A hero perished : the diary and selected letters of Nile Kinnick /
Author / Creator: | Kinnick, Nile C. (Nile Clarke), 1918-1943. |
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Edition: | [Pbk. ed., 1991]. |
Imprint: | Iowa City, Iowa : University of Iowa Press, 1991. |
Description: | 1 online resource (xliii, 290 pages) : illustrations |
Language: | English |
Subject: | |
Format: | E-Resource Book |
URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11107431 |
Summary: | A Hero Perished tells Nile Kinnick's story. This grandson of an Iowa governor, the son of parents who disciplined him to strive for his measure of greatness, became a Heisman Trophy winner and national celebrity through a combination of talent and circumstance. Following his college successes, Kinnick began legal study to prepare for a political career, but with the approach of war he entered the Navy Air Corps to refashion himself as a fighter pilot. Assigned to the carrier USS Lexington on its premier cruise, he took off in a defective plane--and his death shocked a nation grown almost used to tragic loss. For the first time, Kinnick tells his own tale through his engaging letters--all but one previously unpublished--and his diary, printed in its entirety for the first time. The result is a human, intimate look at the true person behind the myth, revealing both his foibles and his essential principles. A Hero Perished also includes a definitive text of Kinnick's moving Heisman Award acceptance speech and his impassioned commencement supper address, calling on the new Iowa graduates to achieve moral courage in a time of depression and war. An illuminating comment on a time and attitude that have passed, A Hero Perished is of and about a football player, but it is not a football book--it is far more. This volume displays Kinnick--who was, despite his great gifts and achievements, a vulnerable and decent young man--in a time of great change and peril when a phase of our culture was passing away. |
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Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xliii, 290 pages) : illustrations |
ISBN: | 1587290103 9781587290107 0877453365 087745390X |