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Overview
"In early summer of 1990, Joel Turnipseed was homeless - kicked out of his college's philosophy program, dumped by his girlfriend. He had been AWOL from his Marine Corps Reserve unit for more than three months, spending his days hanging out in coffee shops reading Plato and Thoreau." "Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait." "Turnipseed's unit was activated for service in Operation Desert Shield. By January of 1991, he was in Saudi Arabia driving tractor-trailers for the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion - the legendary "Baghdad Express." The greatest logistical operation in Marine Corps history, the Baghdad Express hauled truckloads of explosives and ammunition across hundreds of miles of desert. Armed with an M-16 and a seabag full of philosophy books, he is a wise-ass misfit, an ironic observer with a keen eye for vivid detail, a rebellious Marine alive to the moral ambiguity of his life and his situation." This innovative memoir - simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, equal parts Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye - explores both the absurdities of war and the necessity of accepting our flawed world of shadows. With expansive humanity and profane grace, Turnipseed finds the real-world answers to his philosophical questions and reaches the hardest peace for any young man to achieve - with himself.Synopsis
"In early summer of 1990, Joel Turnipseed was homeless - kicked out of his college's philosophy program, dumped by his girlfriend. He had been AWOL from his Marine Corps Reserve unit for more than three months, spending his days hanging out in coffee shops reading Plato and Thoreau." "Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait." "Turnipseed's unit was activated for service in Operation Desert Shield. By January of 1991, he was in Saudi Arabia driving tractor-trailers for the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion - the legendary "Baghdad Express." The greatest logistical operation in Marine Corps history, the Baghdad Express hauled truckloads of explosives and ammunition across hundreds of miles of desert. Armed with an M-16 and a seabag full of philosophy books, he is a wise-ass misfit, an ironic observer with a keen eye for vivid detail, a rebellious Marine alive to the moral ambiguity of his life and his situation." This innovative memoir - simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, equal parts Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye - explores both the absurdities of war and the necessity of accepting our flawed world of shadows. With expansive humanity and profane grace, Turnipseed finds the real-world answers to his philosophical questions and reaches the hardest peace for any young man to achieve - with himself.
Publishers Weekly
Turnipseed has expanded a 1997 GQ article on his experiences as a reluctant Marine during the first war with Iraq into a compelling memoir that has more than a little in common with Anthony Swofford's Jarhead, which was also an account of the camaraderie, "soul rending boredom" and horror of life on the battlefield by a bookish soldier more comfortable hefting a pen than a gun. In 1990, Turnipseed is a college dropout in Minnesota, spending his days sipping coffee and reading Nietzsche, when his unit is called up for active duty. The first thing he does is decide to start smoking. Armed with a pack of Camels (later a pipe), a journal and a duffel full of philosophy texts, Turnipseed soon finds himself hauling munitions through the Saudi desert. His bunkmates, with their Game Boys and beer parties, at first regard him with suspicion. And no wonder: when his nose isn't buried in a Kierkegaard tome, he's prone to pedantic lectures and generally comes across as sneering and pretentious. For a while, Turnipseed relishes his role as egghead among the meatheads. Offered a warm Old Milwaukee one night by one of his brothers-in-arms, Turnipseed waves him off and turns back to his book. "Get real," the soldier retorts. "We're all in this together now, philosopher. Better make the best of what ya got." And soon, of course, his pompous veneer melts away in the desert sun and he realizes he has more in common with his Marine brothers than he would ever have thought. This is a coming-of-age story with all the right ingredients: self-deprecation, wit, insight, irony and a lucid, enthusiastic writing style. The Marine who emerges at war's end is older and wiser-and liked and accepted by his unit-and a pretty good writer to boot. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New WritersPenned by a once-AWOL Marine reservist and college philosophy washout who spent countless hours ruminating over Kierkegaard and Plato in Minneapolis-area coffee shops, Joel Turnipseed's unnerving memoir doesn't exactly qualify as your typical soldier's story. That said, Baghdad Express offers readers a unique, eye-opening, often comically off-kilter look at his experience as a Marine in the first Gulf War.
