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The Lords of Discipline | 
 enlarge | Author: Pat Conroy
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $5.49
You Save: $9.51 (63%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  169 reviews
Sales Rank: 26484
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0553381563
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780553381566
ASIN: 0553381563
Publication Date: October 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Brand New! Immediate Shipment!
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Product Description
In this powerful, mesmerizing, and highly acclaimed bestseller, Pat Conroy sweeps us into the turbulent world of four young men–friends, cadets, and blood brothers–and their days of hazing, heartbreak, pride, betrayal, and, ultimately, humanity.
We go deeply into the heart of the novel’s hero, Will McLean, a rebellious outsider with his own personal code of honor, who is battling into manhood the hard way. Immersed in a poignant love affair with a haunting beauty, Will must boldly confront the terrifying injustice of a corrupt institution as he struggles to expose a mysterious group known as “The Ten.”
Download Description
A coming of age story in a Southern military academy for boys
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| Customer Reviews: Read 164 more reviews...
 little slow but great read towards the end August 22, 2008
like i said a little slow in the beggining and i though i wasn't going to like it. don't give up though...the story gets intense without too much "action" type stuff and it ended becoming one good read.
Excellent Writing April 19, 2008
I received this book as a gift and was reluctant to read it as the subject matter was not of interest. I started to read it just to see what it might be like and was captured by the outstanding writing. It was just a joy to read and the characters will stay with me forever.
Lords of Discipline June 8, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
About half way thru this book and had to set it aside. I'll return to it later as it is a little too intense and the language is shocking.
I thought his books Beach Music and The Prince of Tides were much better. I could not put Beach Music down.
One of Conroy's Best January 31, 2007
This is a great military/coming of age novel by Pat Conroy that I would put slightly behind The Great Santini (one of my favorite books of all time) in his catalogue. In this story, Conroy follows a young cadet at the fictional Carolina Military Institute (modeled partly on Conroy's time at The Citadel) as he endures his plebe year and then comes to grip with the fact that the school fosters a great deal of hate, racism and cruelty to accomplish its mission of developing the Complete Man. Conroy's writing always moves quickly with engaging dialogue, humor and entertaining story lines and this book is no exception. It is certainly deeper than your standard pop fiction book, but it reads just as easily and quickly. I would highly recommend it to Conroy fans, people who enjoy good fiction (even my mother likes this book) or people who have interest in military schools or the South in the 50's. A very good book.
Duty, Honor, Country October 14, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The mark of a successful coming of age story is that you, the reader, can see yourself reflected in the protagonist. For me, this book worked very well. Will McLean, the main character and first-person narrator, a second generation Irish boy, son of a Marine, a mongrel outsider in the pedigreed Carolina Military Institute searches for himself, the man within the boy who is being molded by a system of discipline and honor that doesn't match his internal morality. He's an English major in a college of warriors. He's a basketball player, a finesse guard, in a school of brute force. He's fighting against systems he doesn't understand within a life choiceless in it's inequality.
Pat Conroy, himself a graduate of the model for the fictional Institute, The Citadel, weaves a compelling tension-filled story while eloquent in his setting, Charleston, South Carolina. Employing gracious proper Southern dialect filled with flowers, antiques, and tradition, he describes brutality, racism, sexism, and betrayal. The language works well because it provides within its description the biting irony of the scenes. Will McLean fights through every taboo the South has to offer in the 1960's: a black cadet in the all-white tradition of the military college, an unwed pregnant girl shunned by society for her shame while the father of her baby remains blameless, the brutal plebe system that crushes individuality while remaking young men as soulless military automatons, the classed society of high south old money and it's cruelty to those not born within the circle, and the fact that military honor doesn't equate to individual morality.
Fighting through this maze of pitfalls, McLean has only his closest and dearest friends to rely on, roommates Dante "Pig" Pignetti and Mark Santoro, two brawny, Northern boys of Italian descent and Tradd St. Croix, an "old Charlestonian" (from a very rich and respected family). His moral guide through the story is the epitomy of hard military men, Colonel "Bear" Berrineau, a vulgar battle-scarred man whose character is unimpeachable and whose idea of duty includes awful repercussions.
I loved this story and I couldn't put it down. If I had one criticism to give, it's that Conroy tried to put too much into the novel - too many problems and taboos and tried to fix hundreds of years worth of problems in one book. But, that's not really a criticism because he did it and did it well. Bravo.
CV Rick
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