Book Description
"A great, courageous fellow, a man of deep moral convictions and an uncompromising disposition."-John Kerry on Ron Kovic
"As relevant as ever, this book is an education. Ron is a true American, and his great heart and hard-won wisdom shine through these pages." -Oliver Stone, filmmaker
"Born on the Fourth of July brings back the era of the Vietnam War at a time when the Establishment is trying to make the nation forget what they call the "Vietnam syndrome." Ron Kovic's memoir is written with poetic passion and grips your attention from the very first page to the last. It is a classic of antiwar literature and I hope it will be read by large numbers of young people, who will be both sobered and inspired by his story. -Howard Zinn
"If you want to understand the everlasting reverberations of our war in Vietnam and how it impacts our current events, you must read this book." -LARRY HEINEMANN
"There is no book more relevant in the 21st century to healing the wound of Vietnam, which continues to bring so much pain to our country, as reflected in the last presidential election . . . It remains to Kovic to remind us that history matters, and that the cost of our high follies persists." -ROBERT SCHEER, Los Angeles Times columnist
This New York Times bestseller (more than one million copies sold) details the author's life story (portrayed by Tom Cruise in the Oliver Stone film version)--from a patriotic soldier in Vietnam, to his severe battlefield injury, to his role as the country's most outspoken anti-Vietnam War advocate, spreading his message from his wheelchair.
Customer Reviews:
The story of an American Hero.......2007-09-02
While Ronnie Kovic was fighting in Vietnam I was in college playing football and baseball on scholarship. All expenses paid. People told me that I was extraordinary while Ronnie was suffering in a squalid Veterans hospital. And while he was being spit on at the Republican National convention I was learning to believe that I deserved an exceptional life and that I was better than guys like him who had somehow believed the lies our government told about how the communists were going to take over the world unless young men stopped them the way our fathers and uncles had stopped the Nazis and the lunatic Japanese.
I was too cool to believe any of that, and guys like Ronnie were unenlightened. I felt sorry for them.
I have become an old man now and these days I am trying for all I am worth to be a good father to my son who is Ronnie's age. When he began telling me that he was thinking about joining the Marines, I began reading to him from Ron's book. Reading to him at night while he lay in his bed as I had when he was a small boy. I wanted him to know that if he went to war in Iraq and was wounded horribly there, his government and his country would not care about him. I wanted him to know that the same people who were in power in America and who sent Ron off to war, were in power once again. The same pathetic collection of clowns and liars eager to have wars so long as they and their children don't have to fight them. Cowards, really. I told my son that he would be fighting for a commander in cheif and a vice president and a secretary of state who are cowards. I told my son that the same conservative republicans who spit on Ron Kovic after he gave his body for America were in power once again and that he could expect them to spit upon him when he came home from war if he opposed them. Ron Kovic's magnificent book persuaded my son not to fight for his country in Iraq. I am forever in the author's debt.
A never-healing wound.......2007-05-26
Ron Kovic is one of society's worst nightmares: the unquestioning youth who believed every war movie, signed up for the Marines on his 18th birthday, fully committed to combat and sacrifice...only to turn his shattered back on those same indoctrinated values, speaking out against them with rage and bitterness as he saw himself, post-injury, shoved into a corner like an embarassing mutant.
Kovic's memoir is inelegant, repetitive, self-centered; it is, simply put, not well-written. (The stream-of-consciousness recreation of Marine boot camp on Parris Island is especially clumsy.) Still I would recommend it to any young person, as I would recommend a trip to an open blast furnace, so that the same young person could see life as it sometimes horribly is, to know what war actually does to those who fight on the front. Kovic does not pretend to be writing great literature, but he is presenting the raw case of his life.
The original memoir is also a good antidote (I believe) to its lurid movie adaptation by Oliver Stone. For reasons I do not understand, the movie completely omits the pivotal moment, at a rally just after the Kent State shootings, when Kovic decided to stop simply feeling sorry for himself, and to use his status as a badly crippled Vietnam vet to protest the War. This is the core of the man's story, and still deserves to be read.
For kids, not curmudgeons.......2006-09-27
Ron Kovic is a Marine whose life was blasted and changed forever by the paralyzing wound he received in Vietnam. Confined permanently to a wheelchair, without mobility or feeling below his chest, Kovic successfully turned his enormous inner rage to a public purpose in opposing the continuation of the Vietnam War and telling his story to a new generation of impressionable kids likely to think that war is cool.
Kids, whatever else it is, war ain't cool. Believe Ron Kovic.
But this a book review, not a personal tribute to a man who channeled his victimhood into political activism. In book form, Kovic's rage makes for a tedious, repetitive read. All Kovic wanted to do was to serve his country, fight communism, and be "like John Wayne" (who, unknown to young Kovic, never served in the military in any capacity). And look what happened. Yet despite the terrible personal cost the war laid on him and so many others, the Washington politicians waging the war paid no attention. They believed the national interest as they undrestood it took precedence over personal disasters like Ron Kovic's. One of the problems with Born on the Fourth of July is that the author can hardly believe that, or that Marines are expendable. But what else should a young Marine expect?
