Red Desert Books

While there are many book from Vietnam veterans about their time in `Nam on bookstore shelves today, there are too-few good ones. "Fire Mission" is one of the few good ones.

Author Earl Gorman was a Marine officer fighting in Vietnam in 1965-1966. An artilleryman, his was a slightly different view of the war; at times he was stationed out in the field with an infantry unit as a forward observer where he lived and worked with a `grunt' unit, and then later was based back on the gun line responsible for a battery of 105mm howitzers.

Gorman is an excellent writer with a grasp of detail. "Fire Mission" (an artillery term) lets the reader begin to understand the mindset of a Marine officer trying to maintain his moral balance in the midst of a brutal war. He comments on his disgust in seeing VC bodies being displayed for American civilian and military visitors from Saigon, yet keeps his humanity as he meets and builds a relationship with a Vietnamese mother and daughter.

Commenting on the politics, Rules of Engagement, his superiors, and his times in combat, former 1st Lt Gorman blends the sarcasm and accuracy of a young Marine with the poignant observations and recollections of an older citizen soldier; one who has done his duty to his country yet hopes that others may not have to follow in his footsteps. Well done, Sir!

I was looking for truth about the Viet Nam experience and found it in FIRE MISSION. I read it cover to cover- not able to put it down.
This book is well-written and gives the reader the straight story without bias. It is bold, personal and grips you from the first chapter. I have read other Viet Nasm reconts, but have never read one that is as honest as this one. I recommend it to anyone who wnts to read a personal story framed in history and truth.

I read Earl Gorman's "Fire Mission" in two days...couldn't put it down. The reality of the daily life and death struggle, command incompetence, gentleness (or perfidy) of the Vietnamese, and the whimsy of the bullet and the bomb were extraordinarily compelling.

And the juxtaposition of hunt-and-kill with unbridled spirituality is something new in the literature of this, our second most stupid war.

I highly recommend this book for everyone who wants to understand how it really was in Viet Nam; how most of our troops responded with courage and compassion; and how war - any war - changes those who fight it.

If you are looking for an intimate glimpse into the early days of the Viet Nam war, from the on-site, day-to-day perspective of a Marine's tour of duty there in 1965-66, I highly recommend this book.

I do so because of what it reveals about one man's transformation as an officer in combat - the roller coaster of emotions from his initial awe of the visual paradise that was Viet Nam to the raw realities of the war he experienced that almost took his life. Viet Nam was, as he writes, a "rabbit hole": "When we fell through the rabbit hole, the long tumble turned into a curious, captivating journey; a glimpse of heaven and hell, all for the price of one year in our trip through eternity."

He offers a blunt critique of the way the war was - and was not - fought in those initial years and spares no criticism for some of his immediate superiors and the leaders in Washington. The journal he kept and now shares with the reader provides insights that are frank and honest, like the opposing opinions quoted from a letter written home in May 1966 ("...all the men and money we are spending, I'm afraid is for naught.") to one a couple months later in July 1966 ("We are so mighty they can never hope to defeat us.").

The culmination of the story is his cathartic return to Viet Nam in 2007 (with a humanitarian mission) and reunion with two Vietnamese girls - now women - with whom he had developed a deep and emotional bond during his deployment. Reuniting with them helped close the wounds of his war experience that had never healed. As he writes, "Some memories from Nam are never lost; moreover, they become baggage we carry around the rest of our lives." He calls his return "an inspirational form of therapy...I could feel emotional wounds healing; the sensation of bad karma literally burning off my soul layer by layer. An aperture in my heart was being filled with God's grace." And if you've got a heart, you cannot help but be moved by the story he tells of his needle-in-a-haystack tracking down of and reuniting with these two women.

The thread running through the book, which I did not expect and which makes this narrative all that more poignant, was Gorman's religious faith. Throughout he shares his faith and strong Catholic upbringing, which was key to how he was able to cope with the war. Prayer was a regular part of his daily life and is reflected in how he approached his role as an officer and as a caring, compassionate man who was so challenged and conflicted by the situation in which he found himself. Despite how he felt toward those North Vietnamese soldiers and guerillas who were killed by his unit, he found it in himself to say prayers over their bodies. But by year's end even he was insensitized, becoming apathetic and indifferent to death, admitting he "desperately needed to crawl back up out of the rabbit hole."

Join Gorman in the rabbit hole to share in his eye-opening account and experience an enriching journey of your own.

