A PROUD AMERICAN : A PROUD AMERICAN

Rating:
Summary: Joe Foss: An Authentic American Hero
Review: Joe Foss may will have been the most celebrated hero of WW II.
The feats which earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor are now legend. He describes them in detail in this his autobiography.
Anyone with the slightest interest in aerial combat will thrill
to the excitement of how he and a small flight of 4F4 fighters
defeated a ten to 20-fold larger Japanese force.
The keen judgement and tenacity he showed in this war feat would appear again and again in some half dozen career accomplishments. Besides his WW II heroics,Joe will be remembered most as a two term governor of South Dakota and as commissioner of the American Football League, where he lead an upstart organization to prominence.
His other career adventures provide equally exciting reading.
A man of boundless energy and indomitable spirit he has moved through the American scene desmonstaring a combination of character, talent and mannerisms the nation has not seen since
Davy Crockett. I would describe this book as one which every
father should give to his son.

Don Napier
Corpus Chriati, Texas

Rating:
Summary: Joe Foss: An Authentic American Hero
Review: Joe Foss may will have been the most celebrated hero of WW II.
The feats which earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor are now legend. He describes them in detail in this his autobiography.
Anyone with the slightest interest in aerial combat will thrill
to the excitement of how he and a small flight of 4F4 fighters
defeated a ten to 20-fold larger Japanese force.
The keen judgement and tenacity he showed in this war feat would appear again and again in some half dozen career accomplishments. Besides his WW II heroics,Joe will be remembered most as a two term governor of South Dakota and as commissioner of the American Football League, where he lead an upstart organization to prominence.
His other career adventures provide equally exciting reading.
A man of boundless energy and indomitable spirit he has moved through the American scene desmonstaring a combination of character, talent and mannerisms the nation has not seen since
Davy Crockett. I would describe this book as one which every
father should give to his son.

Don Napier
Corpus Chriati, Texas

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not a Great Autobiography
Review: The story recounted here makes Horatio Alger look like an also-ran. At first Joe Foss was not unlike most other teenage boys on South Dakota farms during the Depression of the 1930s. He worked to help his family make ends meet and longed for escape to something more exciting. Also like many of his contemporaries he was enthralled by airplanes, but at that point his life took a different turn from that of most other rural South Dakotans. He was able to attend the state university--through which he is quick to point out he worked his way--and followed his dream of aviation by beginning flying lessons in 1937 and going through the Civilian Pilot Training Program run by the Civil Aeronautics Authority as a war preparedness measure in the late 1930s.

As soon as he graduated from the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, in 1940, Foss joined the U.S. Marine Corps and entered pilot training. In the fall of 1942, fresh from pilot training and service as an instructor, he arrived in the Pacific Theater and was assigned to a Marine aviation unit at Guadalcanal. When Foss reported for duty, Guadalcanal was one of the hottest combat zones in the world, with daily attacks by the Japanese on the American foothold on the island. During six weeks of combat, Foss flew several dozen sorties and recorded 23 air victories. He received the Medal of Honor for his actions and became a public hero in the eyes of an America that was desperate for heroes. Foss' later World War II career never equaled that early success and fame, but that was in part, he says, because the Marine Corps was hesitant to have a genuine war hero get back into real combat where his death might hamper morale.

Foss' war record set him in good stead after the hostilities. He was able to start a small aviation business in South Dakota, and his hero status served as a springboard for his election to the state House of Representatives in the latter 1940s. From there he ran for governor and eventually served two terms in the mid-1950s. Afterward Foss was appointed commissioner of the infant American Football League, serving between 1959 and 1966 and helping to build an organization that could challenge and eventually function on an equal basis with the much older NFL. He was also an avid outdoorsman and found a way to make hunting and fishing pay by hosting ABC-TV's "American Sportsman" between 1962 and 1965 and later hosting his own syndicated series. All this time he was a senior officer of the South Dakota Air National Guard. He remained active in civic, benevolent, and business affairs until his death.

This book ballyhoos Foss' successes and slides over his faults and failures. That is not particularly unusual in autobiographical writing. The occasional honest and straightforward memoir will appear, such as that of Ulysses S. Grant, but they are more rare than not. This book is the rule rather than the exception. It is also not bald-faced apology, like Richard Nixon's memoir, but it tends to self-aggrandizement. Readers are supposed to be mesmerized by all the wonderful things that Foss has done and all the celebrities, powerful politicians, and high-profile businessmen he has known. At one moment he describes his charity work and at another his hobnobbing with movie stars. While a little of this namedropping is impressive, there is too much of it here. It is clear that Foss had a strong sense of ego.

From an analytical perspective there is a subtext of conservative Americanism that runs through this autobiography like the jet stream, and it tells historians much about the man and the era. Without question Foss had a strong sense of national pride as well as political and social conservatism. His commentary on why he fought in World War II is telling in this regard. "The Japanese were our enemies, and they had some ideas I didn't like," he wrote. "They wanted to do away with our great country, and I liked America. And that's when I finally realized, for real, that if I didn't do my part in the war, I wouldn't have a farm to go back to" (pp. 80-81). Foss' linkage of his participation in World War II to the preservation of the nation reminds me of a conservative nationalist position that the defense of the American homeland must begin on the far shores of the Atlantic and Pacific.

Foss' defense of conservative Republican politicians is also significant. He praises such demagogues as Joseph McCarthy, saying that he "was a dedicated American who was willing to put his life on the line in actual combat, and I was there to witness it" (p. 177). He also describes his relations with Richard Nixon as exceptionally friendly, even to the extent of pushing Nixon to continue his political career after his 1960 defeat for the presidency (pp. 158-59). Foss also champions the cause of the National Rifle Association and claims unqualified gun ownership--which, to his credit, he always describes as a responsibility not to be taken lightly--as a fundamental right of every American citizen.

The pervasiveness of American conservative values expressed in A Proud American will probably be troubling to some in our post-modern, multi-cultural society. The book does, however, provide important insights into sectors of twentieth century American society, business, and politics. As such it will be a useful primary source document for future historians.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding account of dogfights over Guadalcananl
Review: This autobiography is well done, but there is too much detail about life after the first offensive of the United States during World War II. The descriptions of dog fights in an F4F against every kind of fighter plane the Japanese had in the Solomon Islands is the best I have ever read. Most engrossing, but the rest of the book lost me.