Review: Gritty and Insightful
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 23, 2013
Having read a number of books on the Vietnam War, starting way back when with Larry Heinemann's Close Quarters, Michael Herr's Dispatches, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, and most recently John Podlaski's Cherries, I avoid making comparisons to these fine accounts of the war as well as other books I have read. For me, what is most important is for the author/veteran to just be honest and straightforward with his account of his time in the war. You get a lot of that in Franklin Evans' Stand to...A Journey to Manhood.For those of us who have never been in combat, what we, or in my case, what I expect is for the author to help us understand what it was like; to help us understand our involvement in Vietnam and the experiences of the men and women who were there. There's so much more to the war that we might have seen on television or read in the newspapers (I was eleven years old when Evans was in Vietnam) and that's what Evans covers in his book.Much of his book reads like a journal and that is one of the book's strengths. He might be telling "his" story, but there's so much of his story, as one reviewer already pointed out, that any vet can relate. I would like to take this one step further and say that these are stories and accounts which help those of us who were not there understand the war on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, the photos in the book show us another side of the war.Stand To...A Journey to Manhood is both gritty and insightful and a powerful read.Jeffrey Miller,Author of War Remains