Soon after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Turnipseed was yanked from his coffee-shop reverie and soon found himself in Saudi Arabia, carting truckloads of explosives and ammo across the desert. As a member of the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion -- dubbed the "Baghdad Express" -- Turnipseed was a part of the greatest logistical operation in the history of the Marine Corps, but his service was defined more by wrong turns and roadside breakdowns than by anything deemed heroic.
In direct, unflinching prose, with the aid of numerous illustrations by Brian Kelly, Turnipseed conveys the utter tedium and inanity of much of modern-day warfare. But more important, his service in Operation Desert Shield becomes a laboratory of sorts in which he discovers that many of his philosophical absolutes groan under the weight of his newfound military experience and, ultimately, collapse with his acceptance of the flawed humanity we all share. (Summer 2003 Selection)
Publishers Weekly
Turnipseed has expanded a 1997 GQ article on his experiences as a reluctant Marine during the first war with Iraq into a compelling memoir that has more than a little in common with Anthony Swofford's Jarhead, which was also an account of the camaraderie, "soul rending boredom" and horror of life on the battlefield by a bookish soldier more comfortable hefting a pen than a gun. In 1990, Turnipseed is a college dropout in Minnesota, spending his days sipping coffee and reading Nietzsche, when his unit is called up for active duty. The first thing he does is decide to start smoking. Armed with a pack of Camels (later a pipe), a journal and a duffel full of philosophy texts, Turnipseed soon finds himself hauling munitions through the Saudi desert. His bunkmates, with their Game Boys and beer parties, at first regard him with suspicion. And no wonder: when his nose isn't buried in a Kierkegaard tome, he's prone to pedantic lectures and generally comes across as sneering and pretentious. For a while, Turnipseed relishes his role as egghead among the meatheads. Offered a warm Old Milwaukee one night by one of his brothers-in-arms, Turnipseed waves him off and turns back to his book. "Get real," the soldier retorts. "We're all in this together now, philosopher. Better make the best of what ya got." And soon, of course, his pompous veneer melts away in the desert sun and he realizes he has more in common with his Marine brothers than he would ever have thought. This is a coming-of-age story with all the right ingredients: self-deprecation, wit, insight, irony and a lucid, enthusiastic writing style. The Marine who emerges at war's end is older and wiser-and liked and accepted by his unit-and a pretty good writer to boot. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.KLIATT
Joel Turnipseed was a philosophy student in Minneapolis and, as a Marine reservist, had held the rank of lance corporal for almost five years when, in 1990, he was called to go to Saudi Arabia to help fight the First Gulf War. He said goodbye to his girlfriend and dysfunctional family, packed up a boxful of books—most of them philosophical works—and got on the plane that took him to Camp Shepard, out in the desert. There he became a camp guard and part of the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion, a unit that hauled ammunition to the men fighting at the front and, 100 days later, hauled most of it back again. This lively memoir, laced with the philosophical quotations that helped Joel make sense of what he was experiencing, is full of the images of modern warfare: ALICE packs and H harnesses, first-aid kits, M16 rifles, MREs, SCUD alarms, flak jackets, gas masks and nerve gas pills, helmets, convoys, and "bullets, artillery, and death." He uses the creative slang of men in the military: "chocolate chips" for camouflage fatigues, "dog pound" for the tent he shared, "Saudi Motors" for the place where the trucks were kept, and plenty of the profanity, sexual innuendo, and scatology that is on the tongues of soldiers everywhere. He draws vivid images of his fellows and of the situations he encountered: getting his truck half buried in the sand, dodging incoming SCUDS, trying to make sense of religious services, heat and fatigue, learning of the death of a Minnesota man. He witnessed the mass surrender of Iraqi soldiers and comments that US destruction of fleeing Iraqi forces on the infamous highway of death will surely be something we will have to pay for in the future. Brian Kellybrightens the book with cartoon illustrations, picturing Turnipseed in a helmet with the words "Know Thyself" across the front. This is a sensitive, readable book by an unusually observant young man. The chapters are brief and descriptions blunt. It deserves a place among personal memoirs of modern warfare. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Penguin, 202p. illus. map., Ages 15 to adult.—Edna Boardman