The Things They Carried

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"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."

A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber

Book Description

One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel. Yet each one of the twenty-two short pieces is written with such care, emotional content, and prosaic precision that it could stand on its own.

The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves.

With the creative verve of the greatest fiction and the intimacy of a searing autobiography, The Things They Carried is a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. It is also a mirror held up to the frailty of humanity. Ultimately The Things They Carried and its myriad protagonists call to order the courage, determination, and luck we all need to survive.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book.......2007-09-25

I was forced to read this book for class but I am certainly glad I did. The book gave first person insight on the personal aspects of the Vietnam War, not just the obvious blood and guts. Stories of women snuck in to the base, lost loves, and interaction with the natives all highlighted the other side of war, not just the trenches, although those aspects are illustrated as well. Fascinating read.

review.......2007-09-25

i ordered this book a month ago and it still has not come. i need it for my college class!!!!!

Personal and touching.......2007-09-21

This is a moving book. A beautiful metaphor for a title. "The things they carried" sums up what this is about - the hopes and fears these soldiers brought, and took away, from war.

Tim's style jumps - there are times when you feel like he is "writing like a novel writer", with the usual eloquence, well-thought out structure expected from a great work of fiction. The first part of the book is in this style and is great in it's own way.

However, there are times when you can feel like you are reading his private journal. You can sense that he is not writing for me or for you in that moment, but rather for himself - to remember, to just make sense of it all. In these parts, the writing is so raw and honest it is hard to imagine not being moved. His fears, the sense of hope, and finally the courage, become real. (Specifically the portion where he was contemplating escaping the draft.) Sometimes I felt like I was just reading my own journal because of his voice...those were the most powerful moments and for that alone, worth the whole book.

What soldiers carry on their backs and in their hearts.......2007-09-09

An amazing book that succeeds in portraying what it was like for the ones who were sent to Vietnam. The difficulty of the telling shows through as the story comes out in pieces that ultimately are woven together for an intense read. There are some gruesome scenes and brutal actions that you come to understand are just normal under the extreme circumstances of war. Fantastic storytelling that shares what these soldiers have to carry inside them.

Remarkable.......2007-09-06

This is a must-read book. The Things They Carried constantly forces the reader to question the nature of Truth. Is this real? Could this have possibly happened? Is he lying here? What IS real?
And... in the end... does it really matter?

This book also brings the reader closer to the war in Vietnam, which was a tough time and also, for many, a very confusing time in American History. This book does not, however, present the reader with a historical/political view of the war. No. It brings the reader face to face with the everyday soldier. It brings out some of the horrible realities of the war that future generations could have no clue about.
Finally, this book brings home the message that war is not "romantic." It's horrible. It's bloody. And, all too often there is no glory in war, no honor... IT JUST IS.

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam

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COIN
Terrific Research and Analysis!
Counterinsurgency Mandatory Reading
Counterinsurgency
Insightful Book for military buff

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
John A. Nagl
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0226567702

Book Description

Invariably, armies are accused of preparing to fight the previous war. In Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl—a veteran of both Operation Desert Storm and the current conflict in Iraq—considers the now-crucial question of how armies adapt to changing circumstances during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared. Through the use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both engagements, Nagl compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948 to 1960 with what developed in the Vietnam War from 1950 to 1975.

In examining these two events, Nagl—the subject of a recent New York Times Magazine cover story by Peter Maass—argues that organizational culture is key to the ability to learn from unanticipated conditions, a variable which explains why the British army successfully conducted counterinsurgency in Malaya but why the American army failed to do so in Vietnam, treating the war instead as a conventional conflict. Nagl concludes that the British army, because of its role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics created by its history and national culture, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency.

With a new preface reflecting on the author's combat experience in Iraq, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife is a timely examination of the lessons of previous counterinsurgency campaigns that will be hailed by both military leaders and interested civilians.

Customer Reviews:

COIN.......2007-09-27

Haven't read the book quite yet. I plan to get it done by the time I am to attend CCC though.

Terrific Research and Analysis!.......2007-09-05

For this reader, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife's value centers on two main premises: 1) those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them; and, 2) a large, monolithic organization such as the U.S. Army will struggle to adapt unless it adopts a learning culture. Both relate to the U.S. Army's experience in Viet Nam. It is clear that the U.S. Army has only recently begun to learn from its earlier failures fighting a stubborn insurgency in 2004-06 and to implement strategy and tactics appropriate to the situation.

Eminently readable for an Oxford PhD thesis, what sets Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife apart from many other books attempting to explain the failures in Viet Nam is the degree to which the author supports his arguments. He combines exceedingly thorough research befitting a PhD thesis with fully developed and clearly articulated arguments. By examining the British Army of the Malay Campaign and the U.S. Army fighting in Viet Nam in terms of their organizational cultures - that is, the degree to which they promoted learning, flexibility, and adaptability - the author does a superb job of explaining why the British were successful in defeating the communist insurgency on the Malay Peninsula and why the Americans failed in South Viet Nam.

Of course, Nagl has his detractors. There are those who would suggest that the conflict in Malaya in the 1950s differed markedly from the conflict in Viet Nam in the 1960s and early 1970s. For instance, the Viet Cong were able to leverage a well-funded, well-organized, and well-trained North Vietnamese army against the U.S. Army in South Viet Nam. By contrast, the British really only had to confront a communist insurgency in Malaya. However, those readers who point to the dissimilarities in the two conflicts are really missing Nagl's point.

The author's contention that the British Army eventually succeeded in defeating a thinking, adaptive enemy is instructive. In Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, we are told that for any institution to be successful when faced with new and decidedly different operational challenges, it must be capable of learning and adapting. This includes everything from changing strategy and tactics to completely reorganizing. In fact, it may even need to develop a whole new set of core competencies. In the context of armed warfare, this may mean viewing victory through a different lens. As members of the Bush Administration have readily pointed out, the war in Iraq will not end with a formal surrender aboard a U.S. battleship. More to the point perhaps, Nagl's work compels us to think differently about how we define success in a counterinsurgency.

For the U.S. Army currently operating in Iraq, adapting really means moving away from war fighting strategy and tactics appropriate to a linear battlefield and more toward an approach that better recognizes the nature of the threat. The current threat in Iraq is more socio-political than military. In fact, it is now an article of faith that for our counterinsurgency efforts to be successful, U.S. war fighters must win the hearts and minds of the local populace. If the local Iraqi citizens believe they are more secure and hence can live productive lives, they will be more willing to cooperate with the "occupying" Army. That cooperation will take the form of alerting nearby ground troops to the presence of Al Qaeda fighters and Sunni insurgents.

For any large military organization, adapting to an entirely different threat characterized by a highly complex and dynamic situation involving ethnosectarian conflict, religious persecution, and violent criminal activity such as we see in Iraq today requires tremendous innovation and agility. As Nagl points out, the British were able to eventually embrace change and pursue an effective counterinsurgency strategy while facing a similar set of conditions. He argues persuasively that British and Malay counterinsurgency forces eventually were structured to respond quickly to the communist insurgent threat precisely because they were quite flexible. In large part, the Brits' success can be traced to their approach to counterinsurgency warfare in that era - centralized command with decentralized control. This approach recognizes that the fight is really very different in each province and therefore strategy and tactics will need to be different to attain success.

