|
|||||||||
| 📕10-word summary: Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima photograph’s shocking history. 🖌6-word review: Scholar-like accounting. Incredibly written. Horrific details. |
|||||||||
| 💭Compelling quote: “John’s other nightly habit, though, was something he refused to talk about at all. When Betty would ask him about it in the morning, he would simply turn away. He’d be sleeping, his eyes closed, was the way my mother remembered it. But he’d be whimpering. His body would shake, and tears would stream out of his eyes, down his face.” | |||||||||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: chockablock, sintering, billet, supplanted, jingoistic, pillboxes, mettle, tyro, bivouacked, bibulous, paeans | |||||||||
| Description:* In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||||||||
Thoughts: To be clear, the writing in this book is excellent. My 2-star rating is because I didn’t enjoy it, and I would not recommend it to others, which is a result of my extreme pacifism and the excruciating details about the horrific acts of war written about in this book. Full disclosure: The only reason I didn’t abandon this book was because it was a Mostly Social Book Club book. I skipped chapters 7 (D-Day), 8 (D-Day Plus One), 9 (D-Day Plus Two), 10 (D-Day Plus Three), and I skipped over many other paragraphs, passages, and sometimes pages of prolonged descriptions of murder, torture, and dismemberment. While reading this, I thought a lot about my father, and his 2 combat tours in Vietnam, during one of which he received a Purple Heart for wounds received during Operation Purple Martin. I also thought about his unwillingness to talk about his time in Vietnam like a lot of the guys in this book with regards to the battle on Iwo Jima. Also, like a lot of these guys, my dad suffered from long-term effects of his war experience — he was a terrible sleeper, couldn’t eat rice because it reminded him of maggots in the food in the field, and had severe PTSD reactions to fireworks being set off.
 With all that said, this story is a fascinating look at marketing and PR and its — in retrospect — absolute disastrous treatment of the most recognizable image of World War II, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal. And finally, the Afterword of this book made me gasp. |
|||||||||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.
1