Books : Born on the Fourth of July
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In association with Amazon.com
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by: Ron Kovic
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 959.70438
EAN: 9780671739140
ISBN: 067173914X
Label: Pocket
Manufacturer: Pocket
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 222
Publication Date: December 01, 1990
Publisher: Pocket
Sales Rank: 573121
Studio: Pocket
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Exceedingly honest, personal account of one young man's experience fighting in the Vietnam War.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Inspirational Memoir
Ron Kovic was an icon of the Vietnam Veterans anti-war movement in the early 1970s, as well as a powerful voice for downtrodden veterans. In his memoir "Born on the Fourth of July," he movingly recounts his journey from an ultra-patriotic youth growing up in an upstate New York suburb to an embittered disabled veteran, who wound up championing the anti-war and veteran causes. His narrative begins in combat in Vietnam where he is wounded and paralyzed, then goes to his childhood experiences; it's ... Read More
Rating:  - Sad true story
The story is poignant of this good American youth who went enlisted in the marines to fight in Vietnam in order to coma back as an Hero. Who did not have such glorious dreams ?
Alas, he was seriously injured, and returned in a wheelchair deeply traumatized. Injury was double, physical and psychological, as a former Vietnam vet and thus rejected by society.
Every holiday, patriotic, July 4, this dual wound bleeds more because this man is born on the Fourth of July (hence ... Read More
Rating: - Hard-learned lessons
Ron Kovic gives an interesting perspective into the ideas and sentiments of the 1960s. Kovic's traumatic experiences and harsh lessons help to illustrate both sides of the decade: that of the "patriot," and that of the protestor. The 1960s were a changing time in American history, and fueling these fires were the fears of Communism, war, and ultimately the shifting identity of the "enemy" as the power of the change. These factors are present in Kovic's account of civilian life both before and after ... Read More
Rating: - The story of an American Hero
While Ronnie Kovic was fighting in Vietnam I was in college playing football and baseball on scholarship. All expenses paid. People told me that I was extraordinary while Ronnie was suffering in a squalid Veterans hospital. And while he was being spit on at the Republican National convention I was learning to believe that I deserved an exceptional life and that I was better than guys like him who had somehow believed the lies our government told about how the communists were going to take over the world ... Read More
Rating:  - A never-healing wound
Ron Kovic is one of society's worst nightmares: the unquestioning youth who believed every war movie, signed up for the Marines on his 18th birthday, fully committed to combat and sacrifice...only to turn his shattered back on those same indoctrinated values, speaking out against them with rage and bitterness as he saw himself, post-injury, shoved into a corner like an embarassing mutant.
Kovic's memoir is inelegant, repetitive, self-centered; it is, simply put, not well-written. (The stream ... Read More
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