The Raider : The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II

Omtale

The extraordinary life of forgotten World War II hero Evans Carlson, commander of Americas first special forces, secret confidant of FDR, and one of the most controversial officers in the history of the Marine Corps, who dedicated his life to bridging the cultural divide between the United States and ChinaHe was a gutsy old man. A corker, said another. You couldnt find anyone better. They talked about him in hushed tones. This Major Carlson, wrote one of the officers in a letter home, is one of the finest men I have ever known.These were the words of the young Marines training to be among the first U.S. troops to enter the Second World Warand the Major Carlson they spoke of was Evans Carlson, a man of mythical status even before the war that would make him a military legend.By December of 1941, at the age of forty-five, Carlson had already faced off against Sandinistas in the jungles of Nicaragua and served multiple tours in China, where he embedded with Maos Communist forces during the Sino-Japanese War. Inspired by their guerilla tactics and their collaborative spiritwhich hed call gung ho, introducing the term to the English languageand driven by his own Emersonian ideals of self-reliance, Carlson would go on to form his renowned Marine Raiders, the progenitors of todays special operations forces, who fought behind Japanese lines on Makin Island and Guadalcanal, showing Americans a new way to do battle.In The Raider, Cundill Prizewinning historian Stephen R. Platt gives us the first authoritative account of Carlsons larger-than-life exploits: the real story, based on years of research including newly discovered diaries and correspondence in English and Chinese, with deep insight into the conflicted idealism about the Chinese Communists that would prove Carlsons undoing in the McCarthy era.Tracing the rise and fall of an unlikely American war hero, The Raider is a story of exploration, of cultural (mis)understanding, and of one mans awakening to the sheer breadth of the world.