As Nagl points out, to enjoy the kind of success the Brits had in Malaya, the U.S. Army "will have to make the ability to learn to deal with messy, uncomfortable situations an integral part" of its organizational culture. It must, per T.E. Lawrence, be comfortable "eating soup with a knife." Additionally, as a previous reviewer states quite clearly, "it must be ready to work with outside resources as well, such as the United Nations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and various religious institutions."

Overall, Nagl offers terrific analysis. This work should be required reading for all officers of all branches of the U.S. military.

Counterinsurgency Mandatory Reading.......2007-07-21

Since the Iraq War effort collapsed into something other than a simple liberation of oppressed people, I have tried to gain insight into our problems there by studying books on Iraq's current situation, on US foreign relationships, ancient and recent Mesopotamian history, Israeli and Palestinian Middle East history, and historic counterinsurgency successes and failures in various parts of the World.

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife is the most illuminating that I have encountered. Col. John A. Nagl very meticulously converts knowledge obtained in writing his Masters and Doctorate theses into a readable analysis of military success in Malaya and non-success in Vietnam.

You must read his preface to the paperback edition both before and after reading the book; this in fairness to our gallant folks serving in the Middle East. You must also abandon any hopes you may have for a blood-and-guts exposé of battleground behavior.

This is science, not sensationalism.

I wish that our military AND our civilian leaders had been able to study this book and to do serious, long-term advanced planning for Iraq based upon it. I am convinced that such luxury would have placed us in a vastly different position than our current one.

Counterinsurgency.......2007-07-03

This book is an excellent review of the successful British counterinsurgency war in Malaysia and the unsuccessful US counterinsurgency in Vietnam. The author draws the correct conclusion that it is necessary to win the support of the people. The author misses the important lesson that the British war cost Britain probably 100 dead vs. the Vietnam cost to the US of 50,000. The second lesson that the author should have learned is that it is critical to keep our casualties low. It is better to take a long time (like the British did - 12 years) that to suffer higher casualties.

Insightful Book for military buff.......2007-06-18

I bought a copy of this book for my boyfriend, serving in the US Army. He enjoys it, recommended it to his fellow officers.

If I Die in a Combat Zone : Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

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An informative memoir on the Vietnam War
The first step
A Good Time To Revisit the Vietnam Experience
Good, but not his best
A good book

If I Die in a Combat Zone : Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
Tim O'Brien
Manufacturer: Broadway
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0767904435
Release Date: 1999-09-01

Amazon.com

Over time, Tim O'Brien has used both art and artifice to shape his fictional accounts of Vietnam. Award-winning novels such as Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried offer up a surreal view of the war: a soldier who decides to walk to Paris, leaving only a trail of M&M's in his wake; a young man who imports his high-school girlfriend to his base camp high in the jungled mountains, only to lose her to a shadowy squad of Special Forces Green Berets and to "that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure" that was Vietnam. O'Brien's first account of the war, however, was written in the raw, unfiltered months following his return from Southeast Asia in 1969. If I Die in a Combat Zone has all of the eloquence and attention to language and detail that are a mark of the author's work; what is different about it is its straightforward, unembellished depiction of his personal experience of hell.

"When you are ordered to march through areas such as Pinkville--GI slang for Song My, parent village of My Lai ... you do some thinking. You hallucinate. You look ahead a few paces and wonder what your legs will resemble if there is more to the earth in that spot than silicates and nitrogen. Will the pain be unbearable? Will you scream or fall silent? Will you be afraid to look at your own body, afraid of the sight of your own red flesh and white bone? You wonder if the medic remembered his morphine."

O'Brien paints an unvarnished portrait of the infantry soldier's life that is at once mundane and terrifying--the endless days of patrolling punctuated by firefights that end as suddenly and inconclusively as they begin; the mind-numbing brutality of burned villages and trampled rice patties; the terror of tunnels, minefields, and the ever-present threat of death. Powerful as these scenes are, perhaps the most memorable chapter in the book concerns his decision to desert just a few weeks before he was sent to Vietnam. "The AWOL bag was ready to go, but I wasn't.... I burned the letters to my family. I read the others and burned them, too. It was over. I simply couldn't bring myself to flee. Family, the home town, friends, history, tradition, fear, confusion, exile: I could not run." Tim O'Brien went into the war opposing it and came out knowing exactly why. If I Die in a Combat Zone is more than just a memoir of a disastrous war; it is also a meditation on heroism and cowardice, on the mutability of truth and morality in a war zone and, most of all, on the simple, human capacity to endure the unendurable. --Alix Wilber

Book Description

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.

Customer Reviews:

An informative memoir on the Vietnam War.......2007-08-30

This memoir brought me closer than I had been before to the Vietnam War..it was interesting. Another perspective on the Vietnam War.

The first step.......2007-08-09

If I Die...is Tim O'Brien's first book, and his first of many inspired by his tour of duty as an infantryman in Vietnam, 1969-70. Later, more successful books, like Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried, deliberately smudge the line between reportage and invented story (and, in GAC, he takes it all the way to outright fantasy) but this debut is intended as a soldier's field memoir, the facts as O'Brien saw and remembers them, although with much brooding personal commentary added.

More than 30 years after its publication, the book is still quite powerful, reviving the sights and sounds of a war that America decided a while ago not to forget, but rather to remember in a way it finds most convenient. There are still too many people who believe we could easily have "won" Vietnam if we hadn't been "stabbed in the back" by politicians and hippie protestors at home; that is nonsense, much of which O'Brien's book helps disprove. Indispensible works like The Best and the Brightest, and of course The Pentagon Papers, prove how various US administrations allowed themselves to be deluded about the progress the US military might make in solving the political problems of a small SE Asian country. By the time O'Brien arrived as a foot soldier in early 1969, the war had reached a high-level stalemate, was essentially over, and the Vietnamese simply had to wait us out. LBJ and Nixon knew this but they continued to send our soldiers over to be killed and mangled; too precipitous a withdrawal would have hurt their administrations politically.

What O'Brien does so well is dramatize this fatal stall at the personal level. His book is loaded with stories of ranking officers, brave men with Army careers, allowing their commands to ease off in the field, avoid pointless enemy engagements, even file fake patrol reports, especially at night. O'Brien's tour commenced a year after Tet and My Lai occurred, and in their aftermath, as O'Brien tells it, Army morale at even the officer level had sunk so low, and the failure of US goals was so evident, that few Americans wanted to get killed for a misadventure.

What lingers most in my mind is O'Brien's struggle with his own self-loathing: he believed even before being drafted that the war was wrong, and made serious plans to desert the Army, but found himself unable to make that great break, fearful of the reaction he would eventually encounter from parents and the small Minnesota town of his birth. He gave in to tradition, rather than do what he felt to be right, and it seems he has never forgiven himself.

A Good Time To Revisit the Vietnam Experience .......2007-08-02

Tim O'Brien is one of our more gifted, living writers in the genre of war literature, and although IF I DIE IN A COMBAT zone isn't his strongest book, it is certainly worthy reading, especially in the echoing din of George Bush's Iraqi adventure.

