American Warrior: The True Story of a Legendary Ranger

Most recent military memoirs have come from relatively young veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This one, however, details one warrior’s decades-long career in the killing fields, from Vietnam to the Gulf Wars. O’Neal was fascinated from a young age with the warrior culture of his Sioux ancestors, and by the time he was six, he could survive alone in the woods. Less than 10 years later, he’d stolen his cousin’s birth certificate, enlisted, and shipped off for training. Soon after, he got his first taste of combat in Vietnam, and from there on out, he was “a completely different person”—he “reeked of death” and was “desperate to get back” into battle. Instead, O’Neal became an Army Ranger, helped developed “the most deadly individual combat system ever devised” (once a week for three years, he would begin a class by sticking an ice pick through the front skin of his neck, and use it to lift a 50-lb bucket of water), and went to Nicaragua to train troops for dictator Somoza and battle Sandinista guerillas. Casual readers may be turned off by the ferocious violence, but this is a vivid portrait of a man who not only loved combat but studied it closely and creatively. 8-page b&w photo insert. Agent: Frank Weimann, the Literary Group. (May)