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You have in your hands the true, daily, blow-by-blow, journal entries of the author as he went through Army Basic Training and Officer Candidate School, concluding with his being called to active duty for the first time on September 11th, 2001. If you have ever wondered what basic military combat training is really like, and what it really does to you physically, mentally, and otherwise—or simply just want to relive it—read this book. It is probably as close to feeling the real thing as you can get (short of doing it). Most books about such events are either written after the fact in the past tense by someone who went through it years earlier, or written in the third person by someone tagging along who has no idea what is really going on. This book is different. It's all in the present; it's all in the first person; little has been cut; everything is true; the adventure is real. Enjoy.
Customer Reviews:
Went through same thing.......2006-03-22
I was like the LT here. I took the same route of BCT to OCS in the Guard too. I was whiney to a point too. I came back from Iraq and now I am not that same person. I am sure LT. Mann has changed to. The book is good in telling you what the Guard OCS program is like from day to day.
Capt. MSC former 11A
READ THIS BOOK -- whether mil or not.......2005-09-11
I cannot recommend "To Benning and Back" highly enough. I am currently applying to Army Officer Candidate School and it was the most helpful and informative thing I read. I learned more from Monroe Mann's account of his experiences at Basic Training and Officer Candidate School than I did from any other source and certainly from my recruiter. If you're considering enlisting in the Army, or any other branch of the military for that matter, I would definitely get my hands on this book. It's an invaluable resource.
Even more though, read this book for the inspirational story of one very cool young American. From the gut-punching sincerity of the opening line: "I cried when I saw Saving Private Ryan." to the final appendix, "What the Army Has Taught Me", I know I'm going to go back to this book whenever my own doubts about what I'm doing start creeping up on me. Mann, who is now 1st Lieutenant Mann, and who has been serving in Iraq for more than a year now with the New York National Guard, obviously comes from a comfortable background. He has a broad, varied, international education. He has a large supportive circle of talented family and friends, who appear in his journals in intriguing little snippets of intimacy and affection. He's talented, skilled at several sports, speaks several languages. He has a deep, driving dream to be an actor. Someone for whom the possibilities in late 90's America were pretty much limitless. Instead he puts it all on the line to join the Army...way before there was a 9/11 bandwagon to jump onto.
Used to be idealism and intelligence was a combination our country specialized in. If, like me, you think we're a little short on that combo these days -- from top to bottom -- read Mann's account of his experiences and it'll give you some hope for what's out there. Throughout his story, we get to see a sincere love of America that has nothing to do with the sticky, yellow-ribbon sentimentality that passes for patriotism in this country these days, and startling flashes of a deep Christian faith that has nothing to do with the lame moralism of so much of what passes for Christianity these days either. He's completely honest about the pain and difficulties of military life, never afraid to say he's bored, that he's suffering, or that it just plain old hurts. He's candid about his misgivings and fears about the commitment he's making. And he has no illusions about the frequent limitations and just sheer stupidity of much of the institutional culture he's dealing with. Yet all the way through, he holds on to a transcendent vision of a soldier's calling, a vision of courage and sacrifice that sustains him.
This kid's one of the last of the Great American Idealists, the kind of homegrown Quixote we used to grow a lot of, with the beautiful, slightly nutty dream AND the guts and tenacity and competence to make it reality. If you subscribe to the patronizing notion that only Americans with no other options serve in our armed forces, or if you think that all young Americans with other options are spoiled brats coasting through cushy lives with no sense of service or the greater good, then read this book. If you have a kid who wants to enlist, give him this book to read; it'll inspire him and make him a better soldier, marine, airman or sailor. If you've got a kid who wants to enlist and you're discouraging him, then YOU read this book. Believe me, Lt. Mann is the kind of guy you want your son to be.
Duty Honor Country - Doesn't Come Easy!.......2005-07-19
Monroe - your book, To Benning and Back: The Making of a Citizen Soldier - tells it like it is. Your honesty is what makes it special. Most books on the military experience are so 'gung ho' and you never feel the person's true pain. I felt your pain 'my brotha.' Keep your head down over in Iraq. We want all of our heros back in one piece.
A Great book by an even better Soldier.......2005-04-28
I have had the privilege of knowing Monroe Mann personally which prompted me to read his book. Monroe is the type of fellow who can drift into your life briefly and leave his mark.
His book is a honest uncut un polished journal that speaks to EXACTLY what every young soldier remembers about basic Training. Reading Monroe's book was like taking a walk back in my life ten years ago.
An excellent read for old soldiers and a fine book for those considering service. New troops need to take Monroe's total honesty with a grain of salt. When you live Basic training it seems impossible, until you walk on that parade field with almost 300 years of American history that you are not a part of. Monroe is a fine officer who is credit to the service. If he can overcome his fears, frustration, and challenges to rise from a sideline sitter to a professional of the finest caliber should encourage any reader to seek his or her opportunity to place service above self and find a way a way to bring peace to our troubled world.
