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As I write this, I massage aching bits of shrapnel still embedded beneath silvered scars. Iâve read many Vietnam War storiesâpraising the war, glorifying combat, condemning the war. My stories are 1st person limited POV, voice of a twenty-year-old sailor. My title is a spin-off of Joseph Conradâs Heart of Darkness. By the time I wrote my memoir, I realized that our national goals in Vietnam had been Muddy from the beginning. I too, traveled Jungle Rivers. During my time on the riverboat, I witnessed Rivers of bloodârivers of life, trickle across our deck. And yes, Jungle is a fitting metaphor for our life at that time.
McMasterâs book confirms the corruption, lies, and hubris of national leaders, including the military during the Vietnam era. As a high-ranking officer in the army, I found his in-depth analysis of deception at the top levels very troubling. This is a must-read for every person interested in our historyâespecially to understand the mistakes of the Vietnam Warâthe quagmire that pulled us in.
"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C." -H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion) Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. McMaster pinpoints the policies and decisions that gotâŚ
As I write this, I massage aching bits of shrapnel still embedded beneath silvered scars. Iâve read many Vietnam War storiesâpraising the war, glorifying combat, condemning the war. My stories are 1st person limited POV, voice of a twenty-year-old sailor. My title is a spin-off of Joseph Conradâs Heart of Darkness. By the time I wrote my memoir, I realized that our national goals in Vietnam had been Muddy from the beginning. I too, traveled Jungle Rivers. During my time on the riverboat, I witnessed Rivers of bloodârivers of life, trickle across our deck. And yes, Jungle is a fitting metaphor for our life at that time.
After my mother was committed, I went through five foster homes by sixteen. Wolffâs early years mirrored mine in some respectsâbroken home, high school dropout, military service a path forward. He even served in the Mekong Delta, arriving early in 1968 just as the Tet Offensive was trigged. I arrived one week later. Wolffâs tight dialogue and crazy exploits such as the color television resonated. But âLast Shotââthe last two pages really touched me as he reflects on a lost friend Hughâno chance to live life and have a family. Many years ago my daughter went to Washington D.C. She asked if I knew anyone on the Wall. She returned with thirteen etchings. Each day I reflect on why I have lived so long and they never had a chance. Wolff shares that emotion so masterfully throughout his book.
Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive, the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his own illusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye for detail, pitiless candor and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life a modern classic.
As I write this, I massage aching bits of shrapnel still embedded beneath silvered scars. Iâve read many Vietnam War storiesâpraising the war, glorifying combat, condemning the war. My stories are 1st person limited POV, voice of a twenty-year-old sailor. My title is a spin-off of Joseph Conradâs Heart of Darkness. By the time I wrote my memoir, I realized that our national goals in Vietnam had been Muddy from the beginning. I too, traveled Jungle Rivers. During my time on the riverboat, I witnessed Rivers of bloodârivers of life, trickle across our deck. And yes, Jungle is a fitting metaphor for our life at that time.
This is the first Vietnam War book I read. For almost ten years I remained silent about my military serviceâmany coworkers did not know I had served, let alone two tours and wounded in action. Caputoâs voice and sense of loss and waste and rage touched so close to my feelings. His gift of words made me live again the countless hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terrorâfor me, ambushes, mines, incoming artillery, and mortar rounds. Twenty years in the future, when I began writing my stories, I read Caputoâs book again because I hoped to emulate his sense of angst.
The 40th anniversary edition of the classic Vietnam memoirâfeatured in the PBS documentary series The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novickâwith a new foreword by Kevin Powers
In March of 1965, Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern historyâs ugliest wars, he returned homeâphysically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.
A Rumor of War is far more than one soldierâs story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered Americaâs indifference to the fate ofâŚ
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorâand only womanâon a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
As I write this, I massage aching bits of shrapnel still embedded beneath silvered scars. Iâve read many Vietnam War storiesâpraising the war, glorifying combat, condemning the war. My stories are 1st person limited POV, voice of a twenty-year-old sailor. My title is a spin-off of Joseph Conradâs Heart of Darkness. By the time I wrote my memoir, I realized that our national goals in Vietnam had been Muddy from the beginning. I too, traveled Jungle Rivers. During my time on the riverboat, I witnessed Rivers of bloodârivers of life, trickle across our deck. And yes, Jungle is a fitting metaphor for our life at that time.
My river boat division (Mobile Riverine Force Division 112) patrolled the Cua Viet River just south of the DMZ between North and South Vietnam during the timeline of this book so I could very much relate to the events, though the Marines took much heavier casualties than our boats did. Keith Nolan does an excellent job documenting the battlesâas I read, I relived the bomb and strafing runs done by the navy aircraft carrier F-4 Phantoms (which I also wrote about in my memoir) Nolanâs very detailed account of the Marine battles on the north side of the river answered many decades-old questions for me. His use of dialogue and insights into the Marines keep the reader engrossed.