Older readers may prefer the late Lewis B. Puller, Jr's autobiography, Fortunate Son. Puller's father was "Chesty" Puller, a legendary Commandant of the Corps, and young Puller wound up a quadriplegic after just a few days in country. Like Ron Kovic he came to oppose the war. I found his book to be a more satisfying reading experience than Born on the Fourth of July.
"I try to keep telling myself it's good to be alive.".......2006-04-26
Massapequa, New York may well be the most unabashedly patriotic town in America. Like Ron Kovic (who I knew in passing) I grew up there, played in "Sally's Woods" got my hair cut at Sparky the Barber's, and participated in the endless red, white and blue parades that seemed to define our town. A safe, stable bedroom community on Long Island's South Shore, it spawned boys like Kovic who absorbed the tales of "the greatest generation" and took up their fathers' banners when they went to Vietnam.
BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY is Kovic's unpolished, sincere, aggressive and searingly sad remembrance of his Vietnam experience. Kovic was gravely wounded on the first day of the Tet Offensive. Returning home as a paraplegic, Kovic tells us of the hideous treatment he received at the hands of the Veterans Administration, a bureaucracy so rotten that it neglected and abused the very men and women it was supposed to aid.
The sheer contempt with which Kovic was treated turned this All-American young man into a cynic, turning him against the war, and forcing him to confront an uncomfortable paradox: millions were being spent on war machines while America's wounded soldiers had to live with filth and rats in their hospital rooms.
The experience drove Kovic to become a public speaker for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Interestingly, Kovic never mentions John Kerry, a founder of that organization, but he does recount how VVAW was infiltrated by Nixon operatives and almost derailed.
Kovic also tells us---in various flashbacks---about his psychological journey as a paraplegic, about his loneliness, his depression, his pain and misery, and his frustration at being unable to walk. He writes frankly and cathartically of coping with the loss of his sex life. He recounts how the well-meaning but unknowing people of Massapequa made him feel, like their Yankee Doodle poster child come home, a not altogether pleasant role.
And he writes of his challenge to America. Having shouted down Richard Nixon's 1972 nomination acceptance speech, he demands of America self-examination and a reordering of priorities. That very self-examination is the essence of greatness. Should we expect less?
BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY is an important book, and one which needs to be remembered in these days of disillusionment.
***.......2006-04-03
I've never read a first-person account of a war experience, but Mr. Kovic's book was very gripping and haunting. Most of it seems to focus on his experience after the war and what he went through in V.A. hospitals. His desriptions are shocking and tragic. He mentions in a foreward in a new edition of his book that he feels his chapter about his childhood is beautiful, and I agree. He portrays an idyllic upbringing that was quite beautifully recounted.
Customer Reviews:
A book full of horror, pride, and love for on'es country........1999-04-01
This book was incredible!!! It's been so long since any war book has captured the essence of battle so vividly and with such detail and accountability. This isa book everyone needs to read if there is ever a hope of any long lasting peaceworldwide.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Mortgage Banking, published by Mortgage Bankers Association of America on September 1, 1990. The length of the article is 2367 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Born on the Fourth of July: Arthur Hill, the top man at GNMA, is a rising star at HUD. (profile of Government National Mortgage Association president, chosen to be next Federal Housing Administration commissioner)
Author: Janet Reilley Hewitt
Publication:
Mortgage Banking (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 1990
Publisher: Mortgage Bankers Association of America
Volume: v50
Issue: n12
Page: p59(3)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Customer Reviews:
Russ book makes valuable contribution.......2006-06-30
to the universe of memoirs that came out of the Korean War but like many similar books the reader is forced to wade through lots of personal rememberances and vague references to encounters with various women to find the interesting parts about serving as a combat infantryman. Perhaps a re-editing of the book to about 100 pages would help. Also I would his 'hipster' 50s style tone rather grating.
Truman's Folly.......2002-05-02
Russ hits the nail on the head when it comes to the boredom and then instant terror of war. The smells, sounds and foolishness of what we went through is already being glossed over by the liberal revisionists of our history. I was there, a good 11 months before Russ, and we had just come from Chosin and 1st Mar Div units were sectoring to the west. God (and a Navy Corpsman) kept me alive to at least read this narrative and comment on it. From where Russ begins his story he is right on, as scores of Marines I've talked to who were there in '52-'53 corroborate his view. We lost as many dead and wounded during his period as the Inchon to Seoul to the Yalu and back to Pusan period. As the "notebook" diary he kept was a no-no, at least he can quote times and places that I have long since refused to remember. A must-read book, along with Brady's "The Coldest War" narrated from an officer's perspective. Both books tell it as it was. In case anybody wants to store a trivia fact,
there is no such label as an "ex-Marine". Semper Fi---
War in a Very Cold Place.......2001-04-18
This is the third first-person account of the Korean War I have reviewed here during the last year (the others were James Brady, The Coldest War : A Memoir of Korea, review date May 27, 2000, and James R. Owen, Colder Than Hell : A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin Reservoir. review date December 8, 2000), and I have enjoyed all three. No war is pretty, but the Korean War was especially ugly: Most of the fighting took place over cold and barren ground from World War I-style trenches; the enemy, North Koreans and Chinese, was tough and relentless; and the conflict ended in a cruel stalemate that essentially persists to this day. The author of this memoir, Corporal (later Sergeant) Martin Russ describes Seoul, the capital of South Korea, as "a huge trash heap," and the countryside as "a frozen patchwork of fields and rice paddies."
