100 books like The Long-Range War

This is the first person narrative of Kulger’s two years as a scout sniper with the 4th Marine Regiment. Relates what it is like to look through the scope, pull the trigger, and watch your target die. Kulger’s experiences mirror that of most Marine snipers in the war. This is the reality of being a scout sniper, not the fiction that is often written about the elite Marine shooters.

Titled after the cost of a single sniper round, this book details the performance and accomplishment of scout snipers in the 5th Marine Regiment. Culberson and his fellow Marine snipers exhibited patience, stealth, marksmanship, and pure courage to make their sniper platoon the most decorated in the Corps. Uncommon valor was a common virtue among these one-shot killers.

There are many books, some greatly fictionalized, claiming just who was the most effective USMC sniper in Vietnam.  Although extremely brief, this book confirms just who was the top Marine sniper in the Vietnam War.  Mawhinney had 103 kills.  Unlike other snipers who have embellished their accomplishments, Mawhinney has remained modest and off the grid.  He alone sits at the top of the list of "Marine snipers with the most kills."

What Tom Clancy did for submarines with The Hunt For Red October, Stephen Hunter did with rifles and long-range shooting in Point of Impact, which was made into the movie Shooter with Mark Wahlberg in addition to a cable TV show of the same name. 

Hunter had already proven himself a talented thriller writer when he penned Point of Impact, but the excellent plot (a famous Vietnam sniper framed for an assassination by a shadowy conspiracy) combined with never-before-seen firearms technical detail that enhanced rather than bogged down the story made this novel a huge success and catapulted Hunter to the A-list.  

Though I admire her classic work, The Left Hand of Darkness, it’s The Word For World Is Forest that most lingers in the mind.

Ursula Le Guin worried that the book was too simple and that its portrait of the mad colonialist soldier, Captain Davidson, was too unshaded a vision of militarist evil. Well, perhaps. However, men like Davidson can be found in equally brutal forms in accounts of the European invasion of the Americas or in Roger Casement’s report on the Belgians in the Congo.

But it is the otherworldly Selver who possesses my imagination, that archetypal ‘little green man,’ that strange new god of a person, poised between the innocent world he seeks to protect and the violence he must unleash to ensure its survival.

The author has the gift of recall and detail that mesmerizes the reader as to the life of a young, high school dropout who finds himself in the most brutal fighting in the Que Son Valley. He leaves out no account to soften the blows for sensitive readers. He tells it as he experienced it. In the end, this devastating book leaves the reader on a high point... that there is salvation.

Bud Willis does a wonderful job with this well-told story and offers the reader an in-depth look at the everyday life of these helicopter flying Marine warriors, which isn’t, by the way, a nine to five job. The book follows “BOO” through training and then during his tour as a chopper pilot in Vietnam; his tour lasting 13 months from March, 1966 through April, 1967. The author also has a fantastic sense of humor and wit that sometimes catches me off-guard, making me laugh out loud. When I thought about the antics and games these officers orchestrated – I had to remind myself that even as officers, many of them were only 19 – 21 years old and still kids themselves. However, war steals that naivety and innocence, leaving in its place deep scars, both physically and mentally.

As a child, I lived in abject poverty on a little farm in northern Minnesota. By ten years old I was trapping raccoons and shooting squirrels to help put food on our table. When I was in Vietnam, I felt a deep empathy for the Vietnamese fishermen and farmers who lived in poverty complicated by the vicious war. Years later when I began reading Dang Thuy Tram’s diary, I couldn’t put it down. The loss and waste and love for her comrades struck close to home and made me feel guilty for my participation in the war. In her writing, Dang brings to life so many of her Vietnamese comrades who were killed—making one stop to consider the cost of war. In a way the book reminds me of All Quiet on the Western Front written by a German soldier—the loss and waste.

Reading a novel in letters feels like snooping into someone's private thoughts, and that's exactly how I felt as I read Until Tomorrow, Mr. Marsworth. Reenie, age 11, writes letters that highlight the conflict between those who supported the Vietnam War and those who opposed it. Her letters ultimately reveal the situation faced by her family and by Mr. Marsworth. They are funny and heartfelt. History and family drama mix together in Reenie's letters and Mr. Marsworth's occasional response. O'Connor does a fabulous job of presenting controversial history in an engaging way. 

This short book depicts the actions of Vietnamese Marine Corps Advisor, John Ripley, and his heroic actions to stop the onslaught of the NVA tank invasion during the 1972 Easter Offensive. It provides a shining example of how one person can affect the outcome of a battle and to never, ever give up.