Rating: 
Summary: Rotten to the Corps
Review: According to Bing West, a former Marine combat infantryman and assistant secretary of defense, far from telling the story of The Universal Soldier -- the grunt's unadorned truth, as reviewers have intimated -- "Jarhead" is the over-written memoir of someone who did not experience any serious combat (Swofford experienced no firefights and only two shellings in Desert Storm). During his short stay in the Corps, Swofford, according to his own story, either told tall tales or committed criminal acts under oblivious leaders whom he does not name. Either way, this is not how combat soldiers behave. "Jarhead" is to nonfiction what "Platoon" was to the movies.
Rating:
Summary: what a joke
Review: I was one of the Marines who served with swofford and I have to say I am embarrassed by this disgusting account. Not only was he a depressed and often whining individual but this book does not do justice to the fine men we served with. Swofford was not a QUALIFIED sniper but just a guy they got from a line company to fill in the blanks. he was also a man they should never have let join the Corps to begin with. Obvious mental problems led him to write a book that was nothing more than a lame attempt to make a buck and portray himself as some sort of tortured soul. I served a total of 12 years and I will still say that I am immensely proud to have served with those fine Marines that were STA 2/7. Every day I remember something about those beautiful guys and I will never forget them. Especially our friend Troy Collier who was tragically killed driving his truck one morning. My memories of that guy are great. I always remember him pointing out his favorite runner (he read runners world i think it was) some guy with a lions mane for hair who wore space age glasses while running! Those men deserve better than this and I sincerely hope Swofford will fix himself.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book, I think
Review: I just finished the book this afternoon and happened to hear Swofford speak at the LA Festival of Books yesterday. I also just spent the last few minutes going through all the reviews posted here. It seems the former Marines who vouch for his account out number those who don't, but I'm not a former Marine and can't say for sure he is telling it like it is. Regardless, it is a heck of a read. I mention seeing Swofford yesterday because some reviews seem to question Swofford's loyalty to the Corp. I can say my strong impression yesterday from what he said and how he acted was that he is still very proud to have been a Marine.
Rating:
Summary: COMIC BOOK FICTION: NOT REALITY
Review: It is unfortunate that what seems to be the first book written about the first Gulf War from a combatant's perspective should be purveyed as a memoir and work of non-fiction when it is, in fact, largely a work of over-dramatized fiction. Sure, Swofford gets some things right. He accurately depicts the dates that he started and completed basic training, he gets the dates right for his time in country, he gets the weights and capabilities right of the different weapons systems. But what about the rest? What the uninformed and uninitiated believe to be scintillating and insightful truths about what it's like "out there" are in fact colorful tales, the equivalent of "urban legends" for the military. Swofford admits that he started the work intending it to be fiction, and then decided to "adapt" it to his actual recollections. The trouble is, he largely failed in making this adaptation. The work remains, in essence, largely inconsistent with reality. It is doubtful that Swofford himself actually believes in this as a memoir.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad - but it's about Swofford, not the Marine Corps
Review: Seems like a lot of reviewers bought this book thinking they would read an homage to the Corps. It's not that (anything but). Rather it is a personal account of what it was like for one man, Anthony Swofford, to be a Marine in the early 90s. The account is not pretty, but mostly because Swofford is not -- he is a drunk from a bad family who seems to care more about dead Iraqi soldiers than his own comrades. Now, he apparently is trying to elbow his way into literary society by putting down the working class men in the Marines. That said, it's still a good book. It reads quick, and you will be hard pressed to find a similar account. You can learn a lot about what it's like to be deployed and wait for battle. There are some good moments too, about the clash between civilian and military cultures.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful, grim and necessary book
Review: As a prospective soldier, I found this book to cut to the human heart of the soldier. His book confirmed in me the necessity of confronting fear and becoming a man through the military, and also the necessity of keeping one's humanity. It reminds us all that there are costs of war far beyond just bombed-out buildings and combat casualties. This isn't for the feint of heart, this is for those that want or need the real story of what happened in those far away sands.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but depressing
Review: I served in the Corps at the same time as Mr Swofford, so many of the places and some of the names are familiar. Also familir are some of the feelings, and he does a good job at articulating them. While my tour in the USMC (and life in general, apparently) was not nearly as depressingly hellish as his was, it struck a bone or two. I caught myself feeling rather torn while reading this book - on one hand a little angry at him for painting such a broadly negative picture, on the other, proud of him for having the stones to air it out. Over all, good book.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious and juvenile
Review: I bought this book and was hooked in the first page. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there. You never get to the fighting, since he didn't do any. He trained to be a killer and never took a shot; just wept over dead Iraqis. This guy probably took a lot of heat from real Marines, since they don't tolerate whiners who think the're better than their rank. And he didn't measure up to his. (Oh, my -- are you and your broken, drunken buddies going to look me up and beat on me for "a day or an hour or a lifetime.") This guy is a disappointment to the Iowa Writers program as well as to the Marine Corps.
Rating:
Summary: I've got a story......
Review: When I graduated from boot camp the Drill Instructor told the platoon: If you take any large group of people there will allways be 10% of that group who just don't get it.
He said we should try to locate those people as quickly as possible, and stay as far away from them as possible. In peace time they will get you into trouble, and in combat they will get you killed. Great advice.
Rating: 
Summary: Fight Club
Review: A gloves-off recounting of one Marine's journey from recruit to veteran. Swofford was an intelligent, bookreading Marine, unlike so many of the simple fighters around him. By his own account, he hated what the Corps made him, yet admits that his post-service life entailed in part a slippage from the keen edge the Corps honed him to. The narrative flow is all chopped up into flash-forwards, flash-backs, and whatnot. This is completely unnecessary, as Swofford's story is compelling enough to be told straight. Maybe the editors insisted on shuffling the story, in order to keep the attention of video-impaired Gen-X readers. Memoirs by bitter ex-soldiers are nothing new, not even in America. What makes this more than a big Bronx cheer at the military is Swofford's evident intelligence and powers of observation--sniper skills that just happened to translate into book-writing talent. A Marine who reads Nietzsche in a bar and The Iliad in the desert? We're lucky he survived. And the fact that he thinks the war was all a put-up job, all about oil, is no barrier to granting him a hearing. (I doubt that he runs everywhere in his home town of Portland.) Since the book is a jumble of vignettes, it's no sin to pick out the best ones. Years after being discharged, he goes on a bender with a former comrade. They drink and run and sing cadence and slap each other around, drunkenly angry at each other "for changing, for slipping". He gets into an argument with some German tourists about Desert Storm not being a "real" war. He answers that the significance of the war won't be known for years, and that he underwent hardship, uglines, and terror and saw death, just like every other frontline soldier in any war. He idly threatens a comrade with death, at sadistic length, for getting Swofford in trouble. In the war itself, he happens onto a bombed out Iraqi encampment, and joins the dead Iraqi soldiers around their campfire for a few moments, soaking in the ghastly impressions. The actual battle scenes are very brief and seemingly inconsequential--if you're only reading about it. Swofford indeed knew the terror of war, but his war was over so quickly that he never underwent the numbing acclimation to the terror, reported by soldier-memoirists in other wars. He never even fired his weapon in combat, his only chance being spiked by glory-hound commanders, he says. This is a good book to read together with another memoir by another Marine from another war: E. B. Sledge's _With the Old Breed_, about a Marine rifleman's war on Peleliu and Okinawa. The similarities and contrasts between these two remarkable men are as thought-provoking as their books are separately. Swofford deserves thanks for his service, and for his sacrifice--because losing faith is a sacrifice.
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