"This is, of course, fantastic..."
Thanks to BookTuber Paul Harmon of Geeks Love Dogs, who gets a grip on the Men's Adventure Library's collection of MAM fiction by the late Robert F. Dorr, A Handful of Hell.
This book is differs from some of our other MAM collections in that Dorr's specialty was recounting authentic accounts of battlefield heroism, managing to balance the kind of wild, explosive action the mags' readers demanded with the respect his subjects warranted. While Dorr could write big action and adventure with the very best of his contemporaries (and would go on to a storied career as a writer under his own steam following the MAM era), what sets so much of his work in MAMs apart is not only the writer's gifts for nail-biting adventure storytelling, but his stories' realism and humanity—something not lost on Harmon:
"What's very cool about these is that a lot of them are based on true stories... So if you're a fan of history (and) WWII / Vietnam War-era non-fiction, you get that—with the action told in a way that makes it fun and exciting... It gives you the best of both worlds: history and adventure. Fun to read, and even now, they don't feel dated."
Watch the full review below. Dorr talk begins around 24 minutes in:
