Kindle Unlimited
Unlimited reading. Over 2 million titles. Learn more
Read Now
OR
$5.76

promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Price includes tax, if applicable
Sold by: Amazon Australia Services, Inc..
Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will pre-order your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your memberships & subscriptions
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer—no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

James Snyder
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

American Warrior Kindle Edition

by James Snyder (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 out of 5 stars 654 ratings
The year is 1961. America has a new president, named John F. Kennedy, and a new era the newspapers are calling the Dawn of Camelot. But for ten-year-old Paul Brett, dealing with an abusive father and the immigrant gangs roaming his slum neighborhood of China Slough, America is only a small, dead-end place he is struggling to survive.

That is, until the night a mysterious stranger comes out of the darkness to his rescue, and initiates a journey—an unforgettable odyssey—beyond his wildest imagination. From his unlikely beginnings in a brutal California migrant camp, into the darkest underbelly of a distant and unpopular war, to his final and, perhaps, most deadly struggle for survival inside the bowels of a near-medieval military prison, AMERICAN WARRIOR follows one young man's breathtaking and mesmerizing journey into hell...and back.

"This book is hard to put down, and at times...the realism is startling and palpable." Kirkus Reviews

"It immerses you in a rich & violent tale of courage, skill & becoming." Rebeccas Reads
Read more
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    349 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    21 December 2013
  4. File size
    1.9 MB
  5. Page Flip
    Enabled
  6. Word Wise
    Enabled
  7. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
Next slide of product details
Top-rated books in Kindle Unlimited
Find your next great read. Browse this month's selection.

Product description

About the Author

James Snyder was born in Memphis, Tennessee and fell in love with the cadence and sound of storytelling as a child, listening to the meandering tales of his Southern grandmothers and great aunts. While still a child, his family moved to Napa Valley, California where he attended middle and high school, and began taking writing classes at the local college. He left after a year to join the military, and was a soldier with a tactical mobile operations unit in Germany. It was there, while pulling a Harz mountaintop guard duty one night during a snowstorm, he had the chance encounter with another soldier that ultimately became the genesis for his military thriller, American Warrior. His second novel is the suspense thriller, Desolation Run. In addition, he has just released the YA trilogy, The Beautiful-Ugly. "Berlin Diaries" is his blog at JamesSnyder.net where he further discusses the backgrounds of his writings. He currently lives in Texas.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00ENL8C6G
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bandera Publishing Company (21 December 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1.9 MB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 349 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0991527003
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 out of 5 stars 654 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
James Snyder

James Snyder

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

James Snyder was born in Memphis, Tennessee and lived in many parts of the United States before settling with his family in Napa Valley. Among a variety of careers and occupations, he was a soldier with a tactical mobile operations unit in Germany, as well as an executive for a Fortune 500 company.

Among others, he has published short stories in the Houghton Mifflin Black Mask anthologies, the Ginosko Literary Journal, and was a finalist in the New Letters’ Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction. His literary works include the novels AMERICAN WARRIOR, DESOLATION RUN, THE BEAUTIFUL-UGLY, FRENCH QUARTERS, SOLDIER IN GERMANY, and the short story collection TALES OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

His author’s website and contact are at jamessnyder.net. He currently lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
654 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top reviews from Australia

  • peter reed
    4.0 out of 5 stars What a read.
    Reviewed in Australia on 5 October 2021
    Verified Purchase
    This story is incredible. Without giving too much away it follows a skinny kid living as white trash to a soldier to a special soldier and then to a soldier who has seen too much.
    There is more than a bit of Apocalypse Now, a fair bit of Full Metal Jacket, just a touch of Law Abiding Citizen and, just for kicks, throw in some Jack Reacher.
    This read takes you on a ride you will not soon forget and is one of the few books that I really could not put down.
    If you like your stories dark, if you like your stories with an intensity that ‘crams your brains’ and if you like your stories so fast and unrelenting it almost hurts to read - then grab this and stand by.
    Some of this tale is a mixture of ‘finding’ yourself while losing yourself but the main character is worthy of your time and the storyline is just a wild ride for those who expect more than just a tale.
    Wow - what a read.
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • FERROMAIDN
    5.0 out of 5 stars American Warrior-Toward a greater understanding of the Vietnam war
    Reviewed in the United States on 17 April 2014
    Verified Purchase
    I have begun to understand the Vietnam war at last. I was too busy with the turmoil in my own life and around the war to even begin to understand the ramifications of our entry into the war and the continuous FUBAR it was. When family and friends started to come home in body bags or straight jackets I knew Tex Johnson was screwing up big time. It was American Warrior that finally brought the history of the war into focus. It also helped me understand the decent boys who came back in straight jackets. I knew a few SOGs (forward observers); boys that had been sent across the line into hell and understood why they fragged (or killed) their senior officers. The story of the life of the lead character (Paul) is entertwined with the war and his personal life to be both entertaining and informative. It also gave credence to the stories that were told to me by those that came back and closure to me for the ones that did not come back except in pieces. Over all the story is both believable and entertaining. Those with sensitive feelings may be shocked at some situations and language, we need to face it, that is how it was for the American Warriors.[[ASIN:B00ENL8C6G American Warrior]
    Report
  • Paradise141
    3.0 out of 5 stars Good read
    Reviewed in Canada on 9 January 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Good read
    Report
  • Rob Lopez
    5.0 out of 5 stars A real odyssey
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 January 2014
    Verified Purchase
    I first saw this book a month or so ago as a tiny advert on a writer's forum. It had one of the worst covers I had ever seen on a book, it was billed as $0.99 and it was called American Warrior. It looked awful, and I thought, 'How bad could this be?' So I clicked on the ad link.