On April 29, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army is spotted less than four miles from the U.S. Marinesâ Dong Ha Combat Base. Intense fighting develops in nearby Dai Do as the 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, known as âthe Magnificent Bastards,â struggles to eject NVA forces from this strategic position.
Yet the BLT 2/4Marines defy the brutal onslaught. Pressing forward, Americaâs finest warriors rout the NVA from their fortress-hamletsâoften in deadly hand-to-hand combat.At the end of two weeks of desperate, grinding battles, the Marines and the infantry battalion supporting them are torn to shreds. But against all odds, they beat backâŚ
From an early age, I have made a life out of listening to, telling, teaching, and writing about war stories. I am intrigued by their widespread personal and public importance. My changing associations with these stories and their tellers have paralleled evolving stages in my lifeâson, soldier, father, and college professor. Each stage has spawned different questions and insights about the tales and their narrators. At various moments in my own life, these war stories have also given rise to fantasized adventure, catharsis, emotional highs and lows, insights about human nature tested within the crucible of war, and intriguing relationships with the storytellersâtheir lives and minds.
As a Vietnam veteran, teacher of war literature, and writer, I am disappointed that I never interviewed Michael Herr. I can only imagine what such an encounter might have been like with this larger-than-life figure, at least the persona (adrenaline junky, reporter on drugs) found in this fragmented collection of war reportage. With its New Journalistic style and content, the sensory-overload writing might be best described as a collection of literary illumination rounds (their underlying messageâwar is hell and addictive). As a freelance journalist, Herr arrived in Vietnam wanting to reveal the large ugly truths about the war, which he succeeds in doing, but I find the soldiersâ personal war stories more gripping and truthful. For me and even Herr, the real surprise is that this book ultimately chronicles the authorâs own war story of innocence lost: the anti-war reporter becomes just as addicted to war as some of hisâŚ
A groundbreaking piece of journalism which inspired Stanley Kubrick's classic Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket.
We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.
Michael Herr went to Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire. He returned to tell the real story in all its hallucinatory madness and brutality, cutting to the quick of the conflict and its seductive, devastating impact on a generation of young men. His unflinching account is haunting in its violence, butâŚ
Iâm pretty well qualified to provide you with a list of five great books about men at war because, frankly, Iâve spent half my life reading them and the other half trying to write them (you be the judge!). My degree in Military Studies was focused on the question of what makes men endure the lunacy of war (whether they be âgoodiesâ or âbaddiesâ), and it was in fiction that I found some of the clearest answersâclue: itâs often less about country and duty and more about the love of the men alongside the soldier. In learning how to write, I also learned how to recognize greatâenjoy!
I came across this book while researching why the US Army (and Marines) struggled so badly in the Vietnam War. As with all the books Iâm recommending here, it spoke to me of how men go to war for their duty but stay at war for their brothers.
It speaks volumes of the frustrations and contradictions of a war in which an American generation skewed to the poor and racially discriminated against was sent to fight a highly motivated army of liberation and paid the price for their obedience. And told me more about what really happened in the valleys of that benighted country than any history book could.
I read it cover to cover and then read it again, eagerly consuming its truth at a time when the scars were so fresh that the truth was barely starting to emerge, and I commend it to you both as aâŚ
Hailed as the most important novel to emerge from the Vietnam War when first published in 1978, this book launched a spectacular writing career for James Webb that now includes four bestselling novels. A much-decorated former Marine who fought and was wounded in Vietnam, Webb tells the story of a platoon of tough, young Marines enduring the tropical hell of Southeast Asian jungles while facing an invisible enemy--in a war no one understands. Filled with the sounds and smells of combat, it is nevertheless a book about people, an amazing variety of closely observed characters caught up in circumstances beyondâŚ
The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.
This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United StatesâŚ
I was always fascinated by the Vietnam War since my older sisterâs friends went off to fight in it. After getting my PhD and writing about World War I and World War II, I returned to Vietnam by getting involved with veterans groups and taking veterans and students to Vietnam. Since then I have written widely on the topic, teach about the Vietnam War, and have been involved in several major Vietnam War documentaries for outlets including the History Channel and National Geographic Channel. From those early days I have read everything I can get my hands on about the war, about my generationâs war.
A perfect example of what a well-researched and written academic book on the Vietnam War should be. Abandoning Vietnam tells the critical story of the military side of how America exited its conflict in Vietnam. In most western books on the Vietnam War, our allies in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese, are missing. But this book makes clear South Vietnamâs manifold strengths and clear weaknesses and why our alliance with them failed. The failure of that alliance not only cost more than 50,000 American lives but cost the Vietnamese millions and cost South Vietnam its very life.
We like to forget what happened there in the wake of our defeat, but this book wonât let you forget. Reading this pushed me to write my own book to further the story.
