Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty FROM THE PUBLISHER
Since the Civil War more than 39 million men and women have answered the call to serve. Of those, 3,440 served with such uncommon valor and and extraordinary courage that they were presented with the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. Each of their heroic actionsis as unique as the person who performed it, and here more than one hundred of of America's living Medal of Honor recipients are honored and their bravery recounted by best-selling author Peter Collier and presented in duotone portraits by award-winning photographer Nick Del Calzo.
Author Biography: Nick Del Calzo traveled to more than twenty-five states over the course of five years to photograph the recipients of the Medal of Honor. He is also the creator of The Triumphant Spirit, a book of portraits and profiles of Holocaust survivors. He lives in Colorado.
Peter Collier is the author of numerous best-selling biographies of America's dynastic families, including books on the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, and the Fords, as well as Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties. He lives in northeastern California.
SYNOPSIS
The profiles of this volume honors 116 of those 137 recipients of the Medal of Honor who remain living. Each profile includes a full page b&w photo by Nick Del Calzo with the story of how the recipient earned his Medal on the facing page. Their military photos are also included. The volume includes an essay on the history of the Medal of Honor, a glossary of military terms, and description of military ground unit sizes and rank structure. There is no index. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
This group portrait of most of the living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor has an entry for each recipient, including a photo portrait at the time of the award, a summary of the medal-winning action and sometimes (though not often enough) the later career. The variety of actions documented by Collier (The Rockefellers) will impress even fairly seasoned students of military history, as will the 250 duotone portraits. They range from thumbnail period snapshots to full page close-ups of the lions in winter. Van Barfoot, of Choctaw descent, overcame minefields and German tanks in World War II. William Charette was one of numerous medics who fought with a first-aid kit and raw courage. Air Force Maj. George Day was a Vietnam War POW who received his medal for tenacious resistance in the Hanoi Hilton. Eugene Fluckey of the USS Barb is the last surviving submariner of World War II to receive the medal. The six-foot-seven-inch Robert Foley won the medal in a bunker complex in Vietnam and retired as a lieutenant general. And Shizua Hiyashi had to overcome prejudice as well as Germans to have his DSC upgraded to the medal 55 years after he won it in Italy. Courage is a key component of every medal recipient, and so is loyalty to both country and comrades, superior skills and dogged determination. (Nov. 11) Forecast: This makes an excellent companion to the recent Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words (Forecasts, July 14). These two titles will figure into a Veteran's Day events at 30 bookstores across the country on November 11, with appearances by recipients. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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