His vast skill set puts him in front of the front lines, leading twenty-two Marines into the deadlist conflict since Vietnam. He vows he will bring all his men home safely, and to do so he’ll need more than his top-flight education. He’ll need luck and an increasingly clear vision of the limitations of his superiors and the missions they assign him. Fick unveils the process that makes Marine officers such legendary leaders and shares his hard-won insights into the differences between the military ideals he learned and military practice, which can mock those ideals. One Bullet Away never shrinks from blunt truths, but it is an ultimately inspiring account of mastering the art of war.

One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
To meet Nate Fick is to walk away encouraged about the future of America. For in this young man, one finds an uncommon mixture of thoughtfulness, intelligence, and drive -- all of which come shining through in his first book, One Bullet Away. In the mid-1990s, Fick was a Dartmouth student with plans for grad school -- big plans that would cost big money. So when he made a calculation and entered the Marine Corps' Officer Candidates School to fund his further education, he was tested within an ounce of his strength in order to stay the course. But several years later, the catastrophic events of 9/11 would send Fick to Afghanistan and later to Iraq, where his hard-core training came in handy, and the throwaway lines he'd heard from instructors, like "There's a fine line between aggressive and foolish," "Don't be in a hurry to get your Marines killed," and "Deal with it," held a new weight -- that of the lives of his fellow soldiers and of the civilians they encountered.

Fick is a man with a conscience, too -- one that was tried while he was serving overseas, and one that plagues him still. Reflecting on his experiences as a soldier, he writes, "Philosophical debates were a luxury I could not enjoy. War was what I had. We didn't vote for it, authorize it, or declare it. We just had to fight it." Fight it, he did. (Holiday 2005 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A former captain in the Marines? First Recon Battalion, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, reveals how the Corps trains its elite and offers a point-blank account of twenty-first-century battle.

If the Marines are ?the few, the proud,? Recon Marines are the fewest and the proudest. Only one Marine in a hundred qualifies for Recon, charged with working clandestinely, often behind enemy lines. Fick?s training begins with a hellish summer at Quantico, after his junior year at Dartmouth, and advances to the pinnacle -- Recon -- four years later, on the eve of war with Iraq. Along the way, he learns to shoot a man a mile away, stays awake for seventy-two hours straight, endures interrogation and torture at the secretive SERE course, learns to swim with Navy SEALs, masters the Eleven Principles of Leadership, and much more.

His vast skill set puts him in front of the front lines, leading twenty-two Marines into the deadliest conflict since Vietnam. He vows he will bring all his men home safely, and to do so he?ll need more than his top-flight education. He?ll need luck and an increasingly clear vision of the limitations of his superiors and the missions they assign him. Fick unveils the process that makes Marine officers such legendary leaders and shares his hard-won insights into the differences between the military ideals he learned and military practice, which can mock those ideals. One Bullet Away never shrinks from blunt truths, but it is an ultimately inspiring account of mastering the art of war.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The global war on terrorism has spawned some excellent combat narratives-mostly by journalists. Warriors, like Marine Corps officer Fick, bring a different and essential perspective to the story. A classics major at Dartmouth, Fick joined the Marines in 1998 because he "wanted to go on a great adventure... to do something so hard that no one could ever talk shit to me." Thus begins his odyssey through the grueling regimen of Marine training and wartime deployments-an odyssey that he recounts in vivid detail in this candid and fast-paced memoir. Fick was first deployed to Afghanistan, where he saw little combat, but his Operation Freedom unit, the elite 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, helped spearhead the invasion of Iraq and "battled through every town on Highway 7" from Nasiriyah to al Kut. (Rolling Stone writer Evan Wright's provocative Generation Kill is based on his travels with Fick's unit.) Like the best combat memoirs, Fick's focuses on the men doing the fighting and avoids hyperbole and sensationalism. He does not shrink from the truth-however personal or unpleasant. "I was aware enough," he admits after a firefight, "to be concerned that I was starting to enjoy it." Agent, E.J. McCarthy. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

With a compelling need to be the best and lead the best, this Dartmouth graduate became a Marine officer who led his men in combat in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003. Fick's memoir provides an incomparable analysis of the training an officer must undergo and the standards that must be met. His battle narratives are exciting, but the story of the training of a combat leader provides the real meaning. Physical ability, moral courage, and quick intelligence represent Fick's leadership qualities. Here, these qualities are used in combat, but they're applicable to any successful leadership role in or out of the Marines. Fick's narrative eschews tough, vulgar language and instead deploys an intelligent, sensitive descriptive prose. Recommended for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/05.] Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews