I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story

by Rick Bragg

Book Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author lends his remarkable narrative skills to the story of the most famous POW this country has known. In I Am a Soldier,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400042577
• ISBN13: 9781400042579
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

I am A Soldier Too : The Jessica Lynch Story

[[ASIN:1400077478 I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story This is a great book which should be mandatory reading in all high schools. O yes, she IS a hero.

A very good investment!

I just finished reading Jessica Lynch's book, and I enjoyed reading about her side of the story and about her family. The book has 200+ pages, and I finished it in three days. It was just too good to put down! If you're really into politics, then this probably isn't for you. If you want to read about an intriguing young woman's life, how she was miraculously rescued (if she had been rescued even a few days later, she would have died), and how she's adjusting to her current life, I think you will find this book a worthwhile investment. Jessica Lynch has been through alot in her short life, and I don't believe any of us have a right to be critical of her. She is a very courageous young woman. It takes a strong person to survive on such little hope, but by the grace of God and with many prayers lifting her up, she did, and she deserves our respect, not our critism.

Inspirational Jessica

Jessica Lynch became an international figure while she was missing, she was already an Icon before the Rescue and the infamous Washington Post story (undoubtedly planted by Feminists and their cohort Dana Priest).Thus Jessica Lynch was NOT a creation of the Pentagon, she was already in the public's imagination. What has happened is that the Right, the Left, the feminists, the anti-feminists, the multiculturalists and a myriad of other greedy agenda groups have all cynically sought to exploit her. A plague on all of them.In those missing 3 Hours, Jessi endured something which is too horrible to fully contemplate. There is no doubt she was raped and tortured; the massive secrecy surrounding her after her rescue is evidence of this (at Walter Reed, she had to do physiotherapy alone, and was isolated from other soldiers with armed guards around her, and medical staff were told not to utter a word to anyone).Unlike Melissa Coleman, Jessi has had the guts to reveal what happened to her, and has stood up to the Feminists.When she first speaks to her father she says "Daddy, they broke my arm", which suggests that those horrible memories are lurking.Though of course Feminists and the politically correct will dismiss this with their usual callousness.Jessica Lynch is a noble, honest girl, whose dignity shines above the cretins who bash her or seek to exploit her.She has served her country twice...first by being there, then by being honest. We need more people like her.BTW: Why is it alright for Shwarzkopf, Hackworth, McNabb, Clark and others to write books, but not Jessica? At least she is modest and doesn't big herself up, which all the above have done.

It's good to know what REALLY happened

I'm amazed and appalled at the criticisms of some of the other reviewers here: it is one thing to express an opinion of a book (although many of them don't seem to even mention the book itself)- it is something else entirely to attack the character of a person who has faced a terrible ordeal, and its very public aftermath, with honesty and courage. Shame on those who say that Jessica should not be telling her story! she has every right to, and unlike all of those who told it first, she is telling nothing but the simple truth, and with obvious compassion and admiration for her fellow soldiers. This is a gripping story and Rick Bragg treats it with the dignity it deserves. This book is a well-written and inspiring account of what this young woman and her family went through, and I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend it.

All Over But The Healing

Rick Bragg says that he often writes about people who step in front of a moving train. That analogy certainly works for his just released book about Jessica Lynch. I can think of no writer more qualified to tell Jessica's story than Bragg. He is a first class journalist, having won the Pulitzer, and comes from a region of the country, rural Alabama, not unlike the West Virginia where Lynch grew up. (Since I grew up in rural East Tennessee, I'll take the temerity to make that judgment.)Although Bragg had to have written this book quickly, it does not suffer from haste or sloppy writing. Bragg doesn't waste words-- and while I miss his humor, I understand that what he is about here is serious business. His account of the ambush of the now famous ill-fated convoy from the 507th Maintenance Company captures the immediacy and horror of battle. It's as good writing about the awfulness of war as you'll read.The narrative is slim. That's as it should be. The event in Lynch's life that the world wants to know about is her capture and what happened to her while she was a POW. There is little of that information available and we may know now most of what we'll ever know. Bragg also discusses Lynch's growing up in West Virginia as well as her immediate and extended families. Her appeal is obvious: she is hardly more than a teenager, blonde, green-eyed, fragile and, from everything Bragg says, honest. She is our daugher, sister, cousin, and rightly or wrongly, hers is the face the public most associates with the American soldier in Iraq.Jessica Lynch does not consider herself a hero. (I'm reminded that Senator John McCain, another famous American POW, said that there was nothing heroic about getting captured by the enemy.) Bragg discusses the initial sainthood bestowed on her by the government and media and the later disillusionment in some circles because she didn't immediately disown the hype and inaccurate information that was fed to the hungry public. They expect this from a twenty year old who has had many of her bones broken and crushed, was suffering from malnutrition (it is the consensus of everybody involved that she would have died shortly if she had not been rescued by U. S. forces) and in her own words "cannot go to the bathroom." As one of her neighbors said, "She was courageous to do what she done in the first place. . . I couldn't have done it. . . How was she going to set the record straight from days of surgery and fleeting consciousness?" If she is not a hero-- does it matter-- she comes across as a decent, brave young woman. Her best friend was Lori, a Native American, whom Bragg pays tribute to, along with Lynch's other comrades who died in that awful massacre. The Lynch family, along with the Palestine community, are decent, salt-of-the-earth types as well. I bet I could identify most of those dishes the women brought in as the family awaited news of their "baby."Lots of potato salad and banana pudding. It was heartening to read that Mr.