Thank you Monroe
HOOAH!!!.......2005-01-31
To Benning and Back's first person depiction of the Army's vigorous basic training program helped me grasp a better understanding of the intense transformation from civilian to disciplined soldier. As a USO performer, after reading this book I have even a greater appreciation for the men and women who choose to risk their lives for this country! It was especially intriguing to learn that Lt. Mann is not only a soldier but an actor!! I recommend this book not only to potential military recruits but to anyone who is interested in gaining greater insight into the brave men and women serving in our Armed Forces.
>
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This is the final book of the author's military trilogy completing the story of the three years he spent in the US Army. His first book recounted experiences in Vietnam while the second book chronicled Army assignments in West Germany. In this book, the reader will follow the author through his ordeal completing an initial induction physical examination in Los Angeles, to the Army induction center in Chicago, on to the recruitment station at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, over to surviving Basic Training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and finally as he completes his electronics specialty school at Fort Gordon, Georgia.
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Science writer Michael White's subtitle, The Last Sorcerer, echoes John Maynard Keynes's assertion in 1942 that Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was not the Olympian rationalist portrayed by his worshipful early biographers. Newton was a great scientist, the author acknowledges; he was also an "obsessive, driven mystic," deeply involved in the pseudoscience of alchemy, subscriber to a heretical sect of Christianity, and damaged survivor of childhood traumas that rendered him a difficult, egotistical, quarrelsome adult. White makes recent research accessible to the general reader in lucid prose that knocks the academic dust off a towering historical figure.
Book Description
Unknown to all but a few, Newton was a practicing alchemist who dabbled in the occult, a tortured, obsessive character who searched for an understanding of the universe by whatever means possible. Sympathetic yet balanced, Michael White's Isaac Newton offers a revelatory picture of a genius who stood at the point in history where magic ended and science began.
Customer Reviews:
The Last Sorcerer.......2006-04-17
The Last Sorcerer begins with the theories of past philosophers and thinkers like Aristotle and Galileo. It also gives experts about Newton's life through out the entire novel. I found the book a little hard to follow and understand as it jumped from one chapter to the next without much connections between each. However, it is a good source of information on Newton's family, life, and how he grew up to be the great physist he became. Although hard to understand, it is easy reading because the novel is written in a story-book format. It is more engaging and interesting, while still presenting factual information than most biographies.
"For alchemy does not trade with metals as ignorant vulgars think"---Sir Isaac Newton.......2006-02-10
Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer is a well-written, well-researched, and insightful account of the life of one of the (maybe THE) most influential and important scientists and mathematicians in history. Michael White, as implied by the title of his work, has an ambitious thesis to his study: that alchemy was key to Newton's ground-breaking discoveries. According to White, without his controversial pursuit of alchemical goals like the Philosopher's Stone, Newton would not have established his theory on gravity, etc. While the idea is intriguing and probably true (one's interests and studies in specific areas will often influence what one discovers and how one understands other areas), White provides very little evidence to support his thesis and relies mostly on speculation and guessing.
As a biography, I found this book intellectually stimulating, yet very readable with many interesting details that help the reader understand Newton as a scientist and as a person. Although the author claims at the beginning to concentrate on Newton's alchemical research, the book is a thorough biographical account that covers his troubled youth, his autodidactic study at Cambridge, his most important findings (theory on light and colors, gravity, calculus), his religious views and study in prophesy, his work at the Mint (he was instrumental in England's recoinage), his Presidency in the Royal Society, and his relationships with fellow intellectuals including feuds with Robert Hooke, John Flamsteed, and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. White also devotes what I believe to be too many pages on Newton's niece and her affair/marriage with Lord Halifax.
White examines many different areas of Newton's life and also provides background information to help the reader understand the intellectual and scientific foundation that led to Newton as well as the popular biographical accounts of Newton until the 1930s when John Maynard Keynes purchased some of Newton's documents on alchemy from Sotheby's. Newton claims that earlier biographers ignored or covered up Newton's interest in alchemy. White does an excellent job explaining how Plato and Aristotle's reliance on syllogistic logic rather than experimentation stifled the growth of knowledge for centuries (31). Newton was the first to apply fully the scientific method that is used today (182). As to Newton's findings, White is very adept in scientific principles, but does not bog down his work with too much esoteric jargon. He describes Newton's research (he experimented with light in dangerous ways that almost damaged his eye sight, pp. 58-61), his thoughts, ideas, and hypotheses found in his notebooks, documents, and correspondence.
