Boot: The Inside Story of How a Few Good Men Became Today's Marines

To research this book, novelist da Cruz, himself an ex-Marine, spent three months with the recruits of Platoon 1036 at Parris Island, S.C. He shows the eased training standards at Marine boot camp and quotes many enlistees who think the regimen is not nearly tough enough. Drill instructors, for example, may not use profanity at trainees, nor touch them; the process of converting trainees into Leathernecks involves much physical instruction, close-order drill, exercises in marksmanship and simulated combat. The aim is to instill a sense of self-respect and confidence and, more importantly, esprit de corps. There is a chapter on female Marines, whose attrition rate is exceedingly high. Da Cruz's argument that training has become ""too easy'' is off-putting, as is his glorification of the Marine as ``a different breed.'' Military Book Club main selection. (March 24)