Making the Corps this question feed

asked by goonball on November 5, 2006 1:38 PM
Marines are different: distinct not only from ordinary U.S. citizens but from the ranks of the army, navy, and air force as well. The difference begins with boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, where the history and future of the United States Marine Corps intersect in the training of every new recruit. In Making the Corps, Ricks follows a platoon of young men through 11 grueling weeks of boot camp as their drill instructors indoctrinate them into the culture of the Few and the Proud. Many arrive at Parris Island undisciplined and apathetic; they leave as marines.

With the end of the cold war, the role of the American military has shifted in emphasis from making war to keeping peace. "The best way to see where the U.S. military is going is to look at the marines today," says Ricks, as the other armed forces have begun to emulate the marine model. To understand Parris Island--a central experience in the life of every marine--is to understand the ethos of the Marine Corps. Ricks examines the recent changes in the Standard Operating Procedures for Recruit Training (the bible of Parris Island), which indicate how the corps is dealing with critical social and political issues like race relations, gender equality, and sexual orientation. Making the Corps pierces the USMC's "sis-boom-bah" mythology to help outsiders understand this most esoteric and eccentric of U.S. armed forces. --Tim Hogan

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An interesting paperback that walks you through boot camp at Paris Island with real recruits. My daughter was about to start boot camp at Paris Island so I was able to see what she should expect. The book keeps track of some of the recruits from start to finish. Some make it through and some don't.
reviewed by shirley49 on November 8, 2006 9:19 AM

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I enjoyed reading this book and the picture it gives of Marine Corps Boot Camp and Marine Corps culture and what makes it tick. I only wish the author would do an update, a ten-year later kind of work to see what happened to those Marines. That would be interesting. Reading this, it made me think there is a probabably a great need for the Marines far beyond their military role ("The US doessn't need a Marine Corps, it wants one!") simply because the US would not be the same without one.
I liked all the Marine Corps reading list references and the men who helped reshape the Marines in in the 1980's and 1990's.
reviewed by maxmill on November 12, 2006 6:05 PM

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Lots of Good Information for potential recruits or DEPers. There was alot of off-topic stuff on society, and the history of the Marine Corps post Vietnam. Certainly a good read for all forture Marines.
reviewed by drvale on November 29, 2006 4:30 PM

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I was in Platoon 3086, my name was Recruit Daniel Armstrong (I later changed my name due to 'family' politics)and can be best quoted as "the stork-like construction worker from Florida", who wants to "get drunk and laid on boot-leave". First note - never tell anything to a reporter you wouldn't want your grandmother to read about.
I think Thomas Ricks did a great job with the material that he had, but I don't think he had enough material to write a book. He originally intended (or so we were told) to just write an article which appeared in The Wallstreet Journal and was a very good article, but I got the feeling he added a lot of "fluff" to lengthen the work into a book. He was only there a handful of times over the course of bootcamp and if he was intending to write a book, should have spent more time with us. I know he made some assumptions about recruits that were not necessarily true (particularly about Recruits Prish and Winston) and I think he could of done a better job on following up with us after bootcamp. I think it was a really good book about bootcamp in general, but fell short in the area of what we went through personally and how we felt.
reviewed by miceandmen on November 29, 2006 7:04 PM

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