that defined their lives. A unique weaving around specific aspects of their experiences & memories, complete with photographs, historical contexts & commentary by Michael Takiff, whose father fought in WWII.
Rating:
Summary: listening to our Veterans
Review: Rebeccasreads highly recommends BRAVE MEN, GENTLE HEROES as a treasure. Warriors telling their memories, fathers & sons thinking about the time that defined their lives. A unique weaving around specific aspects of their experiences & memories, complete with photographs, historical contexts & commentary by Michael Takiff, whose father fought in WWII.
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Summary: Sensitively and well written, very engaging and moving
Review: This book is riveting and I'm so glad I bought it. As a 50-year-old whose father served in WWII and who narrowly missed being drafted for Vietnam, our relationships to the two wars affected our father-son relationship deeply. These fathers and sons talk about their war experiences, and how the wars affect their lives and relationships.The author has done a great job of finding father-son pairs and presenting their compelling stories.
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Summary: A Unique Book
Review: This is not a book that I would normally have picked up at the bookstore but the beautiful cover drew my interest and the photographs inside made me curious to learn more about the men who were the subjects of these interviews. Michael Takiff lets these men tell their stories of fear and camaraderie, destruction and struggle, family and the return to regular life in a way that brings these men to life. The brief overview of the historical situation at the time helps put the soldiers and their memories in context. Some chapters are painful to read but in these scary times it was reassuring to be reminded how courageous people can be in very tough situations far from home. I found this book compelling and elegantly written.
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Summary: A new way to look at two wars
Review: This splendid book pairs off fathers and sons from two wars, and lets them tell their stories. (On the cover: Gene Swanson, U.S. Marine at Iwo Jima; and Gary Swanson, army infantryman in Vietnam.) It works best when there are recognizable pairs, which is not always the case. Then it reverts to a run-of-the-mill oral history. The most stunning chapters are the first two, relating the stories of Mike Novosel senior and junior. Mike Sr. was a career officer: he flew B-29s against Japan and a "dust-off" helicopter in Vietnam. In the latter work, he was joined in 1970 by Mike Jr. So here they were, 47-year-old father and 20-year-old son, pulling wounded men out of the rain forest and giving them another chance at life. Today the two men live side by side in houses that are mirror images of one another. "Dad is both my father and an Army buddy," Mike Jr. says. What a fortunate pair of men! What's most striking about these pairs of stories is how different the two wars played out. World War II was a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end: the soldiers started green, learned to fight, and returned as heroes. Vietnam was a surreal painting, a black novel, an existential mess where men counted bodies in lieu of winning battles; when they came home, they took off their uniforms for fear that they would literally be stoned in the street. Eminently worth reading -- Dan Ford
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