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Title details for Ranger Games by Ben Blum - Available

Ranger Games

A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime

by Ben Blum
Johnathan McClain
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
A tense and layered true-crime story about an all-American soldier boy turned bank robber Alex Blum was a clean-cut all-American kid with one unshakeable goal in life: to serve his country in the military. He was accepted into the elite Rangers regiment, but on the first day of his leave before deployment to Iraq, Alex got into his car with two fellow soldiers and two strangers, drove to a local bank in Tacoma, and committed armed robbery. The Blum family was devastated and mystified. How could he have done such a thing? Alex's attorney presented a defence based on the theory that trainee Rangers are indoctrinated on a level akin to the brainwashing in an extreme religious cult, and Alex insisted that he had believed the robbery was just another exercise in the famously daunting Ranger program. But Luke Elliot Sommer, the charismatic soldier behind the robbery, maintained that Alex knew exactly what he was doing, and had, in fact, planned it all with him. Who was lying? What had happened to Alex during those gruelling months of training? How accountable was he?

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 12, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780008243746
      • File size: 462554 KB
      • Duration: 16:03:39

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1150
    • Text Difficulty: 8-9

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      What would incite an Army Ranger with a spotless record and boundless potential to rob a bank and throw his career away? That's the question Ben Blum sets out to answer in this outstanding piece of personal journalism about his cousin Alex, who committed this inexplicable crime. Narrator Johnathan McClain's pacing is ideal. He carries the narrative briskly along, using more intensity when needed but without slipping into melodrama. He provides subtle vocal shifts for the various characters, including a passable Canadian accent for Blum's partner in crime, a British Columbiaborn Ranger who incited the robbery. Ultimately, Blum is unable to provide definitive answers, but he asks challenging questions about the way elite soldiers are trained. D.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 29, 2017
      This engrossing true-crime saga follows a twisting labyrinth of confused and suspect motivations. In 2006 Blum’s cousin Alex Blum, a straight-arrow 19-year-old in an elite Army Ranger battalion, was the getaway driver in an armed robbery of a Tacoma bank involving four accomplices, one of whom was a higher-ranking Ranger named Luke Elliott Sommer. Alex’s arrest shocked his family, as did his unlikely excuse: he thought the robbery was a special-ops training exercise he had to participate in. Trying to make sense of this, Blum embarked on a years-long quest to suss out the factors that shaped Alex’s actions: his adulation of the military; the sadistic Ranger training regimen that turned recruits into obedient killers (in 2010 Alex went on Dr. Phil as a poster boy for psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s theory of “coercive social influence” in military culture); and the malign authority of Sommer, a charismatic but troubled man whose schemes embodied Ranger machismo and who gets a fascinating profile from the author. In a triumph of subtle reportage, Blum sleuths through the mind games enshrouding the heist while painting sympathetic but clear-eyed portraits of its perpetrators; the result is an unsettling dissection of the moral corruptions, small and great, that bedevil the culture of military honor. Agent: Tina Bennett, Janklow & Nesbit.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 27, 2017
      Voice actor McClain briskly recounts the story of Alex Blum, a straight-arrow 19-year-old who joined the army out of high school and participated in an armed bank robbery with two fellow soldiers days before he was set deploy to Iraq. The book, written by his cousin Ben, attempts to unravel the confused and suspect motivations behind Blum’s uncharacteristic actions, and the several conflicting explanations for his involvement in the crime proffered by his defense lawyers, Blum and his co-conspirators, and his family. Is he a victim of brainwashing? Did he really believe the heist was an organized army simulation? Was he just acting out? Narrator McClain does a terrific job of guiding listeners through this complex story as attitudes toward Alex shift. He vividly captures the book’s watershed moment, Alex’s appearance on the Dr. Phil show, nailing the emotional weight of the scene and the show host’s folksy aphorisms. The book’s narrative arc makes it well suited for the audio format, and McClain is more than competent. A Doubleday hardcover.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1150
  • Text Difficulty:8-9

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