Where White's work becomes weak is when his branches off into alchemy (mostly in chapters 6 and 7). It is not that White does not explain alchemy well, or does not outline Newton's work in alchemy, or ignores the influence of alchemists like Michael Maier and Robert Boyle; it is that White makes the sweeping claim that alchemy was key to Newton's discoveries with little to back it up. He will introduce alchemy, its history, its disciples, and its influence on Newton and how Newton went about his alchemical studies with a furnace in his room at Cambridge, and then will throw in statements like "The creation of the Star Regulus was PROBABLY one step along this road [to a full-blown theory of gravity]" (146), "It is QUITE POSSIBLE that, by manipulating the tale [about documents Newton lost in a fire at Cambridge], they managed to neatly dismiss Newton's alchemical interests" (148). White maintains that the popular apple story was created by Newton to cover up alchemy's role in his theory on gravitation (no evidence provided). In examining Newton's biblical study, White makes a connection between Solomon's temple and Newton's concept on universal gravitation and then admits "There is no surviving record of an explicit reference to the Star Regulus or the Temple of Solomon to support the idea that they may have symbolized an attractive force" (pp. 159-62). Later in the book, White becomes preoccupied by Newton's relationship with upstart intellectual Fatio de Duillier and, while discussing their relatively intimate correspondence (White implies a possible homosexual relationship), suggests that the censored parts of the letters had to do with alchemy (238). White adds that Fatio "may have" spoken of alchemy in front of other intellectuals and that he possibly got Newton interested in the black arts (291-99). Of course, White seized on Newton burning his papers at the Mint weeks before his death: "the burning incident MAY have some bearing on the conclusion we reach about this. Did Newton venture along paths leading far from his study of alchemy-paths we would now consider those of pure magic, pure heresy?" (355).
I am not criticizing White for asking these questions or for speculating about Newton's secret endeavors. My problem is that White makes the claim that alchemy was key to Newton's discoveries and makes it the thesis of this book and not only doesn't cover alchemy throughout the book (mainly only in 2 chapters and sporadically sprinkled through the rest of the work) but his proof is only speculation and rumor. He doesn't, for example, draw connections between Newton's alchemical documents and his theories. Near the end of his book, White throws in this puzzling paragraph: "Unlike the central theme of this biography-that Newton arrived at his theory of gravity PARTLY [he backs off a little from his thesis here] through his exploration of alchemy and early biblical theory---the notion that he crossed the line into black magic is not supported by any hard evidence, but the circumstantial evidence available offers an intriguing possibility" (358). This sentence applies to his central thesis as well. I almost gave this book 3 stars but decided to compromise as it would be head and shoulders above other books I've given 3 stars. Actually, I would have given this book 5 stars, as it shows excellent care and scholarship, if he wasn't so adamant in claiming to prove a thesis he did not support with information provided in The Last Sorcerer.
Still a massive figure, but ordinary after all........2004-12-31
I start in confessional mode - Newton has long been one of my heroes. Some time ago, I read significant parts of his major works; both Opticks and Principia [or The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy]. The King's School, Grantham, was also my place of secondary education, so I have seen the statue of `Ike' in the centre of Grantham in rain and sunshine. This book takes the statue off its pedestal, but still leaves readers in awe at the colossal figure in history that was Isaac Newton.
There is much more to Newton than the three laws of motion. White fills in some background, and gives interesting details about not only Newton's life, but that of those around him. It leaves a story of a man obsessed - with proving himself, with secrecy, and with power. Not everyone would agree with the broad tenets of the book (e.g. that to understand Newton, you need to understand his alchemical work, or that Newton laid the ground work for the Industrial Revolution), but it give pause for thought. Newton has been much written about, and White gives some fresh insights on what has not, after all, already been done to death. The slant upon `standing upon the shoulders of Giants', being a reference to Robert Hooke's physical deformity, means that this phrase is usually quoted out of context. Newton had a vitriolic turn of phrase!
One of the major themes of Newton's life is his singular fondness of picking quarrels with people; amongst others Robert Hooke, Flamsteed, and Leibnitz. Oh, the extreme politeness of professional animosity, damning with faint praise rather than going for the jugular vein. Was Newton ever wrong? Yes, but White argues that he admitted to making `a silly mistake' rather than being found fundamentally in error. There are good insights into the character of the man, and why he thought that he was right, but perhaps Michael White is too hard on Newton's antagonists, particularly Hooke. Newton says that he does not want to be someone who merely proposes hypotheses; that may have driven him to prove himself. White also declares that Newton viewed life as a riddle to be understood, a code to be cracked, as a duty to the divine. Newton saw there only being one man in any era who could unlock these secrets; himself in his lifetime. As he saw it, the ancients had known things that Newton spent a life-time discovering, or re-discovering.
