Customer Reviews

Life Inside the Coast Guard Academy (High Interest Books: Insider's Look)

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This book is one in a series of guides to the federal service academies intended for younger readers. Though it's not a truly in-depth look at the Coast Guard, the Academy, or the cadet experience, it's still not a bad introduction, given its intended audience. The book's overview of the Academy's four academic years, the day-to-day life of a cadet, and the options for post-graduation careers in the Coast Guard all seem to paint pictures appropriate for the readers most likely to pick this title up.

One of the more entertaining parts of the "Life Inside" series has been spotting the factual errors and mis-identified photos, and this book has plenty of opportunities as well. For example, on page 16 the author describes the USCGA as "the first of the four armed-services academies to admit woman cadets" -- although the US Merchant Marine Academy, the *fifth* federal military academy, admitted women in 1974. Similarly, we're told on page 27 that "unlike other military academies, the Coast Guard Academy has both officers and civilians as professors." In fact, all five federal academies have both civilian and military professors on staff.

(You could, I suppose, argue that the USMMA isn't an "armed-service" academy, and that military faculty members at other academies aren't really "professors." But not only would those arguments be highly questionable, they depend on a level of semantic nit-picking that seems out of place in a book targeted at young readers.)

As in the other books, a reliance on stock photos makes it very hard to prove, for example, that the lacrosse and football players shown actually compete for the Academy. The photos that are obviously of the Academy and Academy cadets, however, are well chosen.

Young readers with an interest in the military and the possibility of a career afloat will probably find this a useful, if still largely superficial, introductory reference.