A straightforward account from a soldier's point of view, O'Brien's book includes the before, during, and after of his Vietnam experience -- especially the daily grind of soldiering (during) and the soul-searching and debate about fleeing (before) instead of answering the call of the draft. He had a rather quixotic escape plan to Sweden (of all places), but ultimately did his "duty," all along meditating on the nature of sanity, obligation, and patriotism. There are frequent excerpts from Plato, even, as O'Brien explores that ancient philosopher's take on "courage." As his fellow soldiers are killed, O'Brien details the nature of fate and chance, along with the more realistic details of the many ways "Charlie" (the VC) could arrange for you to die.

Here is a typical excerpt in which O'Brien compares Vietnam to the Trojan War:

"But losing [Captain Johansen] was like the Trojans losing Hector. He gave some amount of reason to fight. Certainly there were never any political reasons. The war, like Hector's own war, was silly and stupid. Troy was besieged for the sake of a pretty woman. And Helen, for God's sake, was a woman most of the grubby, warted Trojans could never have. Vietnam was under siege in pursuit of a pretty, tantalizing, promiscuous, particularly American brand of government and style. And most of Alpha Company would have preferred a likable whore to self-determination. So Captain Johansen helped to mitigate and melt the silliness, showing the grace and poise a man can have under the worst of circumstances, a wrong war. We clung to him." -- (p. 145)

Philosophical riffs like this are frequent -- as are accounts of the soldiers' lives (and deaths), their nicknames for killer devices, their fear and superstitions, and their ways of surviving in a strange land where even women and children could, and often did, mean death. The literary weave of abstractions on war and history with specifics on Vietnam itself make for a potent read. You will come out of it not only feeling better educated about what Vietnam was like, but sensing that many of the arguments of the American government and the officers in charge ring as familiarly hollow now (in Iraq) as they did then (in Vietnam). If I could, I'd buy a copy for the President. But I know he wouldn't read it or, if he did, seek meaning from it.

Pro or anti-war, Vietnam or Iraq, you, however, can glean something from this early effort of Tim O'Brien's. Check it out.

Good, but not his best.......2007-04-28

Having read O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" first, this book seemed a bit dry and journalistic in comparison. It started out slow, and never really pulled me in the way the other did. In this book there are flashes of O'Brien's lyrical, dream-like brilliance, but never as consistent or as seemingly tangible as in "The Things They Carried."

In this book, O'Brien brings the reader along with him from the moment he first learns that he is to be drafted until he is on a plane heading home from Viet Nam. He shares his fears, doubts and political views of the war. The book is mostly about O'Brien's experience in the war, and how it changed him and matured him.

Overall, a good book. Probably of particular interest to anyone interested in a personal, almost documentary-style account of O'Brien's experience in Viet Nam. In a purely literary sense, however, the stories in "The Things They Carried" are far better examples of Tim O'Brien's skill as a writer.

A good book.......2007-01-11

A little too in depth for me. But i do recommend that it be read. A good book.

The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam

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"Would you stop the car? I'd like your help beating my son."
No new insights into fathers and son,vets, or the war
A son on his father's Vietnam service
A writer of great talent - Tom Bissell
A Subject Greater Than the War Itself

The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam
Tom Bissell
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 037542265X
Release Date: 2007-03-06

Book Description

In April 1975, as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army, John Bissell, a former Marine officer living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, was glued to his television. Struggling to save his marriage, raise his sons, and live with his memories of the war in Vietnam, Bissell found himself racked with anguish and horror as his country abandoned a cause for which so many of his friends had died.

Opening with a gripping account of the chaotic and brutal last month of the war, The Father of All Things is Tom Bissell’s powerful reckoning with the Vietnam War and its impact on his father, his country, and Vietnam itself. Through him we learn what it was like to grow up with a gruff but oddly tender veteran father who would wake his children in the middle of the night when the memories got too painful. Bissell also explores the many debates about the war, from whether it was winnable to Ho Chi Minh’s motivations to why America’s leaders lied so often. Above all, he shows how the war has continued to influence American views on foreign policy more than thirty years later.

At the heart of this book is John and Tom Bissell’s unforgettable journey back to Vietnam. As they travel the country and talk to Vietnamese veterans, we relive the war as John Bissell experienced it, visit the site of his near-fatal wounding, and hear him explain how Vietnam shaped him and so many of his generation.

This is the first major book about the war by an author who grew up after the fall of Saigon. It is a fascinating, all-too-relevant work about the American character–and about war itself. It is also a wise and moving book about fathers, sons, and the universal desire to understand who our parents were before they became our parents.

Customer Reviews:

"Would you stop the car? I'd like your help beating my son." .......2007-09-22

This is a searing, honest, and yes, fair account of a young man's reconciliation with his father, against the backdrop of a return to Vietnam.

The dialog Tom records is almost too good to be true, but it's coming out of his tape recorder, so there it is. The elder Bissell comes across as an ordinary, memory-laden senior citizen who happens to once have been a soldier. His drunken implosion, which the author unspools against the fall of Saigon, is a topnotch piece of psychological fiction, but is nothing that the reader catches first-hand from the rest of the book. At times it seems that Tom projects the gook-plinking hophead of media stereotype into his father, but none of that comes out in the dialog. Indeed, at certain points it's the father who has to point out to the son what a bloody horror the war was.

Had Tom been around during the war, he doubtless would have been a protestor. But at this late date, the historical record is in the books. He stitches together quite good second-hand accounts of the fall of South Vietnam, and of the strange career of Ho Chih Minh (though the latter is perhaps somewhat over-basted with "nuance."). An honest fellow, he frequently admits that the North Vietnamese and the NLF were as bad as advertised, and worse than the more conventionally corrupt South. He still refuses to swallow the old wartime lies, though he proposes no way that things could have come out right.

The end of the return tour, with his father raising a toast with a former ARVN his own age, ends the book on a touching and unexpected up note. Mission accomplished.

A fair-use sample:

"A lot of guys I went to basic with died in this place [the Citadel in Hue city]," my father said. "A lot of guys. Guys who joined up again. Guys who kept volunteering. All died right around here." He shook his head.
"Like who?" I asked.
"You don't know them."
"Well, what were their names?"
He looked at me queerly. "What do you care?" This was said with a brusque sort of inquisitiveness, not anger.
I got to my feet. "I'm sorry. You're right. Just morbid curiosity."
My father--the abrupt smile on his face false to anyone who knew him--turned to Hien [the guide]. "What do *you* think?"
Hien regarded his shoes, which looked like small leather noses peeking out from beneath his blue slacks. "I think this is a special place for many people."
My father said nothing and stood there in the wind, amid the grass. When he closed his eyes, it almost looked as though he were listening to someone.

No new insights into fathers and son,vets, or the war.......2007-08-18

As I am unschooled in the detailed history of the Vietnam war, I focus my comments on the other material I expected based on professional reviews of the book.

Specifically, I expected some attempted growth in the father and son's relationship. Nothing huge, which would be unrealistic, but an attempt or a tiny movement. I also expected insight into the effect of a war that divides generations, dominating both the elder who lived it and the younger who were not directly touched by the war but by their wartime fathers.

The book delivered weakly on both counts. Unless, that is, the author's message is that both generations are so traumatized, albeit differently, that neither can soften their assumptions and defenses long enough to begin to understand the other. Instead, they play out their deep attitudinal and behavioral patterns passively and actively. When they do gain a little insight into the other they become angry. Oddly, father and son both seem slightly grateful to have taken their frozen relationship on a road trip to Vietnam. Finally, to find a point about the effect of war on an entire culture, you'd have to use the family as a metaphor for the U.S.

