Ron Powers

My brother told me this was "the best book he'd ever read" so I went into reading it expecting that. I was fooled by the first two chapters or so and thought "Wow, this is going to be a great book!"

And then the military propaganda started. And then the "Japan was such a terrible country ... here's what it did to it's people..." The first portion of the book I have "Bullshit" and other harsh comments written along the margin because it is such bullshit and crap propaganda.

Before I was even show more half way done with the book I stopped reading it because I was enjoying it (there was nothing about this book to enjoy) and was just "hate reading it" -- hoping/believing it has to get better (my brother said it was the best book he'd ever read!) ... and also really curious how things turned out once the guys get home.

Unsurprisingly, the US Government and Military so the flag raising and the flag raisers as cash cows and IMMEDIATELY sent them on tour to sell war bonds to make money for the military so they could continue to go to battle and kill people. The boy did not even have an opportunity to get treated for the war wounds! They were immediately sent on tour.

The surprising part for me was when I eventually did a Google search to get a better idea of what happened to the guys that survived after the war, specifically the father of the author. The author had made his dad out to be this amazing man who only did right for the remainder of his life -- he served his city and his town and was on all the boards and never did anything wrong the remainder of his life. He praised his father so highly I was, like, "Surely, after this man died it came out that he was a pedophile or a serial killer."

What I found is that the father, that the book is mainly about, who was such an upright and noble man, that never wanted to discuss his role in raising the flag ... was such a humble man and his family didn't even know he was a flag raiser until after he died and they were going through his things ... was NEVER one of the flag raisers. He played the part and took all the glory that was sent his way when he was alive -- staring in two movies and going on the government funded tour, sitting to he sculpted to be depicted in the monument that was eventually made off the photo ... WAS NEVER ONE OF THE FLAG RAISERS!

This was a horrible book and is going straight into my recycling bin. If I had a fireplace or a fire pit I would use it as kindling.

Adrianne show less

As young men, both of Ron Powers' sons fell victim to schizophrenia. One killed himself. The other has achieved a measure of stability with the help of injectable anti-psychotic drugs. In No One Cares about Crazy People, Ron Powers describes the devastating impact the sons' illnesses have had on his wife and himself, as well as the sad history of mental health treatment through the ages.

Ron Powers is angry about many things, including the stigma associated with psychosis, the greed of the show more pharmaceutical industry, the continuing influence of Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist who denied the reality of mental illness, the inadequacy of the old-fashioned insane asylums, and especially the short-sightedness of the deinstitutionalization movement, which put many of the former inmates of the asylums out on the streets. This is a deeply uncomfortable book, but a necessary one. show less

Flags of Our Fathers hits firmly in the historiographic tradition of 'Boomers writing about their Greatest Generation parents', as James Bradley literally writes about his father John Bradley, Navy Corpsman and one of the six people in the famous flag raising photo on Iwo Jima. This book began in silence, the elder Bradley said almost nothing about his service or his role in the photo to his family, and exceeds the mold in a serious evaluation of the wounds of war.

Bradley follows the six show more people in the photo, his father James Bradley, Sergeant Michael Strank, Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, Ira Hayes, Harold Schultz, and Rene Gagnon, from their Great Depression childhoods, through enlistment and training, and then into the Battle of Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima was a nightmare. The entire island was riddled with fighting positions connected by a network of tunnels. Bombardment from sea and air did nothing to the bug in defenders. They would have to be pried out by Marines with rifles, grenades, and flamethrowers, at horrendous casualties. The five week was responsible for 26000 American causalities and a third of the Medals of Honors earned by the Marines Corps in the war. It was a frightful slaughter.

The Photograph is famous, but in a grim irony, entirely unmemorable at the time. The flag was raised on Mount Suribachi four days after the initial landings. Marines who had spent three days in grueling combat climbed the mountain without contact, and set up a smaller flag without photographers present. Bradley and a platoon of Easy Company was sent up with a larger flag later in the day. While simply being on Iwo Jima was heroic, the moment that the flag was raised was one of quietude. The Photograph was taken by Joe Rosenthal as a lucky snap, and became an instant icon.

Three of the six men in the photograph were already dead, killed in action, but the others were whisked off the island and became publicity figures for the 7th War Bond Drive. The survivors handled the publicity in different ways. Rene Gagnon never managed to capitalize on it in the way he thought he should, and died at 54 of a heart attack. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian, had a tragic descent into alcoholism which Bradley reads as driven by untreated PTSD. John Bradley tried very hard to forget the war, building a life as a funeral director and pillar of the community in northern Wisconsin. When reporters called, his children were instructed to say he was fishing in Canada.

Flags of our Fathers is a solid social and personal history of a key moment in the war, with some moving antiwar rhetoric. show less

There is so much good in this book, Powers' warts and all sharing of his life, his struggles with two schizophrenic sons, including the suicide of one of those boys just days before his 21st birthday, is beautiful, and brave, and does so much to humanize mental illness. In this historical moment when we demonize the mentally ill because of the acts of a few we need to raise understanding of what mental illness is and isn't. I could not be more grateful to Powers for shedding light on the show more reality of this plague that has affected, sometimes even taken, people I love. Powers also presents a compelling history of mental illness, some of which was new to me and was fascinating.

For me this book was unsuccessful in 2 areas. The first of those areas was totally understandable. Powers spent SO much time talking about his sons' music. Duplicative stories of gigs that did nothing to advance the reader's understanding or the narrative. I know Powers wanted to show that his son was important and more than his illness. That said, I don't think he needed to try so hard and I don't think many readers would have a real interest in where his 17 year old played what. Certainly the truth of his status as a musical prodigy could be told with just a few of those tales, and the fact of his admission to the esteemed programs at Interlochen and Berklee. These many (many!) digressions were simply boring and frequently led me to put down the book. Ditto on the letters home from both sons. A few of them had red flags to be sure, but mostly they were 100% unremarkable letters from well-educated high school and college aged boys to anyone they felt compelled to write. Powers tries hard to stress their extraordinary insight, but I have an 18-year old, and a lot of the observations sound like things he would say or write to me. The most remarkable thing was how little emotion was to be found in the "sane" letters. Maybe Powers left that out? From what was there the relationship seemed very distant without trust or love. These were simply reports on things going on.

My second issue with the book was more serious. Powers makes an argument that it is wrong that parents cannot commit their adult children as a matter of course. Shame on him. The mentally ill adult is an adult who needs to be allowed to make his own decisions. We don't routinely infantilize adults under our laws because it would be morally and ethically wrong to do so. In those instances where it is necessary because a person is not competent, the law allows for conservatorship. Is it difficult to get to conservatorship? Yep. And is should be. Powers tells the story of a person who had a psychotic break the day after his 18th birthday attempting to show that this is a ridiculous line being drawn. But guess what. All lines are somewhat arbitrary. All of us reach our legal majority at the same age though we are at different levels of development. All of us can collect Social Security and Medicare at the same age though many of us are healthy enough to work, and some people need those programs years earlier and cannot access them. A line is drawn based up averages, means, and medians, and traditions. Mentally ill people have the right to live by those same rules unless a threat to themselves or others (at which time there are remedies.) I found this argument offensive and cruel and dangerous, and it made the rest of the book suspect in my eyes. I cannot imagine what Powers' surviving son, Dean, thought of that thesis. I am sad and angry for him. That is not to say Power' didn't love his sons. He clearly adored them. But his desire for the law to make them perpetual children to ease his caretaking is spectacularly arrogant. show less