"Fire Mission: The World of Nam-a Marine's story" is a great true story. This book captures your attention by describing harrowing experiences during the war. It exposes some of the rules that were enforced by the U.S. military that made success very difficult for it's soldiers. And it beautifully and vividly describes the Vietnam backdrop that hosts such a gory war. The author's travels back to the country in 2007 create an interesting twist, because he finds two women he had befriended while in Nam in the 60's. Highly recommended!

Both a piece of literary artistry and passionate activism, "Red"'s audience appeal is the broadest of any book I've ever read. The book's structure, both wild and bounded by cadences of space, conforms strategically to Ms. Williams' conceptual take on the color red - red represents heat, anger, unpredictability, the lifeblood of the earth that runs through human beings and all earth's creatures, and is concentrated in the searing deserts of the American West where Ms. Williams lives. A thematic tapestry though it is, it is, at its core, a living breathing message presented selflessly and succinctly by a woman who I believe understands the need for a lifelong journey down the parallel rails of human and non-human nature until these rails converge. I recommend this book highly.

When Terry Tempest Williams starts this book with her simple equation place + people = politics, you know you've started reading a book meant to have political impact. But as the equation states, and as any TTW reader knows, you will be reading about place and about people, and you will be reading about these things as seen through the honest open heart of Terry Tempest Williams.

Red is a collection of stories, poems, journal entries and thoughts centered in one place, the redrock desert of southern Utah. While reading Red I found myself feeling similarities with it and Steinbeck's The Long Valley and The Pastures of Heaven. Like both of those books, Red tells the different stories of separate people and the one place that connects them. But unlike those books, the stories in Red span hundreds of years. The place remains relatively unchanged through time. But the people and civilizations pass through this unchanging landscape living, making their mark on the land, and dying. TTW tells these stories in geologic time-desert time. The people stay connected.

Hands connect the people. Hands appear everywhere in the book. Hands are the link between past, present and future. Hands come from the past in geologic forms with Anasazi handprints on clay pots and redrock walls, and a sharp obsidian chip "worked by ancient hands". They are in the present in biologic forms with a hand sliced open by the same sharp obsidian chip; one hand on the belly of a petroglyph while the other rests on a human belly in the present; and the story of children holding out hands to catch the desert's tears that drip from ferns. Then in the final paragraph hands are formed in prayer: "The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint....Wild mercy is in our hands."

I enjoy reading Terry Tempest Williams. Her writing seems to always reach out and touch me. She's done it again, and this time with Red hands.

Terry Tempest Williams created this book to fight for Wilderness with the best tool she has, her writing. The beauty of her words hang in the air and cut like a knife. When asked by a friend why she writes, Williams responds: "I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of my anger and into my passion. I write from the stillness of night anticipating - always anticipating. I write to listen. I write out of silence. ...I write because it is the way I talk long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness."

Terry Tempest Williams is without a doubt one of the finest writers to tackle the intricacies of the American West in literature of any sort. Carrying her own torch is impressive enough, but Williams also evokes the activism and urgent motivation that calls us to appreciate, respect and save our remaining western wilderness that was so powerfully put into words by Edward Abbey. I have reviewed a portion of "Red" before (see "Desert Quartet"), so I will limit this review to the remainder of "Red".

Williams carries on the great and ancient tradition of storytelling to raise consciousness about uniquely Western, and specifically Colorado Plateau, issues. From the Hopi and Navajo peoples, down through the early American explorers, the proverbial cowboys and the present activist community, storytelling has been a central method of encapsulating emotion, opinion and experience into messages that have wide appeal. Williams, in stories such as "Coyote's Canyon" here in "Red", presents her powerful vision of an environmental movement wrapped in the spiritual connection with the stark, often harsh, always awe inspiring desert and given wings by action. Like Abbey, Williams does not shy away from controversy, and her opening to the title essay is a list of places that strangely grows longer each time I contemplate the names set forth. Williams gets personal here, and the blunt approach of listing over a hundred places brings to my mind the fact that I have walked on much of that ground... and that I have seen the critical need to protect these remaining places from the industrious uses and agricultural manipulation that has occured on the infinitely vaster balance of the Colorado Plateau. In this way, "Red" has demonstrated its effectiveness. Some may say that as a resident of California I might have no reason to comment on Utah... and I would, as Williams exhorts in "Red", flatly disagree. Every one of us has a responsibility to work toward a better world, and Williams manages to say this without preaching it or patronizing the reader. (Besides, my mother lives in southern Utah, and I have walked hundreds of miles of that beautiful land...).