If these were the author's points, he could have expressed them far more effectively, and also more interestingly by exploring and elaborating them. For instance, why is it so difficult for the son to ask questions of his father that could possibly increased understanding? The problem isn't only that the dad's reticent and challenged to explain an inexplicable experience. No, the son also doesn't hear or effectively work with what his dad *does* tell him. Why is this? And, how interesting that it might be harder for those who weren't in the war to embrace the experience of those who were, instead of vice versa?

Another fruitful but unexplored vein was their mutual expectations and assessment of the trip. Why had they each gone, what had they hoped to get out of it, what happened internally for each of them?

Yet another lost opportunity occurred in the majority of the book which was was a discussion of the war organized according to major questions in the son's perspective. These topics, such as "Why were the South Vietnamese Corrupt" and "Could the U.S. Have Won the War", seem to accurately reflect the perspective of those born mid-1970s as the author was. Fair enough. But, how much more interesting it would have been to to compare, contrast, and connect the son's major questions about the war with his father's!

There are plenty of places where a hungry reader might think the author's about to do something interesting like this, but he never really does. If you've followed the war coverage in major newspapers or magazines during the last several years, you're not going to gain much additional insight here. Unless, of course, the historical interpretation is accurate, which I'm not in a position to judge, but other reviewers have cast doubt on.

A son on his father's Vietnam service.......2007-05-30

It has been a generation since the last American soldier left Vietnam, after almost 15 years of substantial involvement in the fight to defeat the army of North Vietnam and insurgent forces. Some 3 million Americans served, 800,000 of them in combat. The names of more than 58,000 of this country's dead are etched into the stark, granite walls of Washington's Vietnam War Memorial.

In his compelling new book, THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS, journalist Tom Bissell, born in 1974, brings that painful era to life in a rich and emotionally resonant narrative constructed around the trip he took to Vietnam in November 2003 with his father. John Bissell, a Marine combat veteran, arrived in Vietnam in April 1965 and served there until he was wounded in a booby trap explosion in late 1966. Acknowledging the humility that any writer must feel approaching a subject that has been covered in more than 30,000 books, Bissell sets for himself the task of recounting "an emotional experience interwoven with established historical facts of the Vietnam War." It is, he writes, "a book about war's endless legacy."

The book is loosely and somewhat idiosyncratically organized into three sections. The first interweaves an account of the last, desperate days before the fall of Saigon with Bissell's imaginative recreation of his father's dismay as he watches those events unfold in his home in Escanaba, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The second, and longest, section poses a handful of queries, such as "Could the United States have won the war in Vietnam?" and "What was the Soviet Union actually attempting to accomplish in Vietnam?" using them as the framework upon which the book's main narrative structure is constructed. The final section, entitled "The Children of the War Speak," contains brief snippets of interviews with Bissell's anonymous contemporaries on all sides of the conflict, reflecting on the ways in which the war's legacy affected them and their families.

Bissell is a gifted writer, whose prose is enriched by a talent for selecting arresting details that will fix the scenes he describes in the mind's eye. In one gripping section near the end of the book he describes the visit he and his father made to Cu Chi, an area that featured an elaborate network of tunnels from which guerrillas launched fiendishly ingenious attacks against American soldiers based there. Another emotionally powerful portion is Bissell's terse recounting of the My Lai massacre in March 1968, which most readers will find chilling in its harrowing detail.

Foregoing any attempt either to glamorize his father's service or to demonize the vast majority of the soldiers who fought there on all sides, Bissell nevertheless portrays his father as a fundamentally decent man, reporting that John Bissell's fellow Marines even nicknamed him "Nice Guy." Like most American soldiers, he was compelled to fight by a sense of duty to his comrades rather than to some at best vaguely understood mission to stop the spread of Communism throughout Southeast Asia. If anything, Bissell is much more judgmental about himself than he is of his father, subtly questioning whether he would have had the courage to do what his father did. One darkly comic scene describing Bissell's attempt to fire an AK-47 at a shooting gallery is likely to have readers wondering the same thing.

The book could have benefited from a map tracing the route of the Bissells' journey, as well as some photographs in addition to the few family snapshots sprinkled throughout the first section. These shortcomings are counterbalanced by a useful bibliography featuring annotations by Bissell on some of the secondary sources he relied upon in this work.

At a time when the United States is embroiled in another unpopular war, the temptation to draw facile parallels with the debacle in Vietnam is almost too great to resist. For the most part, Bissell doesn't succumb to that temptation, perhaps because most thoughtful readers already will find themselves struggling to suppress the echoes of incompetence and bravado from that era that haunt us to this day.

THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS is an intensely personal book that expands outward in concentric circles from the intimate relationship between father and son to the broadest concerns of historical and geopolitical thought. "War is appetitive," Bissell writes. "It devours goodwill, landscape, cultures, mothers, and fathers --- before finally forcing us, the orphans, to pick up the pieces." If this book finds the audience it deserves, it will remind those who lived through that era of the price war exacts, and may help educate those who did not to that grim and timeless reality.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

A writer of great talent - Tom Bissell.......2007-05-07

I've read everything I can find by Tom Bissell. His writing is mesmerizing: a medley of travel log, memoir, novel, and psychological study. I think he is inordinately talented.

With this memoir, his depiction of growing up in Escanaba, Michigan, resonated deeply with me, since I grew up there too and knew his family before he was born. I think he described it well, though his was a dark impression. His honest searching and critical mind were very moving to me.

My heart went out to his father, though a young man, saddled with supporting a wife and child, two siblings, his mother and mother-in-law in his early twenties. The Bissells were peceived as very wealthy and above the ordinary worries of most of our families. They were like the Magnificent Ambersons, and we didn't know the half of it.

I also admired his retrospective on the Vietnam War. It was very well researched and presented with lucidness and poignance. I'm not much of a history reader, but the author had my full attention and understanding.

Some day this writer is going to win lots of prizes. Thanks, Tom Bissell, for a wonderful book.

A Subject Greater Than the War Itself.......2007-05-05

"The Father of All Things" is the latest brilliant offering from one of America's great young writers.

Whereas Bissell's first book, "Chasing the Sea," alternated between his (sometimes humorous, sometimes painful) return to Uzbekistan after a failed stint in the Peace Corps and a deft history of Central Asia and the ability of its peoples to repel or outlast any and all outside powers' tries at conquest, "The Father of All Things" plumbs the depths of one family's experience in the Vietnam War, and the reverberation that war has had on the children of veterans on both sides.

To his credit, Bissell shares more of himself in the memoir sections of the book than he does in "Chasing the Sea." His relationship with his father is one of soft reconciliation after years of -- if not literal, then certainly emotional -- separation. There are courageous and heart-baring passages that would've been clumsy in the hands of a less-talented author, and you can see the warmth that Marine Captain John Bissell has for his son, even when he's teasing him about being a Communist when they go to Vietnam together, almost 40 years after John's last visit, when he was one of the first combat troops on the ground.

