So it has been quite a while since I updated the blog and I apologize for that. However with the move to Miami and the season starting, my job has become much more important than keeping a website updated. A week or so ago I finished Jon Krakauer's biography on football star/Army Ranger Pat Tillman.
If I can offer any advice it would be to read this book before you read Lone Survivor. Krakauer supplies a lot of Afghan history, spanning back to their war with Russia. On a side note, some one recently told me that in Rambo 3, Rambo heads to Afghanistan and fights with Al Qaeda against the Russians...weird. The historical information is excellent and really provides the reader with a solid foundation of Afghan history. It helps one to learn why the people there fight.
Pat Tillman himself is incredibly interesting. The book takes us through his early years in New Almadan, California where he excelled in both the academic and athletic arenas but also faced an arrest due to a physical altercation outside of a pizza place. When granted a second chance by the judge, he went on to Arizona State, then to the NFL, then to the Army and the rest is history. Throughout the book Krakauer uses interviews with the Tillman family as well as Pat Tillman's personal diary to paint a beautifully tragic picture of a true patriot and free thinker abandoned by his government after the ultimate sacrifice.
I felt pretty disillusioned after reading this book. Pat Tillman's death was attributed to fratricide, but only after years of the Tillman family fighting with the Army for the information. Our government tried to use him and Jessica Lynch to build the morale of the general public. I keep thinking, Pat Tillman was an NFL star, and it took years for the real information to finally come out, what about the regular soldier, how does his family know if the story of his death is what the Army says it is? Pretty scary.
I really liked about 90% of this book. The part I didn't appreciate was Krakauer's liberal pontification. It is one thing to write a "non-fiction" book, and another to write an op-ed piece. This book dances on a very thin line. I get it, Krakauer doesn't like the Bush Administration, but when you read a chapter in a book about Pat Tillman that complains about Al Gore losing the election on a technicality you begin to get a little skeptical.
All in all despite any political views this book is a must read. Pick it up in paper form or on your iPad, Kindle or whatever form of media you people use!! Buy Book Here
