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Summary: Building a bridge between yesterday and today.
Review: I don't recall how I heard of this book, but the title was enough for me to go looking for it. I picked up the audio version and was hooked immediately. A simple story along with a dose of forgotten history makes this truly a wonderful find. I highly recommend this book to anyone that was moved by "Saving Private Ryan".
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Summary: Thought-provoking in Triplicate!
Review: This book deals on three levels simultaneously...historical record, biographically/psychologically, and on the level of the very personal relationship between Greene and his father. The paths mingle easily and provokingly. A good read to challenge the commitments to the involvements in your life, as well as understand the thought processes of another generation.
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Summary: All hail a Mass Murderer
Review: Don't waste your money on a book that glorifies on of the greatest mass murderers in the history of the world. What is heroic about fliying over a city and dropping an atomic bomb, on defenseless civilians. According to this type of logic Hitler, Stalin, and Reagan (responsible for the carnage of the 80's against the people of central and south America) , were also heroes. This is simply a case of mindless slaughter, and dispect for life. Why not read John Hersey's Hiroshima, or Masuji Ibuse's Black Rain if you want to see the real results of Tibbet's cowardly act of moral blindness.
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Summary: The Men Who Made Our World
Review: This is a wonderful, touching book of the same genre as "Flags Of Our Fathers" but without the edge. Some of the more thoughtful among us, like Greene, are realizing that one of the greatest generations in our nations history is slipping away, a thousand a day, and taking their values with them. Were it not for them, the Nazis might be sending human beings through the chimneys of their death camps and the greater part of Asia might be one giant Japanese slave labor camp. It was guys like Tibbets, still in his twenties then, who beat the Nazis and the Japanese back, making the world safe for us, their children. By contrast, take a look around any shopping mall at the kids with their droopy pants, hats on backwards, and bad attitudes. If they were called upon to save the nation, to beat back an army of Nazi butchers and fleets of Japanese kamikazes, could they do it? Would they do it? Could these coddled little kids summon the manhood to do their duty to defend their country? I tell you, I just don't see it in them. Thank God that when Western Civilization was being overrun by murdering barbarians that Tibbets and his generation were there to put it right. Tibbets himself says he can't understand anyone under sixty. We all speak the same words but different languages. There is a radically different perspective between the generation that came up hard and worked for everything it got and the current generation that was given the good life and feels entitled to more, always more. I was pleased to shake General Tibbets hand in Dallas a couple years back. I was pleased to shake his bombardier's hand, Tom Ferebee (who passed away this year), in Houston. Now I would like to shake Bob Greene's hand for writing this book. I very much enjoyed hearing the General speak his mind. You will, too.
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Summary: A hero doing his duty: an insight, perhaps, into your Dad
Review: It takes a lot to stay focused on a mission as complex as the one that faced Paul Tibbets. The historical FACT is that most strategists at that time - and most fair-thinking historians today - estimate that the US alone would have lost more than 500,000 lives, and the Japanese manyfold that number should the requisite invasion of the home islands ocurred. Tibbets mission in putting the bomb on the target precluded that horrific requirement, thereby saving untold lives. More important though, this book is also a device for the author to understand his father's own, unheralded heroism, and to understand his fathers generation. If you are a baby-boomer who only vaguely recalls your Dad's WWII service, read this book and get an insight into him and his generation.
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Summary: Not what I expected
Review: I am afraid I really could not suggest this book to anyone above the age of 40 who knew their father. I read this book looking for some insight into the bombing of Hiroshima and what Bob Greene discovered about his father by talking with Tibbets. I was disappointed because it seems that Bob went into this not knowing anything about WW2 or the military. Unfortunately it also seems that he and his father never really talked at all, so he had to go to a stranger to find out what his father was like. That is sad. He brings this book off lauding Tibbets for the great hero he was. I don't mean to demean what Tibbets did. He was a hero. But if you read between the lines of his,(Bob's), fathers reminices you begin to realize that he was probably a real hero also. If you are looking for a book that tells it like it was and gives some insight to how people felt back during the war read "Flags of Our Fathers".
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Summary: Succeeds on every level.
