Boot: The Inside Story of How a Few Good Men Became Today's Marines

by Daniel da Cruz

Recounting his return to boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina, the author offers an inside view of the Marine Corps through eighty-eight days of survival, rifle practice, war games, and forced marches

Genres: Nonfiction, Military Fiction

308 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

US writer, formerly known for numerous men's action-adventure tales, who began publishing sf with The Grotto of the Formigans (1980), a novel about African grotto Monsters, and who came to more general notice with his Ayes of Texas sequence: The Ayes of Texas (1982), Texas on the Rocks (1986) and Texas Triumphant (1987). The political premises underlying the series – in the late 1990s the USSR, having hoodwinked the supinely liberal US media, has come to dominate the world – have dated, though the American assumption that its media are liberal is still conventional wisdom; the exuberance of the tales themselves remains winning. The protagonist, a triple-amputee World War Two veteran from the newly free Republic of Texas, arms an old battleship (itself called Texas), and sails off to fight the Russians. Much blood is spilt, and a good time is had by all; by the close of the third volume, however, a genuinely sophisticated dubiousness about the nature of the USSR/USA Cold War conflict complicates what might have seemed an unduly simplified picture: the sequence merits revisiting. F-Cubed (1989) is a less entrancing Technothriller; but Mixed Doubles (1989) enjoyably depicts the attempts of a contemporary failed composer who travels back in time to steal Music from those more talented than himself. [JC] - See more at: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...

Reviews

[Tim Blackburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent detailed account of the Marine Corps boot camp told by a former Marine. The book was detailed but does not in any way burden the reader with boring minutiae. The book is divided into the 11 weeks of the boot camp and each week highlights a different actual Marine recruit living the boot camp life. Very informative for all Americans. The only caveat I would add that could discount the book would be it's 1987 publishing date so the account is over 30 and several wars have been waged which could have impact on today's boot camp - still an informative and enjoyable read even when read in 2022.

[Geo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for those who plan to join the military. Although the story describes mostly the marines, training in the army, air force and navy is a lot milder. It reminded my times in the boot camp, and the parallels I went through for 12 weeks.

The boot camp changes your life immensely. It is a place you will never forget, a place you learn how to go through it, by wholesomely adjusted, or you hate it and want to quit. But you don't. You watch the others struggle and it gives you incentive to keep trying.

But at the end, you realize you life has changed for ever. The graduation day from the Boot Camp you feel is a day of achievement, only then you realize that the time spent was worth it.

Cruz's writing is excellent, detailed, cannot be improved.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

A family member bought this book for me before I shipped to Marine bootcamp in Jan of 1998. The information was largely dated even then. So at this point I'm sure a lot of the information is irrelevant. Although I can't remember the book in great detail I can say it was not that entertaining or seemingly informative, even in 1998.

[Francis]

It's a step by step of the process people go through in order to become Marines.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

lots of detail.