I never thought I would love a book about paratroopers. I never thought a book about paratroopers could be so evocative and romantic--I knew it might be funny. This book just sucked me right in, I couldn't bear to finish it. It offers a reader like me (female) a rare opportunity to feel what it feels like to be a lost young man (you think this happens all the time in books, but it doesn't). The characters are vivid, the settings brilliant (a passage about jumping while high on mescaline no more so than one about sitting on a barstool watching Saturday night take place) and the whole thing is suffused with the mystery and hopefulness that make life so hard to get on the right side of when you're twenty--no matter what sex you are.

Utterly real. One of the best books ever written about the US Army; Put in on the shelf alongide Jones' FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and Crumley's ONE TO CALL CADENCE.

I DON'T KNOW BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD is a dead-on accurate picture of the Army in the bad old days of the late 70's/early 80's. Correa captures the personalities and places, and he has a great gift for language -- the dialogue is perfect.

The plot is basically a series of peacetime war stories -- a Scout platoon from the 82nd Airobrne at Fort Bragg deploys to Panama for Jungle School. The nameless narrator recounts the events years later, looking back on the various ways he has messed up his life. The whole thing is as authentic as having the goofy "pirate ship" Jungle Expert patch sewn on the right pocket of an OD-green permanent press fatigue shirt.

You have to hate how the publisher handled the book. The copy editing was obviously doen by someone with no military background (you get 1/73 and 173 Airborne in the same paragraph), and while the blurbs on the back-cover may be from heavy-hitters in the literary field, the book would have done much better if they could have gotten Nelson DeMille, Dave Hackworth, or someone like that to have given it a prod.

Wow! I just started to read this book and am very impressed! Mr. Correa's book is a tremendous accomplishment. In reading it I feel like I am right there with his narrator, experiencing all the ups and downs, good times and bad, all the sights and smells. There are some excellent reviews mentioned on the cover of this book, some of them comparing Mr. Correa very favorably to other authors. I would certainly not question these but, to me, this book reminds me completely of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. While the subject matter, writing style, etc., are not exactly the same, in reading Grapes of Wrath I felt like I was right there experiencing all the joys and sorrows of the Okies fleeing the dustbowl. In reading I Don't Know But I've Been Told I feel like I am right there with the young paratroopers, trying to live their life while succeeding as soldiers and also coming to grips with becoming adults and finding their place in the world.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in finding what it is like to be a young soldier in a peacetime army, a young man growing up while trying to find out just who and what he is, a Steinbeck fan, or who just wants to read a really excellently written book by a new author. You won't be disappointed!

With all the books I have ever read this one comes to mind as the only one that has ever turned my stomach. I am sure there are many other ways of treating a subject like homophobia without going this route. I gave it one star because there was no option lower.

Tom Wolfe does a fine job of carving a network TV news magazine crew with sharp, satiric strokes. He creates a situation that is both engaging and topical. It's an entertaining diversion, but ultimately I didn't feel particularly amused, enlightened, or otherwise moved by this story. In part, this is because there is no follow through with the key plot elements (murder, journalistic excesses) protrayed. More important, Wolfe settles for allowing key characters to fire off their points without effectively engaging one another. I had little sense that the narcissistic producer, Irv Durtscher, was any different at the end of the tale.

There was a story worth telling here. Wolfe takes on issues as troubling and challenging as homophobia & tradition vs. diversity in the military, and investigative and story-making zeal vs. accuracy and fairness in broadcast news. When a novelist of Wolfe's stature takes on issues of this size, to produce but a diversion feels almost li! ke exploitation. Can America come to terms with market-driven investigative journalism? Can America tolerate a military subculture intolerant of diversity, and can a military forced to relinquish part of traditional prejudice develop an effective identity? I think that Wolfe is very adroit at sketching self-absorbed caricatures that can amuse us with these themes as a backdrop. I'd like like to see him try his hand at characters capable of movement and growth.

The genius of Tom Wolfe lies not in his ability to devise ingenius plots; but like Dickens a century and a half before, he has the uncanny ability to capture many contemporary personality types with a very few verbal brush strokes. He then puts those created characters into a situation, consistent with contemporary reality. This is what he did in Bonfire of the Vanities, and this is what he did again in the audio novella, Ambush At Ft. Bragg. Anyone who has ever written a novel, which strives for verisimilitude knows that at some point your characters at least try to take over the story. We all find our original plot schemes bending,at least, as we interact with our creations. But in Tom Wolfe's case, one strongly suspects that it isn't even a battle. He first creates characters which perfectly reflect the contemporary American reality, and then chronicles the inevitable interaction of those characters. His novels plot themselves; and plot themselves with a reality which reflects the genius of their creation. In this short work one will see a picture of contemporary American TV "Journalism" that one may not like. But it sure does ring true! The man is a modern American treasure.