I want to honor people who do extraordinary things to make our lives better. My first “hero” is David Kleinman who developed the critical battle-field first-aid kit for the Tucson police. Those kits saved lives after the recent shooting incident. Below is a short summary of the National Public Radio story that inspired me to recognize Mr. Kleinman. You can hear the entire story if you click below.
First responders at the Arizona shootings had an unusual tool: a fanny-pack-sized collection of first-aid materials based on gear used to save soldiers on the battlefield. And it allowed Pima County sheriff’s deputies to begin treating the wounded in the crucial minutes before paramedics arrived. Other deputies arrived. They began CPR and opened the kits. Each contained $99 worth of gear assembled by David Kleinman, the medic for the sheriff’s SWAT team. He got the idea to carry the packs after noticing how many police officers were dying from wounds they got in the line of duty.
“It wasn’t necessary for them to perish,” Kleinman says. “Had there been tools like this they probably would have survived.”
Kleinman came up with a two-hour training program called “the First Five Minutes.” He adapted an I-FAK — an Infantry First Aid Kit — for civilian use. Included in the kit’s five items is an emergency bandage he says was originally called an Israeli bandage.
The bandage — developed by the Israeli military — looks like an Ace bandage you’d wrap around your knee, with a gauze pad and clips to tighten it. It can be used on any part of the body to cover a wound and stop bleeding; you can even wrap it with a stick and use it as a leg splint. Combat gauze is also in the kit. It’s infused with coagulant to stop bleeding. There are shears to cut away clothing. A black nylon tourniquet. And an Asherman chest seal — a bandage that fits over a gunshot or stab wound and has a valve for fluid to escape. Everything in the kit is designed to be used quickly. That’s because people with severe wounds can die in the precious minutes before paramedics arrive or before it’s safe for them to enter a crime scene or an accident area.
I want to thank all of you for making this blog possible. Without Jeff, Patti, Rick, Deb, Drongo, Beth, Art, Bill, BV, Evan, L.A., Bob, Todd, James, Scott, Fiona, Jerry, Gloria, Dan, Steve, Karl, Michael, and all the rest of you out there most of the energy and interest here would soon evaporate. I consider this blog a collaborative enterprise. I appreciate your visits and your comments. They motivate me to Do Better. Around June, I’ll be undergoing a total knee replacement operation, but I hope to have enough postings generated so there won’t be any break in the daily stream of reviews while I undergo the 4-6 weeks of rehab. 
Yesterday, I reviewed Nick Flynn’s first memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. The sequel (just published), The Ticking is the Bomb, lacks the previous book’s power and energy. In a series of reveries, Nick Flynn thinks about old girl friends, failed relationships, torture, The Story of O, his mother, his father, and his new baby (yes, Flynn becomes a father!). Yet, the seeds of destruction are everywhere. Flynn has a baby with Inez, yet he still has “feelings” for Anna. On dating two women at the same time, Flynn opines: “For me, ‘dating’ often felt like reading Tolstoy–exhilarating, but a struggle, at times, to keep the characters straight.” Coming from a guy who’s part of a family of chronic substance abusers, this should come as no surprise. Flynn’s alcoholic father, the “star” of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, is threatened with eviction from his rat-infested, government-subsidized, apartment. Nick Flynn tries to delay the inevitable by removing 60 trash bags of clutter from the apartment, but in the end his father ends up in a nursing home. Flynn needed to go through The Ticking is the Bomb and remove the clutter from this book, too. GRADE: C+ 
Nick Flynn’s memoir of his alcoholic father and his mentally disturbed mother makes horrific reading on many levels. Flynn is honest enough to show his own drift into drug smuggling and drug abuse. I haven’t read a more dispassionate description of the slide into homelessness. Flynn opens his electrifying story with his homeless father trying to spend the night in a Boston ATM enclosure. Later, Flynn’s father shows up at the homeless shelter where Flynn works. The story bounces around from Flynn’s Mom’s demons to Flynn’s problems staying in college (and staying drug-free) to Flynn’s father’s stint in a federal prison. You won’t soon forget reading Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Compelling! 
Ted Conover won a National Book Critics Circle Award for Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, the story of Conover working as a prison guard. The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today is just as good. Conover strikes me as one of those restless people who can’t stay in the same place very long. He rambles around the world, traveling on good roads (in China) and terrible roads (in Africa). The most interesting journey Conover takes is a trip to South America to see where mahogany comes from. Several times while reading this book, I thought Conover was going to be shot or stomped or violated (the prostitutes in Africa found Conover very attractive). Conover goes into countries full of violence and AIDS to show how the spread of the disease is directly affected by roads and the long-haul truckers who populate them. If you’re interested in high-level reporting, you’ll find The Routes of Man fascinating. GRADE: A