Buffalo Soldiers DVD ~ Joaquin Phoenix  (48)
$12.99
|
Hidden Heroism: Black Soldiers in America's Wars by Robert Edgerton (2)
$18.00
|
The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West by William H. Leckie (3)
$14.96
|
This item is not eligible for Amazon Prime, but millions of other items are. Join Amazon Prime today. Already a member? Sign in.
|
|||||||||
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Once again, a first novelist inveigles the reader's empathy for a swaggering substance abuser by using direct address in the second person. But while Bright Lights, Big City jammed its hero's addiction up the nose of a greedy decade, this book can make no such zeitgeisty claims for its cocksure central character--Army Specialist Ray Elwood, based in present-day Germany. Elwood has brokered his genius for writing never-fail requisition memos into a profitable operation, specializing in skag and elaborate favor-banking. When a new sergeant threatens his system, Elwood tries for one final payday. Despite the annoying and intrusive familiarity of the formal device ("You want to get off, and two men in your squad need to shoot up. Here's how you do it . . . "), the novel remains highly readable; O'Connor writes bitter, funny prose and creates bureaucratic snafus of the first order. Alternating scenes of Army idiocy and clinically realistic drug addiction are far more compelling than O'Connor's attempt to attribute his hero's bracing nihilism to his tragic past. Toward its end the book falters, as Elwood flirts with maudlin self-pity. But O'Connor misfires now and then only because he aims high; aided by his infectious gift for sneering and his sharp eye for institutionalized depravity, he marks most of his targets with tight clusters around the bull's-eye.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"An M-1 tank of a novel, fast and powerful and dangerous...way nasty and blindingly funny." —Jay McInerney
"This book may well find a place on the shelf with Joseph Heller's Catch-22.... It takes a fine novelist to tell such a sordid story so beautifully—and a brave one to hold out no hope for redemption but the jolting effect of a cold-eyed look at the truth." —The New York Times Book Review
"Buffalo Soldiers rips a story of survival from the fearsome realm of the modern Army's barracks, trenches, and gutters. Military jargon becomes in-you-face narrative, punctuated by extremes of horror and humor.... This book is about now, and its present-tense urgency never flags." —Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer
From the Trade Paperback edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
Once again, a first novelist inveigles the reader's empathy for a swaggering substance abuser by using direct address in the second person. But while Bright Lights, Big City jammed its hero's addiction up the nose of a greedy decade, this book can make no such zeitgeisty claims for its cocksure central character--Army Specialist Ray Elwood, based in present-day Germany. Elwood has brokered his genius for writing never-fail requisition memos into a profitable operation, specializing in skag and elaborate favor-banking. When a new sergeant threatens his system, Elwood tries for one final payday. Despite the annoying and intrusive familiarity of the formal device ("You want to get off, and two men in your squad need to shoot up. Here's how you do it . . . "), the novel remains highly readable; O'Connor writes bitter, funny prose and creates bureaucratic snafus of the first order. Alternating scenes of Army idiocy and clinically realistic drug addiction are far more compelling than O'Connor's attempt to attribute his hero's bracing nihilism to his tragic past. Toward its end the book falters, as Elwood flirts with maudlin self-pity. But O'Connor misfires now and then only because he aims high; aided by his infectious gift for sneering and his sharp eye for institutionalized depravity, he marks most of his targets with tight clusters around the bull's-eye.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"An M-1 tank of a novel, fast and powerful and dangerous...way nasty and blindingly funny." —Jay McInerney
"This book may well find a place on the shelf with Joseph Heller's Catch-22.... It takes a fine novelist to tell such a sordid story so beautifully—and a brave one to hold out no hope for redemption but the jolting effect of a cold-eyed look at the truth." —The New York Times Book Review
"Buffalo Soldiers rips a story of survival from the fearsome realm of the modern Army's barracks, trenches, and gutters. Military jargon becomes in-you-face narrative, punctuated by extremes of horror and humor.... This book is about now, and its present-tense urgency never flags." —Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer
From the Trade Paperback edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