Yes, why another book about Vietnam? As Bissell himself states in his brief author's note: "More than thirty thousand books on Vietnam are currently in print. Why another? one might (and probably did) ask. . . . This is not really a book about the nation of Vietnam, or even the Vietnam War. It is, instead, a book about war's endless legacy. . . . When war begins, leaders inevitably frown as they promise courage and bravery, guarantee tragic sacrifice, yet vow, all the same, to see it through. What any war's igniters rarely admit are the small, terrible truths that have held firm for every war ever fought, no matter how necessary or avoidable: 'This will be horrible, and whatever happens will scar us for decades to come.' Indeed, even necessary wars can destroy the trust of a people in their leaders, just as war destroys human beings on both sides of the rifle."

To ask questions of one's government is not treason -- it is one of the highest form of citizenship. And if one's government cannot supply satisfactory answers to its citizens, it is their duty to endlessly question that government. To say this book -- or the author himself -- is anti-American couldn't be further from the truth, and proof is in the pages. Bissell has reported from both Afghanistan and Iraq, and there's a particularly harrowing passage in the book where, trapped in Mazar-i-Sharif in the early days of the 2002 American invasion, he uses a fellow journalist's satellite phone to call his father. He gets cut off in the middle of the conversation and his father, believing his youngest son has been kidnapped by the Taliban, is suddenly thrown back into his own war.

Not only does Bissell do a superb job of honoring his father and the generation of young men who fought and died in Vietnam, he also, with "The Father of All Things," salutes the 20- and 30-somethings of contemporary America, the brothers and sisters of Bicentennial Babies, who are currently fighting and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq because, as it did with their fathers in Vietnam, their country called them to their duty.

Bissell well understands the sacrifices a military man makes, as he lived with them in the form of his father. Yes, this book is about war, and specifically about the Vietnam War and its shadow, but to read it so narrowly misses the point: This is a book about a son trying to understand his father because he loves him.

Average customer rating:

Courageous Type of Warfare
Very pleased with product. Great book
Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills
Taste of What War is Like
Must Read

Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills
Charles W. Henderson
Manufacturer: Berkley Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0425181650
Release Date: 2001-10-09

Book Description

Marine Sniper is not only one of the most astonishing true stories to emerge from the Vietnam War, it has become a classic of military nonfiction, inspiring a sequel, Silent Warrior: The Marine Sniper's Vietnam Story Continues.

There have been many Marines. There have been many marksmen. But there has only been one Sergeant Carlos Hathcock. A legend in the Marine ranks, Hathcock stalked the Viet Cong behind enemy lines-on their own ground. And each time he emerged from the jungle having done his duty. His record is one of the finest in military history, with 93 confirmed kills.

This is the story of a simple man who endured incredible dangers and hardships for his country and his Corps. These are the missions that have made Carlos Hathcock a legend in the brotherhood of Marines.

"Highly readable." (Publishers Weekly)

Customer Reviews:

Courageous Type of Warfare.......2007-09-24

This book is about Carlos Hathcock, the distinguished Marine Corp sniper of the Vietnam War. Honored in this country, with 93 confirmed enemy kills and having gained notoriety among the enemy as White Feather, because that is what adorned his cap and gained him a bounty on his head. The book is a good portrayal of what it takes to become proficient at sniper warfare, along with its effectiveness in warfare. Although often considered a cowardly method of warfare, the reader will pick up that Hathcock's time in the bush stalking the enemy's position days on end to obtain the perfect shot, but not too close to make escape impossible is a personally courageous act. The book highlights one incident where Hathcock goes one on one with an equally savvy Viet Cong sniper and another four-day stalk within a Viet Cong base camp to bring down a North Vietnamese General. The author's portrayal of Hathcock's banter is not all that humble when discussing himself, but this man can also walk the walk. It is a little sad about the adjustment problems Hathcock has to civilian life. Most civilian jobs pale in comparison to hunting and being hunted by humans., The book is a fast light read with some heart pounding entertainment. The book could have used some more sniper accounts.

Very pleased with product. Great book.......2007-09-13

Im very happy with this transaction and would do business with this seller again.The book is great and worth the money.Its a must to anyone that enjoys reading about snipers or vietnam

Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills.......2007-06-25

Very good book...I was in Vietnam in May of '67 till May of '68....This book is very very real !!!War is a varied mixture of total boredom and the mundane to the highest Adrenalin rush one can ever imagine !!!Many things described in this book present that...

Taste of What War is Like.......2007-06-08

This book gives you an idea of what it is like to be the hunter as well as the huntee. Brings home the brutality of war.

Must Read.......2007-03-08

Henderson does a great job telling Hathcock's story. I couldn't put this book down. If Vietnam interests you, you have to read this book. Also, Silent Warrior the sequal is great to read as well because it tells a lot of the stories in this book more in depth because Henderson went and found out more info about certain battles. even going as far as interviewing NVA soldiers that were stalked by Hatchcock. One of my favorite books ever. Like the Military Channel? read this book!!!!!!!!

Average customer rating:

A Classic on War
I just Cant
Please--all those who will become warriors--read
"There it is . . . "
Increadible!

Dispatches
Michael Herr
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679735259
Release Date: 1991-08-06

Amazon.com

Michael Herr, who wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of notes from his front-line reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best account of the war to date, when published in 1977. He captured the feel of the war and how it differed from any theater of combat ever fought, as well as the flavor of the time and the essence of the people who were there. Since Dispatches was published, other excellent books have appeared on the war--may we suggest The Things They Carried, The Sorrow of War, We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young--but Herr's book was the first to hit the target head-on and remains a classic.

Book Description

"He seems to have brought to this book the ear of a musician and the eye of a painter . . . the premier war correspondence of Vietnam."--Washington Post. "The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time."--John le Carre." . . . Dispatches puts the rest of us in the shade."--Hunter S. Thompson.

Customer Reviews:

A Classic on War.......2007-10-16

In my opinion there are two books on war that stand apart from all others: Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage" and Michael Herr's "Dispatches." In fact, I consider the latter one of the best books ever written. It is soul-level stuff and I can think of few books that have ever so easily transported me to a place and time and left me feeling edgy. There is a reason so much of Herr's material didn't simply ended up in the films "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket" but also became some of the most memorable lines in the films. A brilliant book and one that should be read by anyone concerned about our most recent antics in Iraq.

I just Cant.......2007-09-11

Although I have a fasination with history, This book is just impossible to read. I must say i dislike the writing style. He keeps on and on and you dont get much out of it. I cant read pass page 57...

Please--all those who will become warriors--read.......2007-08-27

There are many who experienced, then wrote, to try to explain the Vietnam War. In tribute, Hunter S. Thompson said, "Michael Herr's Dispatches puts all the rest of us in the shade."

Every person who joins the military "to serve his country". . .(There ARE alternative ways to serve: I chose teaching in Africa for 3 years.). .Every person who may serve in the military, as now, during wartime should read this book before deployment.

You are at risk of barbarity (. . ."We had this gook and we was going skin him". . .) You are at risk of atrocity (. .."Disgust doesn't begin to describe what (our soldiers) made me feel, they threw people out of helicopters , tied people up and put the dogs on them.". .)

The reality, Mr. Herr, later suggests is: if you survive your tour, your problems are just beginning.

e.e. cummings said that memorial statues found in parks should not be built for those who fought so valiantly in war, but for those who said no to service.

