The book follows Johnny Rico, heir to an immense manufacturing fortune, who signs up for military service along with his best friend from high school, Carl. The problem with them is that they are founded on premises that we now (mostly) believe to be erroneous. The book is still fascinating, though: indeed, its interest lies precisely in its extremely right-wing politics, because the thought processes behind this society are overwhelmingly rational. What most people know is that the film is almost nothing like the book Paul Verhoeven satirizes the military society that Heinlein describes, where only combat veterans are permitted to vote and the expansion of humanity across the stars is as god-given a right as Manifest Destiny was to the settlers of the American West. My friend JonBoy told me to read this years ago-I think we were still in high school when he recommended it-but my first exposure to it was from the movie made in 1997. This was the very last of my holiday reading books, although I had been back from my holiday for several weeks before I finished it. When you come right to it, it’s a lot easier to die than it is to use your head. The Great Reread, #5: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith.April 2023: superlatives for the rest of it.Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs.

The Great Reread, #6: Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer.

Star troopers book