I have to be in a certain mood to want to read a Jon Krakauer book. Usually, that mood is not a good one. I greatly admire his work which include: Into the Wild; Into Thin Air; and Under the Banner of Heaven. Krakauer’s latest: Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman was definitely worthy of this author’s attention and talents. As I see it, the beat that Krakauer works is the intersection of Men, machismo, and testosterone and the likely result of the collision of these forces is – Tragedy. There could be no better places to mine these ores than in the NFL and the disaster currently called Afghanistan.
In his own machismo struggle, Krakauer took the photo that graces the cover of this latest.
The story follows the divergent timelines of unrelated events. For examples: 1) when Tillman was in highschool, Ramzi Yousef was doing this; 2) when Tillman was in college, Osama bin Laden was doing this.
The forces eventually meet. And predictably not to a good end.
This book troubled me almost as much as the Under the Banner of Heaven did. The intentional deceit perpetrated by our goverment about Tillman’s death in its unique way made the tragedy worse than in the earlier book.
And… the criminals in this latest book have not been held accountable.
iggydonnelly
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