"There it is . . . ".......2007-07-06

Any idiot who doesn't think Michael Herr captured the essence of northern I Corps during the Vietnam War in 1967-68 wasn't there, or certainly wasn't out in the boonies. I was. My Marine battalion (2/4) spent most of February '68 patrolling a stretch of dirt road through the mountains called "Highway 9" just a kilometer or two east of Khe Sahn. It was the winter monsoon and it rained constantly for days and nights at a stretch. Almost daily at about 5 p.m. we had to duck into our soggy bunkers with the scorpions, snakes and rodents when the B-52 "Arc Light" bombing raids flew in from Guam to pound the mountain jungles around Khe Sahn. Sometimes they got too close to our perimeters and rocks, pieces of trees and occasional NVA body parts fell onto our positions. Boring? Just when we got bored for a couple of hours, one of our patrols would make contact with some NVA and a furious firefight would break out. You ain't seen dark until you've been in jungle mountains on a cold rainy night with VC probing your perimeter. Read the dialogue! That's exactly how we talked there and then, how we thought, how we acted, etc. Yeah, just about everybody was stoned when they could be - it was a lot easier to get weed than beer or a drink, and you needed something to dull it. Herr was being honest by telling the story from a war correspondent's view (which he was), and ironic in calling reporters there "parasites" which is how the pinhead officers in Central Command saw them. But a lot of of soldiers and Marines were glad those "parasites" were there to tell the real story of what was happening in SE Asia. Herr's admiration for the grunts comes through loud and clear in Dispatches, as did his contempt for the politicians who launched the war - most of whom had never been in combat themselves but were too willing to send millions of young American draftees there to die in an ideological conflict with absolutely no strategic value - and the air-conditioned generals who ran it. Herr captured the insanity of the Vietnam War - the craziness of most warfare. This is the only book I ever recommend to others who want to know what it was like in 'Nam. Sound a little like the war in Iraq today? Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

Increadible!.......2007-06-27

Michael Herr changed the face of journalism forever. The poetic imagery, extremely well done, makes reading about history a completely different thing. When I read the book for the first time, I was completely hooked by the second sentence.
People not framiliar with military lingo may come up upon some confusion. There are many abbreviations and terms that Herr expects the reader to understand. Don't let that stop you, you'll learn them soon enough.
If I had my say, I'd make every American read this book before graduating high school. After all, people are only people, but history always repeats itself.

Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965

Average customer rating:

Triumph
preposterous revisionist trash
Great read, sad tale
Self-declared revisionist history is much needed
The importance of pragmatism, patience and judgment

Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965
Mark Moyar
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521869110

Book Description

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence from all sides, Triumph Forsaken overturns most of the historical orthodoxy on the Vietnam War. Through the analysis of international perceptions and power, it shows that South Vietnam was a vital interest of the United States. The book provides many new insights into the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and demonstrates that the coup negated the South Vietnamese government's tremendous, and hitherto unappreciated, military and political gains between 1954 and 1963. After Diem's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson had at his disposal several aggressive policy options that could have enabled South Vietnam to continue the war without a massive US troop infusion, but he ruled out these options because of faulty assumptions and inadequate intelligence, making such an infusion the only means of saving the country.

Customer Reviews:

Triumph.......2007-09-13

TRIUMPH is the first objective detailed history I have read concerning our involvement in Vietnam. I worked next to the highest levels of military intelligence in Vietnam and, I can assure you, Mark Moyar leaves no stone unturned in assessing our buildup and eventual troop introduction into that country--with all the blunders and mis-steps along the way--but ultimately reflects the justification of our strategic goals in Southeast Asia. All Vietnam veterans and their families will read this book with pride. This book and its sequel will someday be mandatory reading for all history courses covering this time period.

preposterous revisionist trash.......2007-08-13

This book is nothing but preposterous revisionist trash. The only thing Moyar's good at is cherry picking archival factoids to substantiate his laughable arguments. To assert that the '63 Buddhist uprising was solely the product of communist agitation is ludicrous. From the very begining of his regime Diem did nothing but aggravate the fisssures between the Buddhist majority and his Catholic constituency. He reaped what he sowed. Also to argue that that Britain supported America's Vietnam War because of a verbal statement of support by a Prime Minister is absurd. Not one shilling nor one British soldier went to the aid of America's noble venture in Southeast Asia.The Brits knew a quagmire when the they saw one. Unlike their erswhile ally they knew better than to step in it.
The litany of absurdities goes on and on.The only thing this book does is provide solace for the "stab-in-the-back" whiners who cannot accept the fact that we got our butts kicked by a third rate country.

Great read, sad tale.......2007-08-09

This book is really well written and researched. It is a tale of how the United States grasped defeat out of the jaws of victory. I was glad to be immersed in the reasons we went to war and am satisfied that I understand why now. I also see that when a president shows weakness or indecision that the world pays attention and takes advantage. Also not all countries are ready for a US style democracy, to believe so is to not understand historical lessons. We may be making the same mistake in Iraq, time will tell.

Self-declared revisionist history is much needed.......2007-07-10

Mark Moyar has written what he himself terms a revisionist history of the Vietnam conflict. Traditional left-wing academia, media and politicians would prefer that you don't read it.

Unfortunately the history is densely written: it is not an easy read and only the dedicated will make it all the way to the last line, which sums up Moyar's central thesis. Vietnam was not the fiasco the left-wing paints it to be. Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated Communist, not merely some flag-waving patriot. David Halberstam, of the New York Times, and a few fellow reporters did terrible things. Robert McNamara was a buffoon (that's my opinion; Moyar is somewhat more charitable).

As the title implies, there was a point where the United States and South Vietnam could have triumphed over the Communists. But the opportunity was lost through the unwise actions of Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara and others in and out of the cabinet.

Moyar's attention to detail is admirable, if tiring. There was so much that the media either got wrong or deliberately falsified that Moyar's expose is like a breath of fresh air.

After reading this history, you have to push back and ask yourself how Johnson, McNamara and their team could have been so stubbornly wrong-headed in their perspective and decision-making.

Moyar's contribution to bringing accuracy back to the writing of history is laudable. It is regrettable that a book this dense probably will not attract a mass audience. Not enough people will learn the truth of how egocentrics like Johnson and McNamara and Halberstam caused great harm to the United States and even greater harm to the millions of South Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and other Asians who suffered for their poor judgment.

Jerry

The importance of pragmatism, patience and judgment.......2007-07-06

A thorough thesis which exploits the wealth of source data, and well written. As someone just too young to be involved in Vietnam it was very valuable to hear another opinion.

But what struck me most was the narrative around the importance of recognizing and supporting potentially flawed but locally adept leaders early in conflicts, how the judgment and will required to do that is rare, and how there is often a single moment that counts ("there is a tide in the affairs of men"). It is not a coincidence that Eisenhower (a military man) got it while State did not.

War is a rough instrument but war decisions can require a sensitivity yet decisiveness that is difficult to cultivate in a democracy. Open societies and their allies are always at a disadvantage against indirect threats and seldom connect the dots, so it is crucial to apply influence and force judiciously and precisely. Our current conflict leaves even more such lessons.

Average customer rating:

Very good book
Understanding Vietnamese writers
WOW
Excellent!!! Very accurate!!! Must Read!!!!!!!!
Outstanding.

