Jack Lucas received the medal of honor when he was barely seventeen years old for actions on Iwo Jima. He covered an enemy grenade with his body and pulled a second grenade under him before they could detonate to save his fellow marines. He pressed one grenade down in the sand as he fell and the second did not explode. He endured multiple surgeries, and his right arm bore black marks from the embedded sand of Iwo Jima for the remainder of his life. Lucas joined the Marine Corps at fifteen, and he was not prepared for the media sensation that came with receiving the medal. The book gives too much coverage to the author's life after his time in the military, and would have been more interesting if additional detail had been given to the brief time the author spent on Iwo Jima. Still, it is an interesting portrait of a young man intensely driven to defeat our enemies in one of World War II's most ferocious battles.
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