Since I am finally viewing the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary I have dreaded seeing, I decided to listen to this memoir O'Brien began writing in Nam thru his journal and letters. He actually published pieces of it soon after he returned to Minnesota. Like me, O'Brien read deeply into the war and took a principled stance against it, but unlike me he actually went, citing cowardice as his main reason for finally agreeing to go. In his story he is almost matter of fact about the horrors these young men experience, and as he says in an interview, forty years later he is stilling dealing with the trauma of watching his friends lose body parts or get blown to bits over a war he knew even as a young man was based on misjudgments and lies. And lies to cover the lies: Johnson, McNamara, Westmoreland, even Kennedy, just extending the colonialist impulses of the French in that country.

And the racism, misogyny, the ignorance and arrogance fostered by military leaders in these young men who just wanted to either 1) kill as many of the "enemy" as possible, not knowing why they were even the enemy besides being Communist, and 2) just wanting to go home. Most of them 18 and 19.

At one point he suggests that maybe the thing we might learn from that war is to allow no more Liars as leaders, but the lies of Iraq, the daily lies now, a young man's optimism. I liked the debate O'Brien has with a hawk chaplain justifying My Lai, where women and children and the elderly were slaughtered.

I like how greater books emerged out of this like the incomparable The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato (that escape fantasy was there in Combat Zone) and the My Lai madness novel In the Lake of the Woods that almost drove him to suicide, that book began in a sense while he was already there.

While Ken Burns is no radical, we can see the deep and howlingly mad critique of O'Brien, one of the consultants on the series, throughout the film series. Already in the first episode I cried 3-4 times, thinking of my cousin Berg killed there and so many young men-just boys, really, a children's campaign, as are most wars--who died there senselessly. Domino theory, indeed. A portrait in courage.

The paradox 'war is peace' is shattered when a reluctant soldier experiences the consequences of the war, first hand. The result is you are able to conjure up the image of the Vietnam war - the minefields, civilian's sufferings, children dying, the ghostly tunnels. You are shaken. Tim O' Brien survives the war and you have one of the most powerful book ever written on Vietnam.

Vivid and powerful but I liked The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods better

Precise, devastating, vivid. The skill of the writing matches the significance of the topic.

Some good sketches of combat in Vietnam, but the author spends way too much time trying to convince you he's above it all -- the poetry references, the anti-war posturing, the easy sneers at boot camp and military discipline. The NEW YORKER loved this book, and the inside cover blurb describes the author as "intelligent and thoroughly nice." 'Nuff said?

O'Brien's remembrances of the terror, heat and boredom of the Vietnam War are incredibly real to the reader. It doesn't quite rise to the brilliance of the The Things They Carried which has the benefit of fiction and multiple perspectives, but this memoir is very powerful. I especially found his description of his inner conflict in the days during the summer leading up to his deployment fascinating to witness. And his depictions of other soldiers and commanders are quite funny between terrible scenes of war. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed this as much on my second reading as on my first. Although, I don't know if "enjoyed" is the most appropriate word, given the subject matter of the book; perhaps "appreciated" is more fitting.

This is the story of O'Brien's year serving as an infantryman in Vietnam in 1969. He tells us about his upbringing in rural Minnesota (Worthington, although he never mentions the town by name), and his moral struggles after receiving his draft card. He takes us through basic training at Fort Lewis in Washington, and then he's off to Vietnam.

The stories he tells about his experiences include the mind numbing routines, the fear of the unknown, constantly wondering where the enemy is, dealing with the local people, trying to determine who among them is friendly or deadly, the seeming lack of any military plan that characterized much of his platoon's activities, the counting down of days until your tour is over, deciding whether to re-enlist for 3 years and get a rear echelon job or take the risk of lasting out the standard one year term, dealing with the fallout of the My Lai massacre (his division had been involved in that the year before, and was still operating in that area), trying to define what courage truly is, and looking forward to the return home.

O'Brien states early in the book, "Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. It is hard to know what bravery is. . . . Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories." O'Brien tells war stories, and does it well.

I checked this book out from my school library because I thought it looked interesting. It was interesting to hear about the Vietnam war from the perspective of a person who was in the war. Overall I enjoyed the book

Not much to say about, it was okay, nothing special for me. Didn't really have any outstanding moments for me. Published in 1973 so I'm no way saying that it wasn't the first, but felt really "seen this before". I liked O'Brien's The Things They Carried more.

"Can the foot soldier teach anything important about the war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories."

What an amazing book. This being the second of Tim O’Brien’s books I have read I have found both to be insightful, dramatic, as well as disturbingly peaceful. This author takes you into his mind, body, and spirit in a way few writers can. Describing the horrors of war, in a war that he never wanted to participate in. I can only imagine his feelings are mirrored by so many who participated in this brutal conflict. This cathartic experience, of putting pen to paper, to try to explain and address his time as well as others in a war that even to this day we are trying to understand is a truly harrowing undertaking. I feel privileged for having been able to read this and receive a small glimpse of what so many others have experienced.

I really wanted to love this, because I love Tim O'Brien generally. But, I came away from this feeling like I had just listened to a bunch of random war stories about Vietnam and going to Vietnam, which I know was the point of the book. I guess it made it feel a bit cliched - at this point, we've heard all this before, but it was probably more shocking or new at the time it was written. I also think he took the whole idea of storytelling much further with "The Things They Carried." Those were also many random vignettes, but they added up to the common theme of the exploration of what the word "truth" means. For me, this book didn't add up to much. Also the narrator had a really annoying Eeyore voice, so that didn't help.