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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
What a powerful memoir. At a time when there are rumors and rumors of war, it's important to understand the physical, emotional, and moral harm we make our soldiers face.
2.5 stars. This Vietnam War memoir is a hard one to rate. On one hand, the book is well written and tells an important story. On the other hand, I often found it repetitive and dull--much like the author's experience in Vietnam. I think that he could have conveyed that without putting the reader through it as well though. The main point of the book is the inhumanity of the war, and that certainly comes through, from the way they had to live (in scorching heat and/or driving rain) to various acts of war/crime. However, it would have come through in a long form article as well, rather than a whole book. Overall, I think it has some admiral qualities, but I still can't recommend it.
A moving memoir of the Vietnam War that tells of one Marine's awakening.
Grim combat-gnostic memoir of the Vietnam war. Unflinching both in its depiction of the horrific violence and purposeless futility of the war, and of its effects on the American marines fighting it (who become, over the course of the book, more violent, more bloodthirsty, more immoral, and more detached from humanity). Respectful of the troops and their motivations, but also written from the point of view of a marine who came home to join the anti-war movement. Absolutely damning in its criticism of the staff, of senior officers in general, and of war as a whole. Definitely worth reading, but it won’t leave you feeling good about much.
I read this when I was a senior in high school and it blew my mind. I imagined that war was horrible, but Caputo's experiences as a soldier and then a journalist during the Viet Nam War left me shocked and awed by humanity's ability to inflict suffering. What struck me most was the cruelty our government was willing to allow our own soldiers to endure.
Excerpts of this book might be useful in a history/social studies lesson or to further illustrate war story narrative (as in "The Things They Carried").
Excerpts of this book might be useful in a history/social studies lesson or to further illustrate war story narrative (as in "The Things They Carried").
It took me 11 years to read this book. I'd picked it up 6 or 7 times over the last decade, always mesmerized by Caputo's prose, but with a heavy heart because it's heavy material. It takes a certain mindset to be keep reading Caputo's dense but depressing narrative. It has much more military strategy than O'Brien's "The Things they Carried". I had an excellent sense of what Caputo's platoon did and where they moved.
The somberness of "A Rumor of War" parallels anything written by Wilfred Owen, but is equally descriptive. Among my favorite lines is: "Even after my eyes adjusted, I could not see the slightest variation in color. It was absolutely black. It was a void, and staring at it, I felt that I was looking into the sun's opposite, the source and center of all the darkness in the world."
An excellent read for anyone interested in the Vietnam War.
The somberness of "A Rumor of War" parallels anything written by Wilfred Owen, but is equally descriptive. Among my favorite lines is: "Even after my eyes adjusted, I could not see the slightest variation in color. It was absolutely black. It was a void, and staring at it, I felt that I was looking into the sun's opposite, the source and center of all the darkness in the world."
An excellent read for anyone interested in the Vietnam War.
Caputo does an excellent job rendering the gravity, tragedy and absurdist nature of warfare. This is one of the better of the type that I have read. Caputo’s greatest success is the ease with which he constructs a narrative that really does elucidate the confluence of rigorous training, demanding circumstances and external pressure that leads the reader to contemplate how they might act in similar conditions.
In this way, the comfortable self-assurance of one’s own moral safety net is not quite so secure. This is not so much a polemic as it is a plea. Very much worth the effort, although it’s intensity is rather draining.
In this way, the comfortable self-assurance of one’s own moral safety net is not quite so secure. This is not so much a polemic as it is a plea. Very much worth the effort, although it’s intensity is rather draining.
A journey of a first hand account of a man who in the first opening years of the Vietnam conflict join the Marines as an officer with a conviction of honor and patriotism. This great autobiographical account takes a brave and honest look at the slow erosion and disillusionment of those ideals that culminated into a bitter ending with the fall of South Vietnam as a back drop, 10 year later as a war corespondent.. One of the best war time auto bibliographical accounts I have read.
I was hesitant about this book for the first half of this book, and wouldn't have recommended it to most people. In the first two thirds of the book Caputo was a young marine, and like a lot of marine he thought he was God's gift to war. But after he becomes a monster and through that more human the story comes home and his reflections allow the previous writing to take hold of you. It's still not my favorite Vietnam memoir, but very good nonetheless.
An interesting read; obvious warning for extremely graphic descriptions as any war novel would need, but a good insight into the cruelty of the Vietnam war and the ambiguity of human nature.