To achieve this goal, America poured millions of dollars into training and equipping the South Vietnamese military while attempting to pacify the countryside. Precisely how this strategy was implemented and why it failed so completely are the subjects of this eye-opening study. Drawing upon both archival research and his own military experiences in Vietnam, Willbanks focuses on military operations from 1969 through 1975. He contends that Vietnamization was a potentially viable plan that was begun years too late.
Who hasnât seen the classic American movies on the Vietnam WarâApocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, or Platoon? They are fine films, but have you ever asked yourself where the Vietnamese are? Save for a few stereotyped cameo appearances, they are remarkably absent. I teach the history of the wars in Vietnam at the UniversitĂŠ du QuĂŠbec Ă MontrĂŠal. My students and I explore the French and the American sides in the wars for Vietnam, but one of the things that Iâve tried to do with them is weave the Vietnamese and their voices into our course; this list provides a window into those Vietnamese voices.
If you like graphic memoirs and want one on the Vietnam War, Marcelino Truongâs Such a Lovely Little War is for you.
Itâs an autobiographical tale of Truongâs life as the son of a Vietnamese diplomat working for the South Vietnam government and a French mother. We see the war through his eyes, but we also see the world he encountered as a teenager in London, Washington, and then back in Saigon.
The dialogue and the graphics are superb. The juxtaposition between his family and this âlovely little warâ turning around it makes this memoir of the Vietnam War a highly original one.
This riveting, beautifully produced graphic memoir tells the story of the early years of the Vietnam war as seen through the eyes of a young boy named Marco, the son of a Vietnamese diplomat and his French wife. The book opens in America, where the boy's father works for the South Vietnam embassy; there the boy is made to feel self-conscious about his otherness thanks to schoolmates who play war games against the so-called "Commies." The family is called back to Saigon in 1961, where the father becomes Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem's personal interpreter; as the growing conflict betweenâŚ
The Vietnam War was a life changing experience for those who fought it and lived through those times; one that will end only when the last one of them dies. Like so many wars, Vietnam will fade into the distant memory of history as a name, some dates, and a historianâs impersonal commentary. My preparation for that war, my infantry training at Fort Polk, and later as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division as well as my subsequent experience with friends returning from Vietnam have given me the unique ability to experience it through many different perspectives. My goal is to ensure the reader will experience as closely as possible the things they saw.
In this novel, Leonard Scott utilizes his experience as a U.S. Army officer to tell a story about five people involved in the Vietnam War. One is an NCO with the 75th Rangers. Another is a rebellious rich girl who joins the Red Cross and volunteers for duty in Vietnam. The third is a company commander for the 75th Rangers, and the fourth is a young North Vietnamese Army Platoon leader. Scottâs book weaves an exceptionally well told saga and became one of my five choices because it captures the essence (or if you will: the grotesque stench) of the war in Vietnam from several perspectives, including that of an enemy soldier.
If war may be said to bring out the worst in governments, it frequently brings out the best in people. This is a novel about some of the very best. Some led. Some followed. Some died.
âOne of the finest novels yet written about the war in Vietnam.ââThe Washington Post
Sergeant David Grady: Leader of Ranger Team 2-2, the Double Deuce, he was a perfectionist who loved his men, his team, and his Army. For a long time they had been his whole world.
Sarah Boyce: Cold. Beautiful. For all her life, she'd been her whole world. She thought sheâŚ
2024 Gold Winner, Benjamin Franklin Awards, Health & Fitness Category
2024 International Book Awards, Winner, Autobiography/Memoir Category and Health: Women's Health Category
A memoir of triumph in the face of a terrifying diagnosis, Up the Down Escalator recounts Dr. Lisa Doggett's startling shift from doctor to patient, as she learnsâŚ
I am well qualified to speak of the Vietnam aviation experience because these things happened during my formative years as a pilot, and I was on the âfront linesâ of seeing and experiencing much of it. In addition, I keep up-to-date with it via reunions and reading stories told by other pilots, and I have met Kenny Fields, George Marrett, and Leo Thorsness.
This is an exciting book by Kenny Fields, a navy pilot who was shot down on his first mission. He came down near a North Vietnamese division in southern Laos and was on the ground for about 50 hours before he was rescued. The story is told from the perspective of the survivor. The NVA and Viet Cong troops had recently participated in the siege of Khe Sanh, and were back in the (for them) sanctuary of Laos.
On 31 May 1968, Lt. Kenny Fields catapulted off USS America in his A-7 for his first combat mission. His target was in Laos, which at the time was `officially' off limits for US attacks. What the planners did not know was that Fields and his wingman were en route to a massive concentration of AAA gun sites amidst an entire North Vietnamese division.
Fields, who used the call sign`Streetcar 304', was the first to roll in, and he destroyed his target with a direct hit. Three AAA guns began to fire, but, following his wingman, he rolled in again.âŚ