    Now I'm sure that, somewhere on the net, there's a whole list of dos and don'ts in marketing that says that I, the consumer, really shouldn't have been drawn to clicking that link in the first place. I mean, I really shouldn't have wanted to click that link. Not according to the experts.

    Which is why I don't have a career in marketing. I'd suck at it. But I digress.

    So anyway, I clicked the link, got past the terrible cover (which has now been changed to something a lot less crappy - no, really, the last cover guy looked like he was made of wax. And was melting), got intrigued by the blurb and was taken with the sample of writing inside.

    And I saw immediately that this was not a book to be judged by its cover. Or its cheap price.

    The novel charts the journey of Paul Brett, a kid living on the wrong side of the tracks in rural 50's America. Surviving the predations of both his abusive father and the gangs that prowl the migrant camp where he lives, Paul embarks on a life-changing odyssey that takes him from the underside of America, through the underside of the war in Vietnam, and into military prison, itself the underside of the US military. It's a harrowing journey that's packed with some of the most authentic scenes you'll ever find in a work of fiction.

    It's not an exceptionally long book, but its scope is massive, or so it feels when you're immersed in it. I mean, the sheer detail of life in a slum, of army training, of martial arts, and of war, is impressive. On one occasion the detail did stray over the line into tedium, but I was never tempted to skip parts. There's a documentary quality to the settings, like it's a memoir, and there's clearly a lot that comes from the author's own experiences. But there's also a lot that doesn't. It is a novel, and a lot of research has gone into it. You can feel it. Or rather, you can't.

    I mean, sometimes you know that an author has done a ton of research, because as a reader you're being whacked over the head with it, like they want to show you how clever they are or they have to insert it all in a really obvious way, no matter how clumsy it looks. Well, this book isn't like that. I know, as a writer myself, that this author has done a lot of research. But as a reader all I get is the sheer immersion into a scene or a setting, like I've been there before, even though it is as far from my own experiences or anything I've read as I can get. And the characters feel real too, and they appear and disappear throughout the narrative in a more realistic fashion than is normal for fiction. Meet one on a page and you really don't know whether you're going to meet them again or just hear about their rumoured demise/exit/promotion from a second-hand source. In fact, I half expect to read about them again in the local news one day.

    Paul's journey is a gritty odyssey, with a fair bit of heartache to endure, but it's not a miserabilist tale by any means. It's just too damned interesting for that. Paul starts his journey as just another dirt poor kid, but the journey he's on is very much a spiritual one, and you can't help but be moved by his hope, as much as his pain. And in fact, the biggest pain for me was in reaching the end, because I didn't actually want it to end. I wanted a postscript, with all the loose ends tied up. I wanted to follow Paul through the rest of his life. That's how much emotional investment I had in this book.

    Which is my way of saying, I really liked this book, and I recommend that you read it. It certainly has a place in the top five of my all time favourite novels. In fact, I'd love to see a movie made about it. I can already picture it as a cross between Forrest Gump, Platoon, Shawshank Redemption and the Thin Red Line. And if you think that's an unlikely mash-up, trust me when I say it works.

    This book proves it.
    Report
  • David Lindsay
    4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written story that engages from the first page
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 September 2016
    Verified Purchase
    I downloaded this book whilst on sale and then forgot about it. I kept seeing the title on my Kindle and wondered why I had chosen it. Eventually I began to read it and was immediately captivated by the intense story and character development. It's far more thoughtful and considered than I had assumed from its title. It's gritty and quite graphic at times. It reminded me a little of 'The Orphanmaster's Son' in that, whilst the latter is set in what we know is an oppressive, war-orientated state of North Korea, this book's theme is the similarly brutal state-sponsored backdrop of the American/|Vietnamese war. There is a tendency for the author to delve into fantasy or stream of consciousness at times, and this did distract a little, but overall a remarkable, well-written story that engages from the first page.
    Report
  • Amazon Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars This is not your typical book about the great, indestructible hero
    Reviewed in the United States on 11 December 2014
    Verified Purchase
    This is not your typical book about the great, indestructible hero, but an extremely well written book following the life of a man from childhood through the horrors of the Vietnam War. As someone who served in that theater, the accuracy and realism in the book are chilling. The political focus of the war, along with (fictional) CIA involvement are very close to home and give an accurate picture of what was wrong with the entire operation. This is an unflinching, often brutal, story that held my interest from the first chapter. Spoiler alert - I would have rated it 5 stars, but I thought the prison scenario was too long and detailed, and frankly harder to believe than anything else in the book. My apologies to the author if this scenario actually occurred. All-in-all a really good read and worth the price.
    Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report