By the time Russ arrived in Korea in December 1952, the war had been in progress for two and one-half years. Although Russ was trained to be a small-arms mechanic, he informs us that all marines underwent advanced infantry training before being sent to Korea, and he spent most of his time as a rifleman in trenches. Five days after he arrived in at his post in the field in January 1953, he wrote: "I consider it an honor to be here." It was, however, a hard life. An occasional chocolate chip cookie is balanced by "an obscene putrescence in one of the cans which is labeled `Ham and Eggs.'" According to Russ: "It is impossible to keep anything clean; showers of dirt fall each time an incoming shell lands anywhere nearby." At one point, Russ describes himself and his fellows as "bearded, filthy, and stinking." As a result, Russ writes: "The portable showers [were] a real luxury."
The trenches of the Chinese forces were no more than 200 yards away, and firefights occurred every night. The fighting often lasted only for a few minutes (in one instance, Russ writes: "The fire fight lasted for at least five minutes - a hell of a prolonged encounter for this type of situation"), but it could be terrifying. Even when they weren't fighting, the marines were almost continuously exposed to danger. They often patrolled through heavily-mined rice paddies, looking for "line jumpers,...Korean or Chinese spies that had gotten through" the Allies' main line of resistance. The possibility of imminent combat was so great that it was, according to Russ, "mandatory to carry one's weapon when outside" at all times. On one occasion, a Chinese mortar round lands in the middle of a group of marines, and Russ reports that another marines described the scene as a "slaughterhouse." On another occasion, after "heavy assaults" by the Chinese on several successive nights, Russ characterizes the marine casualties as "appalling." Russ's crude drawings and diagrams help to illustrate the points he is making.
Russ writes revealingly about his peers: "As a marine, one almost feels obliged to conceal any emotion except anger;" and "The average marine...hates sailors, is not averse to beating up homosexuals, and loathes civilians." It probably was inevitable that some marines would turn that anger inward, and Ross reports: "Suicide is not a rare occurrence in the Corps." According to Russ, "the men of the Corps are the most skillful killers in the world." Russ describes one instance in which a marine is killed while hunting for souvenirs, and this is the verdict of one of his peers: "He was a fool. I don't feel sorry for him; only for his folks."
Russ's writing often is colorful, and he clearly has a gift for observation. However, like the Brady and Owen books, his account makes few references to the geopolitical struggle at the heart of the Korean War. And readers wanting to learn about the big picture of the early Cold War also must look elsewhere. But I now believe that there is considerable value in reading about the individual infantryman's experience in this or any other conflict, and Russ's battlefield memoir is one of the best from the Korean War. Thanks to Brady, Owen, and Russ, this is no longer the "forgotten war."
If you want real, then this is it........1999-12-03
For people who want to get a good idea on what it's like to be a Marine, I think that this is a great book. The book takes the reader through not only the excitement in war, but also the mundane parts of it. Very few books that I've read do this, and I was pleased to find one that did.
A gripping real life war novel. I felt as if I were there........1999-09-01
This book reads very well. The author makes you actually feel as you are in Korea with him. I equate it to a book form - real life "Private Ryan". When I finished the book, I felt a sense of loss. It was like a close friend was leaving. I found it hard to set down.
Book Description
Based upon the authors' extensive experience in policing, and management, this introduction to the day-to-day rigors of a police department stresses that management is only effective if it is based upon a combination of both theory and practice. Using a proactive rather than a reactive approach, it stresses that police managers anticipate events through planning, use police personnel and resources effectively, and deliver a whole range of police services to the community. This comprehensive book covers police culture, police organizations, operating principles, proactive police leadership, communication and information management, 21st century technology, community policing, basic line functions, administrative functions, human resource management, training policies, proactive planning, collective bargaining, and the future of proactive police management. A useful reference for police managers and others in law enforcement.
Customer Reviews:
Comprehensive, but dated.......2007-01-11
In reviewing this work as a required text for my class, several of my classmates commented (and I agreed) that many of the studies cited in this book are dated; numerous cites were from the 1970's and even from pre-1950's. The other theme noticed about this book was that a large majority of the perceptions made by the authors applied to law enforcement organizations from the East coast and although West Coast organizations were mentioned, many of these points seemed dated (again, referring to the first comment).
Average customer rating:
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