Review: 'Duty' is a very special book. It takes three individual subjects and, through Bob Greene's rare talent, makes them not only analogous, but seemingly inseparable. It affected me in profound ways. It's a keeper. One you go back to again and again. Interspection, reflection, a hope to reach out to make a connection. It's a story of the human heart. A father's dying days, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and the mindset and value system of the twentieth century's most intrepid generation. Greene not only ties those 3 subjects together in a seamless storyline, he changes your mindset, expectations, and definition of the word "duty". Want a great war story? Listen in on the 3 principals who, in their own words, describe how they carried out the single most destructive act in the history of the world. Want a father-son love story? Read the words Greene's father recorded onto an audio tape for his son. Words, spoken years before his last, sickly, dying days, described his life. Words, sounding vibrant and hopeful, that Greene listened to even as at the same time, he could hear his father's frail, confused voice in the next room. Ever wonder what made the Depression/WWII generation tick? Read, in their own words, how they think. What is important to them--how they process and catagorize beliefs, responsibilities, and minutiae--why individual accolades and the collective spotlight is more distraction and frivolous emptiness to them than positive reinforcement. Paul Tibbets (....the man who won the war), gets the most print, but his generation as a whole is the character that drives this book. In Tibbet's own words, " Who knew who doesn't matter". What matters is duty, and a job well done. Well done, Bob Greene. Thanks. Read it. Read it for your own good.
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Summary: Duty or blind conformity
Review: Although I did find Greene's style of folksy reminiscence cathcy, the horrific subject and the way he treats it more than offset any redeeming quality that this book might have had. It is about a man that caused the deaths of over 200,000 people, and 47 American's who were being held prisoner in the city when the bomb was dropped. I just think that calling someone who did that a hero is a bit dangerous. Greene also suggests that this violent act "won the war", when practically every military scholar who has looked at this has said that the war was already over, Japan only wanted an honorable end to it. This book is not about heroism it is about revenge, and the tragedy of "just following orders". This incident is no different from what happened in Germany, Italy or even Japan in WWII. All were just following orders and the most horrible slaughter the world has ever known was the result. One should instead read, "Hitler's Willing Executioners" or "Hitler's Pope", at least those come closer to the truth.
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Summary: The Lives of the World War II Generation
Review: Bob Greene takes us by the hand, ever so gently, and forces us to explore many points in the lives of our parents' generation-- from the good-time pre-War days, through the long, drawn-out conflict itself, to the prosperous post-War years of our own birth and coming-of-age, and now to the final chapter of our parents' lives. He leads us on this expedition while sharing some of his innermost feelings & fears (which are often 100% in sync with our own) on each step of the journey. Interwoven in the account of his own family's life (parts of which we already know, as faithful Greene readers since the 1970s), he tells us the story of Paul Tibbets, the man who commanded the crew that dropped the first atomic bomb, which ultimately brought World War II to a close. Tibbets lived for many years in the same small Ohio town as Greene's family, but like so many other GIs, he was unknown to all but a few of his own generation. In meeting Tibbets and recording his thoughts and observations, Greene learned a great deal more about his own father and the World War II generation in general. This and more, he shares with us in poignant detail. Not lost in all of this is the story of a man, his life's work complete, taking his leave of this earth slowly. Greene records many moments--both sad & touching at the same time--of his father's final weeks. To those of us who have already lived this chapter of life with our own family members, or may be facing it all too soon, it is a common-sense road map of just how one family managed to respond. You can almost see the elder Mr. Greene smiling down his approval on all that has been said in this book.
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Summary: Well-written and powerful, if a little bit disjointed
Review: First, unlike many of the books currently being published to honor the World War II generation, "Duty" is extremely well-written. Bob Greene has found a winning subject, but he also is a terrific writer. The quality of the prose alone makes this book worth reading. In addition, Greene manages to strike an excellent balance between the factual structure of his narrative and its emotional content. He neither wallows in maudlin sentiment, as easy as it would be to do that with this affecting story of his father's WWII experiences and the compelling history of Col. Tibbetts, nor does he turn this into a dry biography. My only complaint is that Greene's efforts to link his father's story with Tibbetts are not entirely convincing. The two men fought in entirely different theaters of the war, and while Tibbetts was a nationally recognized celebrity, Greene was one of the many unsung heroes from the war. While both the stories are moving, I would rather have seen them kept separate.
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