Understanding Vietnam
Neil L. Jamieson
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520201574

Book Description

The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding.
Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese--both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither--to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences.
By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.

Customer Reviews:

Very good book.......2007-04-13

I grew up with a lot of second generation Vietnamese and had a relatively significant amount of exposure to the culture. After reading this book I can look back and understand a lot of things better. For example I knew that Viet people are tremendously loyal to thier parents but after reading this book I have a much better understanding of why.
I thought the way he used Yin and Yang to explain things throughout the book was very neat. I think my one complaint is that it does get a little confusing in a couple of places, especially the section covering the 1950's. But I get the empression that the 1950's were a just a confusing time in Vietnam and the rest of the book is great. Much of it does read like a novel.

Understanding Vietnamese writers.......2004-05-10

I bought this hoping to learn more about the Vietnamese people and their history. I got bogged down with all the poetry and prose quoted by the writer. While he brushes off the importance of the battle of Dien Bien Phu in a couple of lines; he drones on quoting (translating) obscure Vietnamese writers until the reader becomes weary. His premise seems to be that if you understand some writer (who he thinks is interesting) and attach importance to what he said then you will understand Vietnam. His annoying treatment of Yin and Yang finally caused me to put the book down and look for another way to understand Vietnam. If you like words such as "efficacy" and "entropy" you will love this writer; if such words irritate you, give this book a pass.

WOW.......2003-04-15

This book's focus on contemporary Vietnamese literary sources through the years makes it absolutely unique in the field. Its blend of straight history narrative and multiple-voice literature excerpts fleshes out Vietnamese society in a way that was sorely needed in the field. To those well-read in Asian studies: this book can almost be seen as a Vietnam analog to Patricia Ebrey's book "Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook," which is a collection of contemporary Chinese sources through history.

The history is instructive and concise, with little excess prose. Jamieson writes in an eminently readable style, and focuses on the most interesting events in order to keep the reader from being bored. He does a pretty good job of giving both Northern and Southern Vietnamese viewpoints, although he does focus a little more than would be preferable on South Vietnam, especially in the later parts of the book. The twentieth century chapters do a better job than almost any book on the market in focusing on the Vietnamese, rather than on the multi-decade war in which they fought.

My only complaint is that the extended yin/yang analogy used to explain societal trends was not very helpful. On the whole, though, I'm really impressed.

Excellent!!! Very accurate!!! Must Read!!!!!!!!.......2002-07-20

I think this book is amazing! Jamieson accuately protrays Vietnam and Vietnamese culture through the eyes and views of the Vietnamese in a way never before written by a Westerner. He is articulate of the moods and feelings faceing the Vietnamese, well educated in the arts and literature of Vietnam, understands the importance to the core family structure, and scholarly in his research of what it means to be Vietnamese. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand the Vietnamese people who live in Vietnam, in the US, or anywhere...

Outstanding........2002-01-26

This is a somewhat difficult book to understand, although it turns out to be a gem.

The author sets out to demonstrate that Vietnamese society, history, and culture from 1700 to 1990 revolve around the yin and yang system. While harmony derives from a balance between these two elements, an imbalance on the other hand results in revolution and war. The forces, which have been pulling the Vietnamese community apart since 1920, came to a head-on battle in 1945-50.

During the 1954-1975 war, the northern yang being stronger and more refined than the southern one led to a northern invasion and collapse of South Vietnam. The hegemony and repression of the north, however, caused a violent reaction of the southern yin during the post 1975 years: exodus of hundreds of thousands of boat people, and refusal of farmers to participate in the collectivization of the agriculture causing a decrease in productivity. Those who could not escape survived by peddling their belongings at flea markets, which over a period of time grew into a vibrant capitalistic system thanks in part to the money sent home by relatives abroad, especially in the U.S. A decade later, the southern economy rebounded while the northern counterpart floundered. This led to a reversal of the dogmatic northern policy and implementation of the "doi moi" policy in 1985.

The author also suggests that happiness and prosperity cannot come to Vietnam unless true freedom and basic human rights are respected.

Amazon.com

Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose." When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras.

The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies's Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the fatefully misdirected snowball in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business. Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving's teacher Günter Grass's The Tin Drum--the two characters share the same initials. A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history, and God. --Tim Appelo

Book Description

Owen Meany, the only child of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he is God's instrument; he is.
This is John Irving's most comic novel, yet Owen Meany is Mr. Irving's most heartbreaking character.
"Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic...Dickensian in scope....Quite stunning and very ambitious."
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"John Irving is an abundantly and even joyfully talented storyteller."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKR EVIEW

Customer Reviews:

A Book that Will Stay With Me.......2007-09-05

I read this book at the recommendation of a friend who said this was one of the top three novels she'd encountered, and I couldn't agree more! I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who wants to enjoy a richly written, inspiring and very satisfying "good read."

Fantastic Book!.......2007-08-26

Great book! This is so well written and refreshing. It has held my
interest and enabled me to picture everything Irving has written.

boring book.......2007-08-23

my son had 2 read this 4 school i think it was very boring and all over the place u cant make heads or tails where their going in this book also if schools have to seperate church & school this should not have to be read

Heroics by non heros amidst the banality of life.......2007-08-06

It was 4a.m. on a work day when I finished, closed, set the book down, and wept. Not just a tear, but buckets, the rest of the house asleep leaving no witnesses to this unexpected and potentially embarrassing event. Very uncharacteristic of me. I couldn't recall a similar reaction in all my reading ... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
This book on my short list of favorite (fictional) books - meaning books that I would actually read a second time (along with such unlikely books as Crime and Punishment (Dostoyefski), and The Name of The Rose (Umberto Eco), both of which I have read several times). I realize that individual preferences are intensely personal, but reading some of the other reviews I see that this particular book is one that evokes a passionate response by quite a few people (a number of people regard this as their favorite book). This usually points to the book's ability to touch on universal themes of the human condition. But it's not for everyone - personal preferences, you know. Irving is not a prolific author, but a disproportionate number of his books have been made into movies. This book was the basis for Simon Birch - an enjoyable but not great movie (much smaller in scope and theme than the book.)
Irving weaves a story where unlikely characters - in particular a small deformed boy with a squeaky voice - do unlikely things with unexpectedly good consequences. This book is the opposite of a heroic epic where the world is made better by the brave efforts of great people doing great things. In this book, small broken people stumble through life, playing, working, doing inconsequential things, but after it all, redemption comes in a single brief act that leaves a tiny corner of the earth much better than it would otherwise have been, and personal meaning in life is not in the banality of a life lived, but the unexpected opportunities at altruism.
As to why I wept, I'm still not sure. I certainly came to care about the characters. A sign of a good author. Irving's style is appealing - I like long stories since they give more opportunity for character development via embedded stories that don't necessarily advance the plot. Perhaps it was late and I was tired - like some other reviewers, I got to the point where I could not put the book down and had to finish reading it in a single go. I'd be interested to hear whether anyone else had a similar experience.

Irrelevant to me.......2007-08-04

I know most of you adore this book and definitely will think this review is not helpful, but I didn't like this book.

I believe the reason for this is that its satirical cuteness, which I think is the driving force, fails to cross the generation/culture cap and its appeal and irony is restricted to those who have a personal place in their minds for having experienced it in some way and can actually be personally relieved to deal with it in such a strange context as this book.