In summary, "Red" is another jewel of a book from Terry Tempest Williams. I am glad to see "Desert Quartet" back in print, though I sorely miss Mary Frank's wonderful illustrations that were in the original. This is a book which is not a difficult read, nor a scholarly treatise... rather, it is a frank, realistic look at a serious challenge facing the United States right now.

This book made me feel very guilty that I am not out there taking a stand on conservation, supporting a cause, or putting my land into a conservation easement. Her passion as well as commonsense about wild areas is contagious! She clearly defines the political and social situations surrounding land use through a variety of short stories ranging from disagreements within her family to lyrical myth. Even though Red is about the Southwest US, it is about land use everywhere. As with all Williams's books, the writing is marvelous.
This should be required reading for everyone who deals with land use (yes, developers included), is passionate about conservation regardless of what part of the world they live in, and all who recognize the need for wild places to sooth our souls and give us some perspective on life.

This book was a gift that I put on the shelf and ignored for a long time. I have been using it a lot lately. It is well researched and informative. It is possible to plant and maintain a beautiful desert garden just with this book. The only thing I would change or include is color pictures. The descriptions and drawings are good but many desert plants are similar and color plates would be very helpful.

This is a very beneficial book for any Southwest gardener (sepecially those of us in New Mexico). So many Xeric books focus on either the low desert zone in Arizona or the High Plains in Coplorado - they are of little help to those of us in the Chihuahuan Desert. This book covers all of the zones completely and accurately.

Growing Desert Plants is a life saver (it also saved me a lot of money by helping me identify those plants to avoid for New Mexico).

This is a MUST for anyone serious about Xeric landscapes!

"When I have questions about desert gardening, especially in the high desert, I oftern reach for my copy of Growing Desert Plants-From Windowsill to Garden" SUNSE

I loved the book it was very good with the location and territory. The story will get you in its grip and you won't want to put the book down. I think the book was very well written and can't wait for the next book to come out so I can find out what else Reb gets into. If the author gets into the detail about the rest of the stories he will get lots of attention.

Good stuff, a solid story with wonderful historic color. Leaves one looking for book two.

It will keep you in the trail of the adventure of Cliff from Ga to Wy after the war of the states, just waiting for the next event to happen. You will be like me, waiting to get the second book in the series from T H Bear.

John Murray is one of the best writers on the West practicing today, perhaps the best. He has authored or edited more than forty books including such classics as Desert Awakenings, Cactus Country, and the highly acclaimed American Nature Writing series.

This book is a collection of fifteen essays and fifteen stories, both fiction and nonfiction, that celebrate what Murray describes as the most beautiful desert in the American Southwest, the Red Rock Desert. It is loosely located in a triangle shape anchored by the Gates of Ladore to the north, the Grand Wash Cliffs to the southwest, and the Zuni Mountains on the southeast. All things considered, a pretty good boundary description for the Colorado Plateau and the four-corners area. Indeed, the twenty-one locations of his stories and essays are in southern Utah, northern Arizona, and western Colorado.

In his incomparable style of graceful prose and lyrical musings Murray takes the reader into the world of form and color that define such diverse locations as Monument Valley, Escalante Canyon, Navajo Mountain, Grand and Coyote Gulch, Wilson Mesa, Professor Valley, the Burr Desert and a host of other locations that form this wonderland of incredible beauty and harmony and time and space. Using the desert as a metaphor the stories tell of life and death, greed, togetherness and separation, hope and despair and a myriad of other conditions that are so like the West itself. The essays describe the ever changing beauty and danger of the rivers and canyons and space, indeed all of the flora and fauna that comprise the Red Rock Desert and reveals Murray's deep affection for, and encyclopedic knowledge of, this special place. The following from the Afterword will give the reader an idea of the special talent of Murray: "I only know this. There are few things as beautiful as the shapes a desert river carves in the rock of a country, or the way a canyon rose holds it wine-colored blossom toward the sun, or the sound of the wind as you climb to the summit of a solitary peak. To have been among these places is to have known a happiness not often found elsewhere in this world."
Truly a special book about a special place.

John A. Murray's latest book, "Another Country: Encounters with the Red Rock Desert," is a tour de force. Murray has created a new genre, alternating non-fiction nature writing with gutsy, O. Henry-surprising short stories. A lesser writer might founder with this format, but Murray brings home the goods.

From a touching elegy for his mother ("Sandpainting") to hard-ball, edgy murder and action ("The World Behind the Sun"), the author writes with a deft, sure hand and leaves no false notes.

