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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
20th-anniversary edition of Caputo's memoir of fighting in Vietnam.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“To call it the best book about Vietnam is to trivialize it... A Rumor of War is a dangerous and even subversive book, the first to insist—and the insistence is all the more powerful because it is implicit—that the reader ask himself these questions: How would I have acted? To what lengths would I have gone to survive? The sense of self is assaulted, overcome, subverted, leaving the reader to contemplate the deadening possibility that his own moral safety net might have a hole in it. It is a terrifying thought, and A Rumor of Waris a terrifying book.”—John Gregory Dunne, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Caputo’s troubled, searching meditations on the love and hate of war, on fear, and the ambivalent discord warfare can create in the hearts of decent men, are among the most eloquent I have read in modern literature.”—William Styron, The New York Review of Books
“Every war seems to find its own voice: Caputo... is an eloquent spokesman for all we lost in Vietnam.”—C. D. B. Bryan, Saturday Review
“A book that must be read and reread—if for no other reason than as an eloquent statement against war. It is a superb book.”—Terry Anderson,Denver Post
“This is news that goes beyond what the journalists brought us, news from the heart of darkness. It was long overdue.”—Newsweek
“Not since Siegfried Sassoon’s classic of World War I, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, has there been a war memoir so obviously true, and so disturbingly honest.”—William Broyles, Texas Monthly
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
This book does not pretend to be history. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
This book does not pretend to be history. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Candid account of the brutal reality of combat,
By
Ce commentaire est de: A Rumor of War (Paperback)
I read this in two sittings. This book consumes you. If you harbor any romanticized notions of combat, A Rumor of War will shatter them. Caputo joins the military for the same reason so many other young men do: to validate his masculinity through acts of valor. It is Caputo's story, but it could be the story of so many others. He "escapes" his banal suburban town and becomes a Marine officer. Soon the monotony of Marine training is replaced by the stark realities of combat. The reader can sense a gradual transformation of Caputo's pysche. At the onset of the conflict Caputo is transfixed and mesmerized by the carnage(he describes in lucid detail what brains look like as they spill from a man's skull). By the end of the book Caputo is savage and even bloodthirsty, completely callous and almost indifferent to the brutalities that surround him. I honestly think this book hits harder than any film can (saving private ryan, platoon, etc.) about how hellish combat is. Film can only utilize imagery, but literature, through words, more vividly captures the tattered consciousness of the participant. I thought the most disturbing part of the book was when Caputo recalls the euphoria that he felt when he finally accepted the inevitability of his own death. at that point i think he ceased to be human in the sense that most people know. the only thing that detracted from the book was the somewhat mundane descriptions of military logistics.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
My favorite text book,
By A Customer
Ce commentaire est de: A Rumor of War (Paperback)
My military history class used this book as one of our main text books. It was and still is the only text book that I have ever enjoyed reading.Caputo uses great writing skills to take the reader through his tour as a Marine Corp's officer in Vietnam. I have read many other books on Vietnam, but this book is exciting while keeping a respectful tone for the war. This is an excellent book for educating civilians about the atrocities that the soldiers experienced. This book will be eye opening for everyone!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
From Camelot to Quang Nam,
By
Ce commentaire est de: A Rumor of War (Paperback)
Mr Caputo (as in TOE) takes the reader on his journey from college to war to military inquiry and part of the power of the work is how well the language illuminates that experience. It begins with clear, concise prose, as the young man is clear in his goals and what his country "stands for" , and rises to poetry of a kind as the narrator descends into a confused hell, where his goal becomes simple survival and he is uncertain about his country and its values. The narrator's journey in his early twenties, is from a sobriety to a delirium and back again but on that return, the open, trusting individual, is transformed into a cold, hardened, and cynical Nam Vet. There is some especially good analysis of "courage" (p.294) and the nature of a patrol by a platoon (p.252). The passage on 240 has a music and power which I could imagine being quoted as a classic piece of war prose/poetry in which the phrase "All secure. Situation remains the same" is echoed five times throughout the piece in a kind of fugue. Great writing which summarises the misery and the exhaustion men suffered on patrol, especially the power of the landscape and climate to overpower.
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