B-Shifter: A Firefighter's Memoir
by Nick Brunacini
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nick BrunaciniEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-31
ISBN: 0974753467
Number of pages: 152
Publisher: Across the Street Prod.
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780974753461
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of B-Shifter: A Firefighter's Memoir
Book Review: In my FD, the equivalent of "B-shifter" is "Downtown Clown"
Summary: 5 Stars
As I am reviewing this, there are 11 other reviews of B-SHIFTER to read. I saw that all but one were 4 and 5 star reviews. The remaining one was a 1 star review admonishing people to "save their money". I wanted to read this one first as I thought this gentleman must work for the Farmington Hills Fire Department if he is so humorless. His name doesn't sound familiar so I don't think he does, but surely there must be others in the whole of the fire service like them. I just didn't think they would dignify this book with comment, being the consummate pros that they are.
In order to enjoy this book, you had better have a fireman's requisite appreciation for the absurd. If the bizarre and inexplicable don't make you bust out in belly laughs, stay home with another book. Maybe one of those dryer-than-dry histories of the FDNY, or the one about the BC that single-handedly lead every survivor out of the South Tower before it collapsed. If you've got self-aggrandizing on your mind, and you never made a mistake or would tell anyone about it if you had, you're barking up the wrong tree.
I'm a career FF and I've read tons of FF memoirs...good, bad, and right in the middle. This one isn't poignant like ENGINE 82 or outsider-ish like WORKING FIRE or FIGHTING FIRE, but it is hands down the FUNNIEST book ever written by a fireman. The stories, which on some level I HOPE are slightly embellished, are crazy enough to be true. I laughed out loud dozens of times. If this book has a fault, it's that it is too short. I wanted it to keep going.
Reading this book and thinking about Nick Brunacini I am reminded of a quote of Raymond Chandler's in talking about the hero of his private detective novels, Philip Marlowe. Chandler said, "If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."
Summary of B-Shifter: A Firefighter's Memoir
Most firefighter memoirs are painfully idealized and should come equipped with a bag-pipe soundtrack. If that?s the kind of book you?re looking for, my advice is to move on because B-Shifter will most likely disappoint you. The first 3 chapters of B-Shifter are about family. Brunacini devotes the first chapter of the book to chronicling his father?s (Alan Brunacini) 48-year career with the Phoenix, AZ Fire Department. Alan is world renown as one of the fathers of the modern fire service and a pioneer for firefighter safety. Nick connects his father?s zeal for improved firefighting safety procedures by vividly describing a diner fire where his father died for a few minutes. The next two chapters are devoted to Nick and his brother and sister growing up in a family where the only logical end was joining the fire service fraternity. Nick makes the observation that fire departments more closely resemble cults (or severely dysfunctional families) than a regular workforce. The reader is brought into the closed world of fire station life and the wide range of personalities that a fire station houses. Firefighters describe B-Shifter?s portrayal of the workforce as "dead on". The remaining 10 chapters of B-Shifter give the reader a "ride along" on a collection of the most exciting, twisted, heart breaking and adrenaline filled calls over a 25-year period in the city of Phoenix. Whether it?s pulling an attack line up a rapidly vaporizing staircase, a airplane crash into the center of a family's Memorial Day backyard picnic or standing by the side of a slime filled pool frantically trying to rescue a pair of young brothers, the reader is immersed in the firefighter?s world. B-Shifter is as much about how firefighters perform, handle and decompress from responding to life and death situations. The Phoenix Fire Department was long held to be the cutting edge fire department by most of the world?s fire service. B-Shifter shows the world that the PFD is as human as any other department. Despite the graphic nature of the book most readers describe it as absolutely hilarious.Memoirs Books
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