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The Price of Honor

The Price of Honor

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Extremely well written; good character development
Review: I have read two of Hack's other books. Hack is a world class writer and has done an excellent job for his first "fiction". If you like well written military action novels, this one is for you! Look out Captain Dickie, you have some competition. I will always buy books written by Hack as his books always hold your interest.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An unusually fine novel
Review: THE PRICE OF HONOR is a strong, suspenseful story about vivid characters and has a good deal to say about the modern military and the modern media. Hackworth's protagonist, Sandy Caine, is fascinating. Unilke most writers of 'military fiction,' Hackworth's principal female character, Abigail Mancini, is fully believable. When the dust settles, I'm going to read THE PRICE OF HONOR again. May it stay in print forever!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent book, riveting story, had trouble putting it down
Review: I enjoy military stories like this only if they are authentic. Too many times they sound phoney, but not "Price of Honor". The military references are accurate. The characters are well developed. The back-room-dirty-deals David Hackworth descibes are right on, they happen. If you like Clancy, Coonts, or Marcinko, read this book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Terrific
Review: I have all of Hack's books. This is his first fiction and it is great. Plenty of action and since we know he knows what it's like it is really a page turner.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hack outwrites Clancy, Coonts and Marcinko!
Review: Having read all of the books by Col. Hackworth, Stephen Coonts, and most of the Tom Clancy and Richard Marcinko efforts, I feel Col. Hackworth has topped them all with "The Price of Honor". His vivid description and prose can only come from someone that has been there and done that. Weaving the past with the current events, makes this a very intriquing and soul searching novel. It also helps us question the current status of Our Military and their Political Leadership. Caleb Tarleton (Capt. USAR 1959-1967)

Rating: 0 stars
Summary: These good words were sent to me by a longtime friend.
Review: By Colonel Carl Bernard, USA (Ret)

David Hackworth's choice of a novel to Honor the men with whom he fought in the nation's recent wars is particularly apt. The fighting done by a low-level infantry unit ties its men together in a bond outsiders can seldom understand well enough to share. Readers of his powerful description of the battle in which this unit is destroyed will be submerged in a world where their age, location, or choice let most of them escape. "Paying the blood tax" is a concept everyone who has had men he knows and loves killed with him understands. Love is the proper description for the relation between men whose brief time with one another leads to many of them dying to keep their fellows living. All of Hackworth's readers will be gripped by grim circumstances that deform forever those who fight at this level.

Fortunately, the human costs described by the author are put in a fascinating set of circumstances drawn from those our newspapers describe each day. The shameful promotion of irrelevant products forced on industrialists by the necessity to keep their factories running, and their bonuses coming, sets a stage. The book's "F-44" aircraft-whose imposition motivates this novel's villains-bears an uncanny resemblance to the acquisition of the F-22 dividing our Congress today. Pasting the real name of an American general on this villain is an unsubtle vengeance by the author that will not be lost on other veterans. Journalists who described this man as "The Butcher of the Delta" will not be surprised by the choice of names.

That soldiers in danger focus on thoughts of sex to maintain their sanity surprises no one. The role of women in the book and their relations to its active males goes well beyond this natural romantic focus. Making two of its heroines journalists combines persuasively the power of exotic sex and the more important power their profession acquires from exposure of real happenings in the decision centers of Washington. Blatant "cover-ups" of failures and faults is far more difficult now than it was in the past.

The French author, Jean Larteguy, of novels about their "Revolutionary Wars" in Indochina and North Africa was a worthy trailblazer for Hackworth. Both combine the qualities of real men and their actual circumstances to make fascinating, credible stories very real. The CG of the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg would not allow his instructors to make the novels of Larteguy (The Centurions; The Praetorians) required reading for his students. There was "too much sex" in them. Explaining this fault to our students got these very valuable guides to a new kind of war sold out each month at the local book store. Sadly, our decision makers of that day were generally immune to new concepts, and we went into an unwinnable war with a particularly inappropriate force.

The political and operational dimensions of the "Military Operations Other Than War" Hackworth is describing so realistically will be much less mystifying to the readers of his work than to those not exposed to it. Example: the page "missing" from a central document in this book is much like the missing page from the FBI's report on Waco, which has just become a public matter. His description of the impotence of air power in close combat-the "aimed fire war" described by General Ridgway-and the continued dedication of our chiefs to its use in Kosovo, speak to a potent possibility of providing readers of his novel a more realistic perception of the world in which we live. Hackworth believes each soldier has a limited reservoir of courage that can be used up. This happens to one of his central figures, misidentified by the villain flying a mile high over a critical combat action. The villain is as mistaken here about what actually happened below them as our pilots flying two miles higher than this were in Kosovo.

The term "Page turner" is an overworked term used to promote books. It is appropriate, however, for this one. Most readers will not have the combat experience to properly appreciate what is being said. Almost all of them, however, have enough experience with sex that the well placed military and political lessons mixed with it will get somewhere into their consciousness.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hack has jumped into the arena with Clancy and Griffin!
Review: The copy I read was an advance copy, but I was clearly taken with the story and the prose style. It is a fast-paced, action packed tale of courage and deceit spanning some thirty years. A son's quest to find the truth of his father's death in Vietnam and the myths and careers that have been built up surrounding that tragic day.

I wish Hack much success with this book and many, many more.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Hack, stick to the guns
Review: I have read and enjoyed Col. Hackworth's previous works. He is the consumate "truth-teller". In "The Price of Honor", Sandy Caine's search for the "truth" about what occurred in Vietnam follows Hack's principles. The few combat scenes are well told and page turning, but too brief. The comaraderie between good officers and men in the Special Forces is on target. Where Hack goes somewhat astray in this tale is the foray into Sandy Caine's sexual activities with Abigal Mancini. While the depictions may arguably provide the reader insight into their relationship, Hack should have fallen back on the more subtle and less graphic. For more on SF ops and the frustration to win hearts and minds, try "Immaculate Invasion". Or, for more on Somalia, try "losing Mogadishu", or "Backhawk Down". While not a top on my list, I'd compare it to a W.E.B. Griffin genre. Next time Hack (and I do hope this is just the beginning of his fiction writing)...stick to the guns and leave out the bedroom details.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not that good.
Review: As a retired Air Force officer who enjoys listening to Hackworth on talk shows, etc., I realy wanted to like this book. However, the characters are cardboard cut-outs with no believable human emotions, the plot is slow, and the writing is stiff and unimaginative. Even the sex scenes were boring! He clearly knows his stuff when it comes to combat and the military environment, but maybe Hack should stick to nonfiction. I gave up on this book after reading about half of it, something I almost never do.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Hackworth should stick to non-fiction...
Review: I just finished "The Price of Honor" and was seriously disappointed. I have read all of Hackworth's other works, and although not always agreeing with him, found them all insightful and interesting. Not this book. In some parts its actually pretty ludicrious, particularly all the conspiracy-theory nonsense and the Vietnam Vet who relives the war in the forests of Montana. Some of the characters are simply thinly-guised real life people, and the F-44 is a thinly-guised F-22...

The best parts of the book are the combat narratives from Somalia and Bosnia. Hackworth has extensive knowledge in both areas and considerable combat experience as both a solider and journalist. In authoring a plot, he stumbles badly. Overall, for readers of Hackworth, there should be enough fiction in his non-fiction to satisfy you (if you get what I mean). If you are determined to read, get in paperback.


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