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Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals
by Stephen E. Ambrose
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc (1999-10)
ISBN: 1568957777
EAN: 9781568957777
Dewy Decimal #: 302.34081
Hardcover: 165 pages
Edition: Largeprint
SKU: 28324
Condition: New
Comments: NOT A LARGE PRINT! THE HARDBACK BOOK! SCHUSTER, 1999. THE UNABRIDGED 1ST EDITION. 1ST PRINT. WITH GREAT ILLUSTRATIONS! HARDCOVER BOOK W/GILT LETTERING, DUST JACKET and pages are BRAND NEW! Ships immediately w/FREE tracking, GREAT PACKAGING. To Overseas, will be shipped by AIR MAIL.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
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 next tells 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 emotion, Ambrose describes the relationships of the young soldiers of Easy Company who fought and died together from Normandy to Germany, and he recalls with admiration three unlikely friends who fought in different armies in that war. He recounts the friendships of Lewis and Clark and of Crazy Horse and He Dog. Ambrose remembers and celebrates the friends he has made and kept throughout his life. Comrades concludes with the author's recollection of his own friendship with his father. He was my first and always most important friend, Ambrose writes. 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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Amazon.com Review
This tender book about male friendship will probably surprise those readers who know Stephen Ambrose best for his histories of World War II and biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Born in 1936, Ambrose acknowledges in the introduction to his memoir that men of his generation do not speak or write easily about their feelings. Yet male bonding is a strong theme in all of his work, as selections from previous writings on Lewis and Clark, Richard Nixon, Crazy Horse, and General Custer that are included in Comrades prove. What is more interesting, however, is the more personal material on Ambrose's two brothers (their youthful competitiveness mellowed into mature devotion), fellow historian Gordon Mueller ("my dearest and closest friend"), and several college buddies. After losing touch with each other during the harried years of career building and child rearing, these men rediscovered intimacy in middle age. Most moving of all is the closing chapter on Ambrose's father, an old-fashioned authority figure and disciplinarian quick to criticize his sons, but always available to sustain and guide them. The warming of that rather stern relationship is clearly one of the great joys of his son's adult life. It makes a fitting finale to a dignified but strikingly sweet memoir. --Wendy Smith
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Customer Reviews
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A really interesting book, especially for men
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-30
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.
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A great theme treated without much depth
Rating  (3)
Date: 2007-09-07
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.
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The audio version is very good
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-04-05
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
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-
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An easy read, good but not great
Rating (3)
Date: 2007-03-22
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.
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A Little Diffirent
Rating (3)
Date: 2006-11-19
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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