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Another year, another annoyance
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD
By Ian Urbina Audio Renaissance, $14.95 2 hours abridged, CD ISBN 1593978391
Understanding the young men and women in the military, fighting (conventionally and unconventionally) in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other chaotic regions of this dangerously chaotic world is vital. They are, for better or worse, our real ambassadors, ambassadors on the ground. They fight, but they also train indigenous armies, build infrastructure, "implant charisma" and attempt to win hearts and minds. Two new audiobooks offer views of the front, one macro, one micro. Robert D. Kaplan's Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground looks at elite U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in Yemen, Colombia and the Philippines. Whether or not you fully accept Kaplan's premise that we are a vast empire "impelled forward by a succession of real or imagined security threats," his is an insightful, incisive analysis of what is really happening and who is making it happen.
By Robert D. Kaplan Random House AudioBooks, $37.95 9 hours abridged, CD ISBN 0739323393
By Nathaniel Fick Simon & Schuster Audio, $29.95 6 hours abridged, CD ISBN 0743551877
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Having a pet peeve has none of the rewards of having a pet dog or cat, or even a gerbil; no unconditional love here, just unconditional aggravation. But with the aid of Ian Urbina's deeply discerning research into this rarified, rarely investigated field, there is hope and help for the harassed. As you listen to Urbina's findings in Life's Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore, read by award-winning actor Stanley Tucci, you'll identify with many of these real-life dramas and with the folks who fought back and found that revenge can be quite sweet and soul-satisfying. You may simply take solace—and a few laughs—from their recipes for retaliation, or you may use them to cook up your own. Fun and diverting while you're stuck in yet another traffic jam.
From the ground up
In One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, Nathaniel Fick looks candidly at his own experience as a leader of a Marine Recon platoon. Fick, a classics major at Dartmouth, joined the Corps because he wanted to be a warrior. And his officer's training, which he describes in detail, made him one, instilling competence, bravery and intense loyalty to his men and his mission. Fick took pride in the things they did right, but when he realized that the "good didn't feel as good as the bad felt bad" and that his sense of purpose could be undermined by poor command decisions, he left, and now he's left us with a fast-paced, honest, up-to-the-minute war memoir.