This is the first up-close account of the Vietnam War from a journalist's perspective. WOW! So good. Sobering. My father-in-law was a surgeon during the Tet Offensive. So during that part of the book, I was all ears!
A very worthy read. BUT it is tough.
The author mentions Errol Flynn's only son in the book. He was a photojournalist in Vietnam. Here is an article on his disappearance:
Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:
Between 1967 and 1969, journalist Michael Herr was in Vietnam, reporting on the war for Esquire magazine. Dispatches is his episodic personal account of that experience. The conflict Herr covered has sometimes been referred to as America’s “first rock ‘n’ roll war,” and there’s certainly a head-banging, heavy-metal swagger to the author’s juiced-up prose. Through each stunning sequence, Herr remains alert to the trauma, terror, language, and longing of the soldiers he is watching kill and die. An electric pulse of desperation sears their humanity, and the author bears witness to the pain of the burns.
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