Deftly blending history with autobiography, action with analysis, the legendary Marine general Victor "Brute" Krulak offers here a riveting insider's chronicle of U. S. Marines--their fights on the battlefield and off, and their extraordinary esprit de corps. He not only takes a close look at the Marine experience during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam--wars in which Krulak was himself a participant--but also examines the foundation on which the Corps is built. In doing so, he helps answer the question of what it means to be a Marine and how the Corps has maintained such a consistently outstanding reputation.