Jeff Danziger, one of the most widely recognized political cartoonists of his generation, is syndicated by the Washington Post News Service and is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army 1967-1971, one year in Vietnam in the First Air Cavalry, the 11th ACR and other units. He received the Bronze Star and the Air Medal.
“Lieutenant Dangerous is, the author notes, a "sad story, full of
waste and loss." It's powerful. Put it next to Tim O'Brien's "The
Things They Carried" on your bookshelf.”
--Laurie Hertzel, The Minneapolis Star Tribune
An "important book . . . at times mordantly funny, at others
sparking with anger."
--The Washington Post
"By turns funny, sad, horrifying, and thought-provoking . .
. reads like a cross between Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and the
television show M.A.S.H.”
--The Christian Science Monitor
"As with his cartooning, Danziger pulls no punches with his
description of his time in the service and Vietnam."
-- The Florida Times-Union
"A must-read war memoir . . . with zero punches pulled, related by
one of the most incisive observers of the American political
scene."
-- KIRKUS reviews (starred review)
"In clear language he [Danziger] describes both the horrors and
absurdities of war and the toll it takes on a soldier.
-- The Rutland Herald
"Brilliant political cartoonist Jeff Danziger has written a
crackerjack new book...The book is a rollicking, honest, cynical
and, at times, tragic recollection of that dreadful and deceitful
war."
-- Valley News
"Danziger's new book isn't merely a recollection of a tumultuous
time in his youth; it also passionately engages our political
situation now."
-- Seven Days
“Lieutenant Dangerous is a forthright, brutally honest memoir of
one American’s experiences during the time of the Vietnam War.”
--The North Star Monthly
“Danziger’s book is a note to the wise. You can forget about the
Vietnam War. Certainly, the past cannot be recovered. But it
pays to be on guard not to repeat the same mistakes in the future.
Danziger has written a fine book and it is well worth reading.”
--Global Insights
"His book, which careens from political satire to wrenching
personal history with a highly palatable dollop of social analysis,
is as relevant today as it would have been when the events it
describes were taking place."
--Who What Why
"Mr. Danziger belongs to a generation that was shaped by the
war in Vietnam and the political upheaval it caused. He
has succeeded in what he set out to do — to narrate one young
man’s journey through the worst of that maelstrom. And he
has managed to set it all down without so much as a whiff
of undeserved nostalgia.
--The Barton Chronicle
"Jeff Danziger's Lieutenant Dangerous is funny, biting,
thoughtful and wholly original. This memoir instantly ranks among
the best personal accounts to emerge from that war. I have
encountered nothing quite like this wonderfully acerbic,
go-for-the-jugular book."
--Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried
"Most readers will know Jeff Danziger as a brilliant
cartoonist. Lieutenant Dangerous shows that he is a
brilliant writer as well. Full of mordant observations and
absurdist escapades, this memoir of his army service reads like a
real-life Catch 22 -- with Danziger as the Captain
Yossarian of the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Dangerous joins
the small shelf of must-read books for a sense of what it was
really like to be a soldier in America's most unpopular war."
-- Max Boot, author of The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and
the American Tragedy in Vietnam
"From arguably the best political cartoonist this nation has ever
produced...wow: words! And what words. Having spent a decade on the
ground in Afghanistan, I can certify: this book applies directly to
today's wars. Only, in the transition to an all-volunteer army,
what may have disappeared from the ranks of our officers is this
type of brutally honest skepticism."
-- Sarah Chayes, author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside
Afghanistan After the Taliban and On Corruption in America: And
What Is At Stake
The Things They Carried, and Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn
--Tom Bodett, Author and radio anomaly
"Every West Point cadet should be required to read Lieutenant
Dangerous, political cartoonist Jeff Danziger's powerful memoir
about his four years in the army, when honor, integrity, and
purpose were as illusory as American victory in Vietnam."
--David Cay Johnston Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, an IRE Medal
and the George Polk Award
"'I am not a weeper, but I sat on the bus to Ft. Dix and wept.' So
begins Jeff Danziger's youthful journey to the center of America's
Vietnam maelstrom. A 24 year-old Vermonter with a pregnant wife at
home, Danziger experienced the full-on nightmare of the Army's
Vietnam catastrophe. He saw everything combat -- death, hypocrisy,
moral degradation, and the fervid futility of the mightiest nation
on earth bested on the battlefield by men and women fighting in
pajamas and loincloths. He saw everything, that is, except the
nominal purpose of the conflict. There is no evidence of a shared
cause with our South Vietnamese 'allies,' no evidence that American
soldiers knew or cared about the Communist Threat, and no evidence
of the proverbial quest for glory that theoretically animates
military endeavors. War, he writes, is 'in an awful way,
interesting, if you can avoid getting killed and don't mind loud
noises.' Danziger's purpose is to inform, but he and we wonder what
the story of the 55,000 squandered American lives has taught us.
Then the jungle; now the desert. Then B-52s; now Predator drones.
The more America's ill-informed interventions change, the more they
stay the same."
--Alex Beam, author of Broken Glass and Gracefully Insane
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