- Paperback
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (P) (October 1981)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0395316650
- ISBN-13: 978-0395316658
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Like Michael Herr's Dispatches, Robert Stone's National Book Award-winning novel Dog Soldiers trades on a hallucinatory vision of Vietnam as a place in which all honor and morality are ceded to the mere business of survival -- and, better, survival with personal profit. "This is the place where everybody finds out who they are," says the novel's protagonist, the journalist Converse, to which his friend and partner in crime Ray Hicks replies, "What a bummer for the gooks." Converse convinces Hicks to smuggle a shipment of heroin back to the United States, renegade CIA agents pop up, and all hell breaks loose in this beautifully written, dark study of the soul in anguish.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action—and profit—by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong for him. Dog Soldiers perfectly captures the underground mood of America in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered profiteering cops and professional killers—and the price of survival was dangerously high.
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
good good good,
By
This review is from: Dog Soldiers (Paperback)
I read this book for a college course on the cold war. I couldn't believe my professor. He actually apologized for putting it on the curriculum! He said that it was perhaps too gross, or graphic.... or something. How insulting!...How are we s'poseta learn about the cold war if the teachers teach with sterilized kid gloves. This book is, to Vietnam, a more accessible version of what Gravity's Rainbow is to WWII. It's harsh but not without redemption. Dog soldiers is goods good good...
5.0 out of 5 stars
Riveting and Real,
By A Customer
This review is from: Dog Soldiers (Paperback)
I had never heard of Robert Stone when I picked up an old paperback printing of this novel at a flea market. Reading it blew me away. If you're an ex-soldier (or marine) who had more than passing contact with the drug/criminal underworld of the 70's (hhmmm - guess I'm in that category) I predict that you will recognize every character and it will blow you away, too. Without belaboring all the points made in previous reviews, I agree with those made by MacInnes, Rampageous Cuss, and Sam Mills. Yes, this novel is a "trip in time for those who experienced it", but it is also enlightening and thought provoking on multiple levels.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bleak portrait of emptiness,
This review is from: Dog Soldiers (Paperback)
Framed in a story of drug smuggling gone wrong is a bleak portrait of America in the 1970s and of the people living then, specifically the subcultures. The underlying message appears to be how pointless things actually seemed (the Vietnam War, relationships, justice, life), and yet all the characters (and us as well) just keep soldiering on through the drudge and misery in the hopes that things get better. This is a sometimes difficult read that gets easier as the reader adjusts to the rhythms of the story. As the would-be drug smugglers end up on the run, the storyline picks up speed to its unexpected end.
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