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Dog tags
From the killing fields of World War II to a Chinese POW camp during the Korean War, this mesmerizing novel is a tribute to the legacy of the Greatest Generation
Separated from his fellow American soldiers, Benny Beer walks alone on a frozen plain in Germany during World War II. Lost and afraid, he seeks shelter in an abandoned tavern and encounters a victim of the Holocaust. Benny tries to save the suffering man's life, but never knows if he succeeds--he wakes up in a hospital bed, wounded and missing his dog tags, with no memory of how he got there.
Sent back to Brooklyn with a limp and a Purple Heart, Benny falls in love, gets married, and becomes a doctor--not necessarily in that order--but his life is just beginning when he is called to serve his country once more. In Korea, he is captured and sent to a Chinese prison camp, where for two and a half long years he practices the fine art of self-preservation and fights the cruelty and indifference of his captors with compassion, care, and a fierce sense of humor.
Poignant, witty, and authentic, Dog Tags is the story of an ordinary man in extraordinary times, of an awkward Jewish boy who grows up to become an American hero. Soldier, doctor, lover--Benny Beer is one of the most captivating protagonists in twentieth-century literature.
Separated from his fellow American soldiers, Benny Beer walks alone on a frozen plain in Germany during World War II. Lost and afraid, he seeks shelter in an abandoned tavern and encounters a victim of the Holocaust. Benny tries to save the suffering man's life, but never knows if he succeeds--he wakes up in a hospital bed, wounded and missing his dog tags, with no memory of how he got there.
Sent back to Brooklyn with a limp and a Purple Heart, Benny falls in love, gets married, and becomes a doctor--not necessarily in that order--but his life is just beginning when he is called to serve his country once more. In Korea, he is captured and sent to a Chinese prison camp, where for two and a half long years he practices the fine art of self-preservation and fights the cruelty and indifference of his captors with compassion, care, and a fierce sense of humor.
Poignant, witty, and authentic, Dog Tags is the story of an ordinary man in extraordinary times, of an awkward Jewish boy who grows up to become an American hero. Soldier, doctor, lover--Benny Beer is one of the most captivating protagonists in twentieth-century literature.
307 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
8 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Becker
43 books13 followersStephen Becker (1927–1999) was an American author, translator, and teacher whose published works include eleven novels and the English translations of many works, including Elie Wiesel’s The Town Behind the Wall and The Forgotten and André Malraux’s The Conquerors.
He was born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1927, and after serving in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University and studied in Peking and Paris, where he was friends with the novelist Richard Wright and learned French in part by reading detective novels. The recipient of Paul Harris and Guggenheim Fellowships and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Becker taught at numerous schools throughout the United States, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
His best-known works include A Covenant with Death (1965), which was adapted into a Warner Brothers film starring Gene Hackman and George Maharis; When the War Is Over (1969), a Civil War novel based on the true story of a teenage Confederate soldier executed more than a month after Lee’s surrender; and the Far East trilogy of literary adventure novels: The Chinese Bandit (1975), The Last Mandarin (1979), and The Blue-Eyed Shan (1982).
Equally distinguished as a translator, a biographer, a commentator on the popular arts, and a novelist, Stephen Becker brings to his fiction a breadth of experience with world culture and human behavior which yields moral complexity and psychological verity in his work. Two major themes intertwine through his novels—the problems of justice and the necessity for self-knowledge and self-fulfillment.
Becker's examination of society's structure and limitations and his portrayal of men seeking "grace under pressure" is a significant contribution to contemporary fiction. The existential premises of the works—individuals finding meaning inside the arbitrary bounds of social order—reflect our acceptance of the civilization we have built.
Read more: Stephen (David) Becker Biography - JRank Articles http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4144...
He was born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1927, and after serving in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University and studied in Peking and Paris, where he was friends with the novelist Richard Wright and learned French in part by reading detective novels. The recipient of Paul Harris and Guggenheim Fellowships and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Becker taught at numerous schools throughout the United States, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
His best-known works include A Covenant with Death (1965), which was adapted into a Warner Brothers film starring Gene Hackman and George Maharis; When the War Is Over (1969), a Civil War novel based on the true story of a teenage Confederate soldier executed more than a month after Lee’s surrender; and the Far East trilogy of literary adventure novels: The Chinese Bandit (1975), The Last Mandarin (1979), and The Blue-Eyed Shan (1982).
Equally distinguished as a translator, a biographer, a commentator on the popular arts, and a novelist, Stephen Becker brings to his fiction a breadth of experience with world culture and human behavior which yields moral complexity and psychological verity in his work. Two major themes intertwine through his novels—the problems of justice and the necessity for self-knowledge and self-fulfillment.
Becker's examination of society's structure and limitations and his portrayal of men seeking "grace under pressure" is a significant contribution to contemporary fiction. The existential premises of the works—individuals finding meaning inside the arbitrary bounds of social order—reflect our acceptance of the civilization we have built.
Read more: Stephen (David) Becker Biography - JRank Articles http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4144...
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