Owen Meany is definitely universal. I have a friend just like him, just as small and extrahumanly obsessed and strange (minus the religiousness, he can recite Old Norse poetry though). But much of this book just isn't.

It twists around the things which are important for America in a way that's so totally convincing and makes you see how innecessary and ridiculous it all is which is totally relieving if you actually have to hold on to and value those things because of some personal/cultural obligations. But if you've long ago dismissed them, religion and politics and great men and such, not in the teenager sort of way, but actually let them have no significance in your thought, then much of the appeal is just gone. That's my theory anyway.

Or said otherwise, it's like reading satire from some totally irrelevant historical period and geographical location. Like 1100's Turkish countryside or something. Even if you knew all about that place, if you didn't think like a person from there, it hardly appeals on a personal level.

Average customer rating:

Strong narrative accompanied by deep meaning
BACK TO NAM
Good
Too Stars
excellent

Up Country
Nelson DeMille
Manufacturer: Vision
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0446611913

Amazon.com

In Up Country, Nelson DeMille cannily revives the army career of Chief Warrant Officer Paul Brenner, the cynical, hardworking Criminal Investigation Division man who was forcibly retired after solving the high-profile killing in The General's Daughter. Brenner's called back to investigate the murder of a young army lieutenant by his captain. The catch is, the crime took place during the heat of the Tet Offensive, and the only living witness was a North Vietnamese soldier who described the incident in a 30-year-old letter that has only recently come to light. Soon Brenner, a Vietnam vet, is on an ostensible nostalgia tour of his old stomping grounds. The trip immediately turns dangerous as he heads "up country" to search for the letter writer, accompanied by a gorgeous American businesswoman, who's hiding more than even the smartest CID officer could imagine.

DeMille, who saw his own tour of duty in Vietnam (and even found a letter on a dead Vietnamese soldier), intersperses historical facts and chilling political possibilities with enough local color to provide some serious flashbacks for his fellow veterans. To non-vets the book may seem very long, but the payoff at the end is worth a couple hundred extra pages. --Barrie Trinkle

Book Description

In Up Country, Nelson DeMille cannily revives the army career ofChief Warrant Officer Paul Brenner, the cynical, hardworking CriminalInvestigation Division man who was forcibly retired after solving the high-profile killing in The General'sDaughter. Brenner's called back to investigate the murder of a youngarmy lieutenant by his captain. The catch is, the crime took place during theheat of the Tet Offensive, and the only living witness was a North Vietnamesesoldier who described the incident in a 30-year-old letter that has onlyrecently come to light. Soon Brenner, a Vietnam vet, is on an ostensiblenostalgia tour of his old stomping grounds. The trip immediately turns dangerousas he heads "up country" to search for the letter writer, accompanied by agorgeous American businesswoman, who's hiding more than even the smartest CIDofficer could imagine. DeMille, who saw his own tour of duty in Vietnam (and even found a letter on adead Vietnamese soldier), intersperses historical facts and chilling politicalpossibilities with enough local color to provide some serious flashbacks for hisfellow veterans. To non-vets the book may seem very long, but the payoff at theend is worth a couple hundred extra pages. --Barrie Trinkle

Download Description

The last thing Paul Brenner wanted to do was to return to work for the Army's Criminal Investigative Division, an organization that thanked him for his many years of dedicated service by forcing him into early retirement. But when his former boss calls in a career's worth of favors, Paul finds himself investigating a murder that took place in Vietnam thirty years before. Now, returning to a time and place that still haunts him, Paul is swept up in the battle of his life as he struggles to find justice.

Customer Reviews:

Strong narrative accompanied by deep meaning.......2007-08-06

Up Country is the first novel I have read by Nelson DeMille, and it is a very strong first impression. As the son of a man who served in Vietnam, I have always held a fascination with that particular war, but yet I feel like I have never really understood much about it. As DeMille was a lieutenant in Vietname, he not only writes this novel with a strong, suspenseful narrative, but he also finds plenty of appropriate moments throughout the novel to speak to the reader about the experiences of those who served in Vietnam, and how their lives were affected.

The novel follows former army investigator Paul Brenner. He is called by his former boss to go to Vietnam to investigate a murder that took place there in 1968. The murder involved the killing of a lieutenant by the captain of the same company, and it was witnessed by a wounded North Vietnamese soldier, who proceeded to write a letter to his family about the incident. When an American soldier gets a hold of the letter, it eventually finds its way to the American government. As Paul's investigation moves closer to its resolution, he realizes how much this murder means to the American government, and starts to wonder if he is in over his head.

While there are some slight lulls in the middle of the novel, and some of the dialog between Brenner and his female companion seems a little pedestrian, the novel overall is a solid read that not only provides a good mystery, but can also provide some deeper meaning if the reader happened to be a Vietnam vet.

BACK TO NAM.......2007-07-10

Two difficult things to take in: 393 reviews, and 40 some people only grudgingly allowed the book 1 star.

With all the reviews here all I will say is this book has the same characters somewhat as The General's Daughter, and though it is not a sequel the two books fit together well in continuance. The author served in Viet Nam and returned there for a visit prior to writing the book. Closure, well I don't know, but I am glad he revisited and wrote the book.

Finally, after 7 years this book still reads well and for me was an enjoyable read.

Semper Fi.

Good.......2007-06-22

This is a long book with very little action considering it's length. Paul Brenner a retired military police officer is sent on a mission in Vietnam (present day). He is to find a north Vietnamse man who witnessed a murder 30 years ago. Sounds simple? Well Paul takes us on a tour of Vietnam before we meet the man he is searching for. Along the way Paul talks about his experiences in Vietnam and provides lots of historical information. Great Stuff!! I was in Vietnam in the early 90s and did not know about a particular indigeneous people that played a role in this novel. The development of tourism after America resumed diplomatic relations with Vietnam is a amazing. Susan Weber the love interest in the novel provides insight on why some people become expatriots in far off places.

Most of the book deals with Paul and Susan touring Vietnam and then going up north to find the witness to a crime. They know where the man is but, it seems to take them a long time to get to their destination.
I listened to this on casset with Scott Brick as the narrator.
Brick is wonderful. This is a great audio book for the car because when at times I drifted off I didn't miss much action just descriptions of events, places , and feelings. I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in Vietnam

Too Stars.......2007-05-21

So the U.S. Army sends an immature and wise-cracking, retired 50-something Vietnam vet back to Vietnam for a dangerous secret mission in a totalitarian police state. In the former Saigon, he teams up with a with a beautiful Harvard MBA twenty years his junior, who falls madly in love with the aforementioned sarcastic jerk over dinner. I don't buy it. Neither should you. The author seems to be living out a mid-life crisis in this yawner. The book is TOO long, and the characters are too incessantly sarcastic and witty. The witticisms get old. Furthermore, the protagonist gets way too sassy with innumerable Vietnamese officials, and never gets jailed or deported. It's amazing! No, it's all just way too unlikely. Too insufferably "John Wayne." Instead of this silly book, read Philip Caputo's Vietnam memoir "A Rumor of War," which is profound and brilliant.

excellent.......2007-05-18

witty. funny. serious. satirical.
yes, i did skip over some dreaded dialogue.
overall, nelson deMille is always a good read!!

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