Product Description

Perhaps the best book to emerge from the Vietnam War, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a fascinating insight into the lives of the soldiers caught in the conflict. First published in 1973, this intensely personal novel about one foot soldier's tour of duty in Vietnam established Tim O'Brien's reputation as the outstanding chronicler of the Vietnam experience for a generation of Americans. From basic training to the front line and back again, he takes the reader on an unforgettable journey -- walking the minefields of My Lai, fighting the heat and the snipers in an alien land, crawling into the ghostly tunnels -- as he explores the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war no one believes in.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205776 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
'No one has written about the Vietnam War with the eloquence of Tim O'Brien. If I Die in a Combat Zone may be the single greatest piece of work to come out of Vietnam -- on a level with World War II's The Naked and the Dead and From Here to Eternity.' Washington Star 'A work of passion and protest ! one of the few good things to come out of that desolating struggle.' Guardian 'A personal document of aching clarity ! O'Brien brilliantly and quietly evokes the foot soldier's daily life in the paddies and foxholes. A beautiful, painful book.' New York Times Book Review 'I wish O'Brien did not write so beautifully, for he makes it impossible to forget his book. Years from now it will still have that terrible power to make me remember and to make me weep.' New York Times

About the Author
Tim O'Brien was born in Minnesota and served as a foot soldier in Vietnam from 1969 to1970, and after graduate studies at Harvard worked as a reporter for the Washington Post. When If I Die in a Combat Zone was published in 1973, it established him as one of the leading American writers of his generation, a status that was confirmed when Going After Cacciato won the 1979 National Book Award for fiction.

Customer Reviews

A fine "On the Ground View"
This is not a history book, tactics and plans are not discussed. This is a book of survival, survival of a naïve individual who quickly gets the fastest lesson in maturity required - infantry soldier war. O'Brien's book is riveting reading, it is basic and direct, it quickly knocks any glory to be had in being in Vietnam. This is a book of survival, one were friendships can end quickly. O'Brien does not ask for sympathy he only appears to want the reader to try and understand what it is was like for the common GI.

Superb!
We all think we know about the Vietnam war. The brutality, the slaughter, the insanity - a very general view. This book takes the reader right into the thick of it. You're not viewing the war on the General's map, you're right there in the fox hole with your buddies. This is the tale of a normal man living through the war. It's not a political text. There's no "slant" put on the events. It's just a straight forward personal story. Like sitting down and listening to a veteran talk - that's O'Brien's style and it is captivating.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Whether you have an interest in the Vietnam war or not, you won't want to put it down.

Apocalypse Wow!
The horror... the horror... it's Vietnam, the way it was, and perhaps also the way we imagine it to have been, through the lens of films like Apocalypse Now and Platoon, only this is the (semi-fictionalised) account of Tim O'Brien's tour of duty through the madness of what is generally thought of as the first rock n' roll war. There is pain and suffering in his account, interspersed with the exhilaration of still being alive as each day brings him that one step closer to returning home. Tim's book reads fast and furious and is probably one of the finest examples of its genre.