One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer | 
| Author: Nathaniel C. Fick
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  146 reviews
Sales Rank: 1685
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0618773436
Dewey Decimal Number: 359.96092
EAN: 9780618773435
ASIN: 0618773436
Publication Date: September 7, 2006
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Condition: Clean pages. Well-creased spine and worn cover. We ship fast!
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Product Description
If the Marines are "the few, the proud," Recon Marines are the fewest
and the proudest. Nathaniel Fick's career begins with a hellish summer
at Quantico, after his junior year at Dartmouth. He leads a platoon
in Afghanistan just after 9/11 and advances to the pinnacle?Recon?
two years later, on the eve of war with Iraq. His vast skill set puts him
in front of the front lines, leading twenty-two Marines into the deadliest
conflict since Vietnam. He vows to bring all his men home safely, and
to do so he'll need more than his top-flight education. Fick unveils the
process that makes Marine officers such legendary leaders and shares
his hard-won insights into the differences between military ideals and
military practice, which can mock those ideals.
In this deeply thoughtful account of what it's like to fight on
today's front lines, Fick reveals the crushing pressure on young leaders
in combat. Split-second decisions might have national consequences or
horrible immediate repercussions, but hesitation isn't an option. One
Bullet Away never shrinks from blunt truths, but ultimately it is an
inspiring account of mastering the art of war.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 141 more reviews...
 The real heroism of our armed forces July 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book has a beautiful grit and honesty. Fick doesn't talk up or down to the reader. He doesn't glorify or embellish the life of a marine. He doesn't judge or condemn politicians, military or brass, his superiors or his troops. He just tells his story, in a clear, resonant, powerful voice. The simplicity of his style conveys the clarity of a marine's values - honor, loyalty, duty, having the back of every other marine in your platoon.
I listened to this book unabridged on audio CD narrated by Andy Paris. His narration is exceptional - a strong, unwavering voice well-suited to the confidence of a marine officer, but also very adept at capturing Fick's battle to make sense out of war's daily insanity.
 A very sanitized, sterilized memoir July 20, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this book with a different reason in mind than most. At the time I was considering a military career and I wanted the author's insights into the commissioning process for officers in the Marines. For anyone with similar aspirations this book is an excellent read as the opening chapters include a detailed look at the process of the author's passage from starting as a raw civilian going through the rigors of OCS, TBS, MOS school and ultimately life in the service. I thoroughly enjoyed this first half of the book and found myself reading the first few chapters over and over.
However, the book takes a sharp nose-dive into mediocrity after it becomes a war memoir of the author's service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nathaniel Fick participated in the most controversial and significant historical event of our generation, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, yet at no point anywhere in this book does he offer anything resembling an opinion or judgement about the war. This is not a veteran offering his insights into his experience in war, this is a very sanitized and sterilized publicity document for a future politician looking to showcase his military service without saying anything that might offend possible future voters. Even his descriptions of combat, which are few and far between, seem scrubbed of anything that might shock or upset the reader.
If you're contemplating a miliary career as an officer and want a glimpse of OCS and TBS from the perspective of someone who has done it already then this book is required reading. But if you're looking for a deep, meanining look into the Iraq war through the eyes of a veteran who fought it then look elsewhere.
From scholar to Marine, a memoir July 13, 2008
There is a great divide in America between those in the military and those who are not. Nowhere is that divide more total than in the elite universities, where virtually no one knows anyone in the military or has any sympathy for it. This book is a very rare bridge between those two worlds. Fick graduated from Dartmouth in 1998, became an elite Marine officer, fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and then went back to graduate school. This is his memoir.
The primary subject of the book is the training that a Marine officer goes through, the transformation from an ordinary person into a warrior. It is extremely well written. The pace is relatively slow, and the reader is able to go along with Fick on his emotional journey from Ivy League student to Marine officer.
Fick happened to finish his training as an officer, just as 9/11 was happening. He thus jointed the military, when we were still at peace, and was a very junior officer, just as the war was starting. He gives an excellent account of some of the early fighting -- and early mistakes -- in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was rotated out of Iraq, just after Saddam fell, however, so his account is limited to the early war, before the counter-insurgency started. In short, a very valuable, well worth reading for many reasons, but very out of date, for those wanting to understand the Iraq War.
On Target July 3, 2008
This is a great read for those concerned with how we train our Marine Corps officers. An added bonus: an inside view on the early US incursion in Afghanistan and how we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the early days in Bagdad. I've bought at least a dozen copies for interested friends.
The single best book about Marine officers in modern war June 28, 2008
Captain Fick has done the Corps and the American public a great service with this insightful and well written book. In it, he explores what it means to be a platoon commander, responsible for many young lives while leading them into battle. Fick does not hold back in either detail or in exploring his own emotions, giving the reader the best possible sense of what it is like to be a small unit leader in the US Marine Corps.
Fick begins by detailing the process of becoming a Marine officer: Officer Candidate School, The Basic School, and the Infantry Officer's Course. He discusses the difficult and often frustrating training that he is put through, and the resulting transformation that he undergoes from young man into lean, tough Marine.
Then, through the lens of his deployments to Afghanistan with the 1st Marines and Iraq with 2nd Recon, he gives the reader a firsthand sense of the boredom, fear, and excitement of combat, the pride in seeing his platoons perform well in the most dangerous situations, and the incredible frustration at being led by weak and incompetent officers.
One Bullet Away, together with Generation Kill, the companion book written by Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright about young enlisted Marines in the same Recon platoon, is easily the best book available on the first part of the war in Iraq. It does not give a clear picture of the overall strategy or the way that the war played out on a macro-level. It is not intended to. Rather, One Bullet Away is meant to put the reader into the mind of a young Marine officer at war. For its ability to give the reader a sense of the lives of individual Marines on the ground in combat, this book is unsurpassed.
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