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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A raw and no holds barred memoir of a grunts life on the front lines and in the rear. A perfect examination of war on the psyche.
informative
tense
medium-paced
Once you get through Part One, it's worth it. "Officer in charge of the Dead" is some of the greatest war writing I've read.
This book gives a great insight into the day to day realities of combat troops in Vietnam. What a pointless nightmare. It's an autobiography not a novel. Some really amazing passages but I had a hard time registering any character but the narrator. When they died it was hard to remember who they were. Still, an impressive document.
This is Caputo's memoir of 16 months as a marine lieutenant in Vietnam in 1965-66. While Caputo doesn't have the literary skills of O'Brien or Herr or Marlantes, he does have a very raw, personal and real story of America at war in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and of the disillusionment that crept into the lives of so many of its soldiers as they risked (or gave) everything in that futile effort. The last stage of his military career - a court martial for murder in the field - and his return to Vietnam as a journalist in 1975, as the American war ended, lend a perspective to Caputo's account that few others could provide.
Moving, essential, personal. The best Vietnam War book I've read.
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced