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Comrades : Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals
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List Price:
$11.00
Fitness-Health-Care Price:
$10.78
Your Savings: $ 0.22 ( 2% )
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 920.710973
EAN: 9780743200745
ISBN: 0743200748
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: 2000-09-07
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Editorial Reviews:
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From the author of Undaunted Courage and D-Day comes this celebration of male friendship, taken both from the pages of history and from Ambrose's own life. Acclaimed historian Stephen Ambrose begins his examination with a glance inward -- he starts this book with his brothers, his first and forever friends, and the shared experiences that join them for a lifetime, overcoming distance and misunderstandings. He writes of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had a golden gift for friendship and who shared a perfect trust with his younger brother Milton in spite of their apparently unequal stations. With great feeling, Ambrose brings to life the relationships of the young soldiers of Easy Company who fought and died together from Normandy to Germany, and he describes with admiration three who fought in different armies on different sides in that war and became friends later. He recounts the friendships of Lewis and Clark and of Crazy Horse and He Dog, and he tells the story of the Custer brothers who died together at the Little Big Horn. Comrades concludes with the author's moving recollection of his own friendship with his father. "He was my first and always most important friend. I didn't learn that until the end, when he taught me the most important thing, that the love of father-son-father-son is a continuum, just as love and friendship are expansive."
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A really interesting book, especially for men
Comment: I happened to read a condensed version of this book in Reader's Digest. Even though it's about men and their relationships, it was interesting to me (a female). I decided to purchase a copy for my sons and my son-in-law because it's an uplifting and encouraging book. There aren't many out there regarding men and their relationships to other men.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great theme treated without much depth
Comment: Stephen Ambrose wrote some good, seriously researched history books, but intermittently would publish some short volumes that seemed excerpted from his ambitious ones. They seemed to have been published for gift-giving occasions, like Christmas or birthdays. This short book seems to be one of them. His examination of some 'male bonding' between and among biological and comradely brothers is a bit thin, except perhaps for the chapter about himself and his own "brothers." He may have done it for the money; that's fine. Regardless, this book suffers from a cursory examination of some important relationships (Eisenhower brothers, Lewis & Clark, etc.) Toward the end of his career he told Charlie Rose on the latter's interview show that he was 'going to study war no more' and focus on writing about other aspects of history. Well, Christmas time rolled around and there was yet another retelling of some WWII material. The value in a book with an excellent theme of the nature of male friendship is that it may get some people interested in the subject matter history so it motivates them to read and learn more--which right now in our country would be a definite boon.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The audio version is very good
Comment: Ambrose's stories of male friendship would be good in any format, but why read what Ambrose wrote when you can hear him read it to you? There is the added benefit of hearing Ambrose's emphasis on a phrase, his light-hearted tone in some areas and, even more important to the emotional punch of some of the stories, hearing his voice break at particularly touching moments (perhaps the most touching was a comment that is highlighted in HBO's 'Band of Brothers'. A veteran of Easy Company is asked by his grandson, "Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?" "No. I served in a company of heroes.")
Ambrose focuused on the friendship he and his brothers share, his friends from college, from work, the friendships of Lewis and Clark, Dwight Eisenhower and his brother Milton, Lewis and Clark, the men of Easy Comapny in 'Band of Brothers', the friendship of men who fought against one another in war but meet again as old men and the friendship between Ambrose and his father. I was surprised that he did not mention the friendship that he shares with his sons since he did the friendship between he shared with his father.
Ambrose comments on the beauty of friendship between old men - no rivalry, nothing but support and love. He notes that he can't wait until he is old and can enjoy such friendships. Sadly, Ambrose died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 66.
I give this one a grade of A-
Customer Rating:
Summary: An easy read, good but not great
Comment: This is a very short book, more a collection of short essays than a cohesive treatise on male friendships. The book praises male friendships, using the friendships between Eisenhower and Patton, Custer and his brothers, and Crazy Horse and He Dog as examples. But most of the book deals with the author, his friendships, and his relationships with his father and brothers. These parts of the book are somewhat self-congratulatory yet sad at the same time, because it seems that Ambrose 's relationship with his father was ultimately unsatisfying, though he claims otherwise. For example, the only conversation that the author had with his father about God or faith, apparently, was a brief conversation during a car ride in which they both agreed that there must be a heaven, since Abraham Lincoln would surely have gone to heaven. The author also alludes to, but ultimately skims over, his own alcohol abuse. (If his friendships were so great, as he claims, why did he need to drink so much?) Overall, though, the book was enjoyable and thought provoking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Little Diffirent
Comment: This is an easy, one day read about friendships. Not a bad book, but we are so used to the brilliance of Ambrose that we, or me anyway, may have had higher expectations than this book brought. It was a pretty good read, but most of all it made me want to read more of some of the friendships included. I'm an Ambrose fan so am glad to have this effort in my library.
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