Beyond his major pieces of work, Isaac Newton posed some very tough questions. He spent significant parts of his last 40 years searching for the Holy Grail of physics, a so called `Unified Theory' (and indeed, whole teams have spent large parts of the 20th Century doing the same). The Queries at the end of the Opticks asks the penetrating "Does not light get bent by `gravity'?" (This was also a question that Einstein implied 200 years later.) Is there a possible pre-cursor of Quantum Mechanics is another Query, or is that just hind-sight? Hind-sight is a wonderful tool; it is never wrong. And that can sum up Newton - never wrong, at least in his own eyes.
No reference whatsoever has been made of Dr Samuel Clarke's correspondence with Leibnitz, where Clarke was speaking for his master. This is a massive omission; in these letters, Leibnitz pointed out that the calculus of Newton worked, but was flawed (because of two compensating errors), which led the German to say of Newton's disciples that they were `men more accustomed to calculate rather than think'. The two clashed over the place of God in the Universe. For Newton, God was a central part of his life, even if his views were rather unorthodox. God was the eternal watchmaker, who wound the watch up and set it going (and thereafter he rested). However, Leibnitz sees God as having a different role in continually sustaining His creation. Without God's active participation, the universe would fall apart.
Alchemy can help to explain Newton's reliance upon the unexplainable triplet of Action at a Distance, Absolute Space and Absolute Time, and it is hard for the modern mind to comprehend the influence of items that verge on occult. White raises questions about Newton's active involvement in more sinister elements, and touches upon possible reasons for the fire that destroyed some of his papers. What does come through is that Newton was both a very able administrator, and a manipulative, almost Machiavellian figure who used his position as President of the Royal Society for his own ends. He left the Royal Society and the Royal Mint in much better shape than when he took the lead of them, but over con trolled.
He came, he saw, he measured, he conquered. but Newton was a very flawed human being. Why is it that some of the finest minds have large amounts personal baggage? THAT is probably why they achieve what they do. Newton had a view that `second inventors count for nothing', although the History of Science is able to provide ample evidence of dual independent discovery (as in Newton and Leibnitz with differential calculus). This partly explains Newton's obsessive and secretive nature, and confrontational approach to some of his fellows. He was a genius and a very difficult man, and these two themes are very evident in the book.
In the end I am left liking Newton less, but admiring him more.
[...]
Great biography of a twisted genius.......2004-05-10
Think that Isaac Newton was the epitome of the cool, scientific, humanist mind? Think again. It turns out that the greatest scientific genius in history was a twisted, tortured mystic with homosexual tendencies, an ability to hold grudges for decades, an egomaniac, and a very petty man. The word "queen" (...) comes to mind. He spent a few years on his great mathematical and physics work. He spent decades and decades attempting to decipher alchemy and the Old Testament prophecies. He predicted the year that Chist would return to earth (1948). He thought the design of Solomon's temple was a code for all of recorded history. He wasted year after year on absurd alchemical experiments. He subscribed to the heresy of Arianism. He was deeply religious (and not at all secular) in his outlook (though not in his behavior). He was incapable of much human affection having been damaged by his upbringing. He went nuts several times. He sought revenge on his (perceived) enemies and did so with a tenacity and a ferocity that bordered on being satanic. This is an individual who would have been very comfortable as a guest on Art Bell's "Coast to Coast" program along with alien abduction "experts" and conspiracy theorists. He was brilliant and his mathematical work is still astounding. But forget the idea that he was some symbol of the new man of the enlightenment. He was nothing of the sort. A heck of a good read.
The best biography of Newton I've read to date.......2003-12-31
I've read other biographies of Sir Isaac Newton, and this is the best. As the title suggests, there is an emphasis on his interest in Alchemy.
I worried (unnecessarily as it turned out) that other aspects of his life would be neglected. But his time at the Royal Mint, and his clashes with Huygens, Hooke, Leibniz etc are well covered.
The only disappointment for some readers might be that this is not an overtly scientific/mathematical biography - there are no formulae : so if you want to know that little more detail about Newton's discoveries, such as the Laws of Motion, Laws of Gravity, and Differential Calculus, you won't see any of that in here. In fact the word 'Gravity' (perhaps his most famous discovery) doesn't even appear in the Index (although the 'Apple' does).
Product Description
A biography of Newton that centers not only on his scientific achievements but also on his fascination and dedication to the "science" of alchemy and its effects on him
Book Description
This digital document is an article from First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, published by Institute on Religion and Public Life on November 1, 1998. The length of the article is 5854 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer. (book reviews)
Author: Phillip E. Johnson
Publication:
First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (Refereed)
Date: November 1, 1998
Publisher: Institute on Religion and Public Life
Issue: n87
Page: p25(7)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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