Making the Corps

Title: Making the Corps
Author: Thomas E Ricks
ISBN: 9780684831091
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 1997
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Condition: Used: Near Fine
Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.

G 1664871

Publisher Description:
In the tradition of A Long Gray Line and Friday Night Lights, Making the Corps chronicles the powerful forces that transform a group of raw recruits from wildly different backgrounds into a single unit of fiercely proud Marines.

Boot camp, says one Parris Island drill instructor, is a kind of war. The enemy: selfish, un-Marine-like values that Marine recruits bring with them. In Making the Corps, Thomas E. Ricks takes us to the front lines of that war. Following a single platoon of new arrivals from their arrival on Parris Island through their first full year as members of the Corps, Ricks guides us on an eye-level tour of America's most hallowed rite of passage. From the white supremacist from Alabama to the black Muslim from Washington, D.C., to the tough Irish-Catholic kid from Boston, every man faces tests of courage, confidence, discipline, and endurance -- tests that strip away his past and stamp him forever as a United States Marine.

Written with driving force, full of richly drawn characters, and thick with insights into race, class, and the military's relationship with the larger culture, Making the Corps is a triumph, a journey through the heart of an American myth that will be a classic of its kind.