In the mid-Sixties, The Ballad of The Green Berets was the number one song and later I would find out that it was written by a former Green Berete. Though I think this just lightly touched on this man's life he had some real issues such as killing a former lover's ex and then running guns in South America only to have an assassination attempt really put an end to him in his last few years of life. Was really thinking this book could be more and was left wanting more actually.

The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry Sadler The top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn t Paint It Black or Yellow Submarine --it was The Ballad of the Green Berets, a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam vet Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler s clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote articles for Soldier of Fortune and pulp novels that made Rambo look like a stroll through Disneyland. He killed a lover s ex-boyfriend in Tennessee. Settling in Central America, Sadler ran guns, allegedly trained guerrillas, provided medical care to residents, and caroused at his villa. In 1988 he was shot in the head by a robber on the streets of Guatemala and died a year later. This life-and-times biography of an American character recounts the sensational details of Sadler s life vividly but soberly, setting his meteoric rise and tragic fall against the big picture of American society and culture during and after the Vietnam War."

My rating:4 stars
I grow up listen to the song The Ballad of the Green Berets,and it's still one of my all time favorite songs to listen to, so as soon as I saw this on NetGalley,I knew I had to request it, and read it, it's the type of story that makes you want to read it, and feel for the main character , because of all the stuff he went through before and after he wrote the song, how the fame he gained made his life hard to live when all he wanted was to be a solider , how no matter how hard he tried to put his life together it just didn't work out, its a must read .With that said I would love to think NetGalley for giving me the chance at reading this and finding out so much more about the life and death of the man who wrote a song that to this days is the song about the Green Berets.

I grew up listening to this song and so the title drew me me in.