Tying the work together is the place, the sun-splashed, crimson walls of the Four Corners region, Hillerman country, Abbey country - and, now, Murray country. You can't fail to want to grab your sleeping bag, lace up your boots, and head out for a hike to the Red Rock wilderness after reading this book. And after reading the title story, a gut-wrencher with a surprise ending, you'll also remember to bring along a gallon or two of water.

This book is great stuff. Buy it.

This is a collection of Biggles stories. They aren't the 'Biggles' of the baby-3 category. This is war story stuff of the ripping yarns and glorious empire style, better suited to 10+ years old.

Biggles has always been a favorite, even though the British Empire and its various codes are more a memory these days. But they introduce younger readers to (a somewhat sanitized) view of war. There is no glory in the war itself, but there is in a man's courage. Quite a few people get killed and injured, often in nasty ways (crashing and burning in an aircraft is not a pleasant death, neither is being machine-gunned). Without being too keen on the war, Johns does describe its horror in terms that younger readers can understand. It's better than TV drama these days, and does focus on the good points of what keeps people going in difficult times.

I read this book and used it extensively in helping me in my hiking in the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. Thanks to The Author! There are lots of unexplored areas in this Reserve, and he really presented each of these trails in great detail. The photo's were great and just hope that this area of southwest Utah is forever preserved, cause it needs to be. A must read for all hikers in Southwest Utah.

My 16 month old son LOVES this book. It's his absolute favorite and he'll sit by himself and look at it for several minutes at a time.

As river go the San Juan, which orginates in the southern Colorado mountains, snakes across southern Utah and finally joins the Colorado river, is not technically challenging to river runners or lusted after by dam builders. It is not generally known outside its geographical region in widespread myth and legend, as is the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. Ah, but to those fortunate few who have navigated its meandering course by boat or foot it is truly a special place with scenes reminiscent of uncut diamonds.
Recently, while visiting a bookstore in Flagstaff, I discovered a writer that is generally unknown outside the geographic region of the four corners area but that exhibits special qualities worthy of the readers time, not unlike the San Juan.
Waterlines is a wonderfully written book of poetry about the author's fifteen years experience on the San Juan River in particular and the Colorado Plateau in general that will immerse the reader in an area that you will not soon forget. This slim volume is unique not only for its exquisite writing but for the attention to detail provided by the author. Walka not only is a keen observer of the River proper but also of the "...names and histories and relationships of the locals-the rocks and river channels, plants and animals...native and newcomers, settlers and adventures..." Thus, the reader is treated to an unusual vies of the landscape and "...local gossip, of the spirit and teachings of a place." In reading the book I was reminded of noted author Gretel Ehrlich's comment of landscape: "I like to think of landscape not as a fixed place, but as a path that is unwiding before my eyes, under my feet. To see and know a place is a contemplative act. It means emptying our minds and letting what is there, in all its multiplicity and endless variety, come in."
Walka has done that with this book. This is a writer with special talents and a perfect example of a small publisher finding and publishing a first rate writer. Highly recommended.

One perspective many "vette" people should read. Makes me wanna re-do my career choice (I should have been an auto engineer). Read it, and you'll understand the many facets involved in auto design and fabricating along with personal "differences". Just read it and you'll know what I mean.

If you want to know why GM had trouble building great cars in the 1990's you only have to read this book. This is the story of the workers at Chevy going out on a limb to build the best car possible, and how the GM system got in their way.

All Corvettes Are Red (the story of the C5-generation Corvette's development) is undoubtedly the best "biography" of any Corvette generation, from C1 - C6. Author James Schefter's descriptive retelling of corporate politics and personality conflicts, all through the car's development, reveal many problems within GM's culture that exist even today. A must read for all C5 Corvette owners, past, present & future.

The Chevy Corvette is one of America's most innovative cars, serving as our country's first sports car that boasted four-wheel disc brakes, independent suspension and V-8 injected power.

Because the Corvette has always been an engineering marvel, it would have been very easy for author James Schefter to get caught up in the technical details of the rebirth of the Corvette in 1997 - but, he doesn't. Although he shares detailed and significant information about the car, his words also allow readers to feel the sheer excitement of the Vette's innovative new rise to glory.

Schefter also clearly defines car jargon for readers who aren't auto body shop experts, thereby creating a broad audience for his book.
He doesn't shy away from sharing the many challenges that designers, production staff and engineers faced when recreating a car legend - and yet, the overwhelming feeling in this book is one of success and triumph.

Most of the content is fairly dry reading. Contains some interesting facts.