Charlie Mike
A True Story of Heroes Who Brought Their Mission Home
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This true story of two decorated combat veterans who find a new way to save their comrades and heal their country is “a great look at two of the best veteran organizations going and the incredible humans who make the effort work” (Jon Stewart).
In Charlie Mike, a true account that “reads like a novel” (Publishers Weekly) and “explodes like a thriller” (The Huffington Post), Klein tells the dramatic story of Eric Greitens and Jake Wood, larger-than-life war heroes who come home and use their military values to help others.
Wounded in Iraq, Navy SEAL Eric Greitens returns home to find that his fellow veterans all want the same thing: to continue to serve their country. He founds The Mission Continues to provide paid public service fellowships for wounded veterans. One of the first fellows is former Marine sergeant Jake Wood, a natural leader who begins Team Rubicon, organizing 9/11 veterans for dangerous disaster relief projects around the world. “We do chaos,” he says.
“A deep and compelling exploration of a group of young veterans determined to continue serving after leaving the military” (The Washington Post), this is a story that hasn’t been told before—a saga of lives saved, not wasted. The chaos these soldiers face isn’t only in the streets of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake or in New York City after Hurricane Sandy—it’s also in the lives of their fellow veterans. Charlie Mike shows how Greitens and Wood draw on the military virtues of discipline and selflessness to guide others towards inner peace and, ultimately, to help build a more vigorous nation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Klein, best known as the unmasked author of the bestselling political novel Primary Colors, ventures back into the realm of military nonfiction, which he first tackled with his 1984 book Payback: Five Marines After Vietnam. His subject here is the inspiring, selfless work of two veterans: Eric Greitens, who served as a Navy SEAL in Iraq, and Jake Wood, a former Marine who served in Afghanistan. Greitens founded an organization, the Mission Continues, to help his fellow wounded war veterans, while Wood started Team Rubicon, a group of war veterans doing volunteer humanitarian work both domestically and internationally. Klein ably shares the stories of Greitens and Wood alongside those of a number of other recent veterans, articulating their often difficult post-war physical and emotional problems as well as their triumphs. At times the book reads like a novel, due to Klein's reliance on reconstructed dialogue. Klein's style works well, though, as he presents a clear picture of the costs of modern war and the heroic actions of a group of former warriors who wanted to make life better for their fellow service members.
