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I'm Staying with My Boys: The Heroic Life of Sgt. John Basilone, USMC |  | Authors: Jim Proser, Jerry Cutter
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
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as of 7/30/2010 23:19 MDT details
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Seller: bookmans_exchange
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 20693
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0312611447
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.545973092
EAN: 9780312611446
ASIN: 0312611447
Publication Date: February 2, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
I'm Staying with My Boys is a firsthand look inside the life of one of the greatest heroes of the Greatest Generation. Sgt. John Basilone held off 3,000 Japanese troops at Guadalcanal after his 15-member unit was reduced to three men. At Iwo Jima he single-handedly destroyed an enemy blockhouse, allowing his unit to capture an airfield. Minutes later he was killed by an enemy artillery round. He was the only Marine in World War II to have received the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and a Purple Heart and is arguably the most famous Marine of all time. I'm Staying with My Boys is the only family-authorized biography of Basilone, and it features photographs never before published. Distinctive among military biographies, the story is told in first person, allowing readers to experience his transformation, forged in the horrors of battle, from aimless youth to war hero known as "Manila John".
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 26
 great service June 29, 2010
ssmith1959
I will be looking for more WWII books thru this vendor excellant is the only word I can think of. Thank You.
 Some Reviews smack of conflict of interest... May 13, 2010
K. Patton (Houston, Texas USA)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I haven't read the book and don't plan on it as first person narratives are trite and presumptious. What I did find very entertaining and amusing were the number of reviews by Basilones relatives. Conflict of interest? Probably. I have no doubt that a lot of the extended family will bet a slice of any money that is garnered from the book or any future movie deals. The sad thing is that they hitched a ride on a lead balloon. The miniseries The Pacific is no Band of Brothers (BOB). It stinks. It stinks historically and it stinks in character development too. I never cared a wit for the characters they presented. Not like I did in BoB, and I have read Sledges, Burkins and Leckies books. The characters were cardboard cut outs of the real men. The angst protrayed by the Sledge character was moving at times but hollow. The actor playing J. Basilone was handsome enough but he protrayed a kind of mechanical bafflement. The bravado they protrayed of him on Iwo Jima was foolhardy not heroic. Did J. Basilone start to believe his own PR and think he was a "one man army" as Eisenhower said of him? If so the Japs showed him otherwise.
I'm mot belittling his courage and or bravado, we all know that youth instills a sense of invincibility. Those that survived know how naive they were going in.
I think what would be more interesting is publishing his letters and let he readers decide from his own words if he had doubts or if he was full of swagger and fooled by his own notoriety. I don't much like authors filtering or interpreting stuff for me. Its kind of the lazy man's way out. Kind of like going to church so the minister can tell you what the Bible means. Everyone has their own opinion and the majority of them are colored by their own agenda.
I personally wonder if JB wasn't a victim of his own reputation and forgot he had men to lead. Don't you think that a seasoned GySgt would have been a bit more of a leader looking out for his men, rather than getting himself killed the first day of a 5 week long campaign. Who looked after his men after he went down?
Saddly we will never know the answers.
great companion book to "The Pacific" May 8, 2010
J. H. Zimmerman (Fort Collins, Colorado United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an excellent companion to the HBO mini series, "The Pacific." It is not a technical history but gives a compelling view of life during WW 2. I found the first person usage interesting in that it created the narrative of a real person. It did not attempt to whitewash or embellish the story of a very heroic and regular guy. History is complex and cannot always be approached directly. This approach was effective, enjoyable and rewarding in a way that a direct history could not be. Well worth reading.
First Person Perspective?? Historical Details Especially Questionable April 30, 2010
father2 (England Europe)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
With the HBO series "The Pacific" currently being shown on Sky here in the UK I have been reading a number of books trying to get a feel for the Pacific war and those featured in the series.
Having already read the superb "With the Old Breed" by Eugene Sledge, I immediately looked around for a book featuring Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, who served with distinction during the Pacific war and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, October 1942 and after his death at Iwo Jima, 19th February 1945, was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously.
Wanting to learn more about John Basilone I chose "I'm Staying With My Boys" by Jim Proser, a book which apparently is highly regarded by members of John Basilone's family.
Straight away I found it strange that the author has written this book in the first person, even though John Basilone died over sixty five years ago. Jim Proser apparently felt confident presenting the book in this manner after extensive research, learning much from the Basilone family and having access to information about John Basilone and letters he wrote during his life etc. Jim Proser also writes extensively about the thoughts and motivations John Basilone had, as though he had written them down before he died or had exclusive access to the mind of John Basilone. It simply felt very odd to me, after all who can really know the mind of another person?
In fact this book feels like reading a film script which has been converted into a book, a novel style book based upon John Basilone, as opposed to a serious history book considering the life and military career of John Basilone. The author Jim Proser admits at the start of the book that many of the experiences contained in the book cannot be verified, so there will be doubts naturally whether many of the experiences actually took place or are cases of exaggeration or outright fantasy.
But where this book really falls down is the way it handles historical facts. For example after the attack upon Pearl Harbor, December 7th 1941, the United States Government held back the full facts of the Navy's losses and they were not fully released until much later. But Jim Proser has got John Basilone writing/talking about the full losses at Pearl Harbor even though he could never have known about them fully because they would have been released after he died!
Then there are other examples which demonstrate that Jim Proser has only a tentative grasp of the events surrounding the war against Japan. On page 147 for example Jim Proser states: "The Japs had been stopped at the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway where the Navy had fought them to a draw but they hadn't been turned back." Mostly total rubbish. At Midway the Japanese were planning the invasion of Midway but were taken by surprise by the US carriers. In the ensuing battle the Japanese lost four carriers and the US lost only one carrier - hardly a draw. Furthermore the Japanese were turned back from their proposed invasion of Midway, totally contrary to Jim Proser's claims.
On the same page Jim Proser claims: "The Japs were already bombing Point Moresby on the southern tip coast of New Guinea, and Australia's front door was left open. Her troops were with the British in Africa. They had no defence, except us." Australia had no defence? Not all Australia's forces were in North Africa and many Aussies were fighting alongside MacArthur's troops in the struggle against the Japanese. Indeed the efforts of Australia's finest fighting men were vital in pushing the Japanese back over the Owen Stanley Range in 1942, during the New Guinea campaign.
Personally I was so disappointed with this book, out of frustration I gave up about half way through. The book does contain some interesting facts about John Basilone's early life, but if it had been presented in some other way and if the facts could have been relied upon then it would have been a much better book. There are hardly any books on John Basilone currently available which is a shame, because his story is inspiring and provides a shining example to other young people today. Hopefully at some point a book will be produced which does justice to the life of John Basilone.
Manila John April 24, 2010
Robert Grell (Tehachapi, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Another great story from WW2. This man was incredible, never accepting defeat. Lots of great stories in this book about his time before his heroic service on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, the latter were he lost his life taking a mortar round to the head.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 26
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