Customer Reviews

Fields of Fire

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When it was first published, James Webb's Fields of Fire was hailed as a great Vietnam novel. It isn't. It is a good, earnest effort, much like a superior exercise in a creative writing class, but it is not even close to being one of the great books to come from what has become a very literary war. Webb is simply not a natural writer and he doesn't have the imagination of a Tim O'Brien (whose novels Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried are the best to emerge on the American side from the war) or the style and fire of Michael Herr, whose non-fiction Dispatches still ranks at the very pinnacle of all Vietnam War books. Webb's book is overly burdened with that Vietnam-era slang which becomes painful after you've read enough of it. ' One more dinky-dau, in other words, and you're ready to scream. His characters are stereotypes, as is the situation in which they find themselves. And like a more recent Vietnam novelist who has received far too much praise, Karl Marlantes, Webb wants to have it both ways. He writes what is nominally an anti-war novel but ends up glorifying war despite himself. In brief, there are too many excellent Vietnam novels out there (at least a few of them written by Vietnamese combatants on the other side) to waste time with what is now a dated and rather painful exercise.

Mr. Webb was among the first to tell of the war from the gritty, unglamorous viewpoint of the field Marine, the grunt. The book chronicles the operations of a rifle platoon operating in Vietnam at the height of the war, and the story circles around a young lieutenant who strives to survive and serve his rowdy band of drafted Marines while still completing the mission. Webb has an unusual writing style, but it works well within the story, especially the "street" style dialogue of the young combatants that depicts the manner in which Vietnam era Marines spoke. Unlike shelves of blase, feelgood snorers of military fiction out there, this book stands apart as one of the truly great war novels of all time. It is a must read for anyone who served or is currently serving.

I had watched many movies about the Vietnam War, but I'd never read a book about it. James Webb's "Fields of fire" was my first choice because of the high-rated reviews and praising I found everywhere I looked for information on this book.

James Webb was in Vietnam, so he knows what he's writing about. His style is simple and direct; he didn't intend to create a poetic or philosophical book about the war. "Fields of fire" is a very graphic and accurate portrait of the real people who fought against the vietnamese. Characters are not stereotyped, but rather a display of the many kinds of men who were in SE Asia, and their different motivations or reasons to be there at the time. Interestingly, there are not that many battle scenes, but rather the plot of the book is a fabric of human behaviour during a war, with occasional fighting and changes thrown in the middle.

This book is considered very good because the reader can sense that everything in the pages is real. Another thing comes to my mind now: the final chapter (and the ending) is one of the most sensitive, believable and, therefore, appropriated final moment of a book dealing with war that I've ever read.

Congratulations to the author, who created a fine book about a gruesome subject. This is one more lesson about humanity in a society that seems to be flunking Citizenship 101.

Grade 9.3/10

This book should be required reading in college history classes. It is an amazing look into what was a difficult time in American history and tells the story of several soldiers in Nam in such a way that the telling of this story will stay with you forever. The Vietnam war was a conflict this nation had never seen the like of before or since and this book is a must read for any one who harbours any illusions that the soldiers over there were doing wrong. They were our citizens, sons, brothers and fathers and the way this nation disregarded them makes me ashamed and glad I wasn't yet born to bear witness.

Anyways, I recommend this book and give it five stars. I also give thanks to the troops who servered there and did their best in a fubar'ed situation and I grieve with them for their losses.

i read this book for my high school modern fiction class. It was one of the best books i have ever read. you truly connect with the characters and you feel as if you are in the bush, fighting ] along with them in their struggle in vietnam. this book will show you not only the war, but all the aspects of what goes on in thuis war. the story will change you and make you feel somthing. its amazing how much this book will have an affect on you. some parts although may feel slow, the ending battle will truly make you feel what the war was about. i would recommend this to anyone with a sense of adventure and a intrest in war

I'm happy to see this book reprinted. I went through a period of depression many years ago and occupied myself with reading books about the war in Vietnam (it suited my mood at the time). This was far and away the best of the bunch. I really felt I understood what the experience was like for those who were there. One knows from reading it that the author had to have been there himself, and indeed this is true. If you want to know about the war in Vietnam from the perspective of the soldiers fighting it, this is the book to get.

Novelization follows war accurately. Details you won't get from a non-participant. Theme is about how we sent them there and then forgot them. Find out what it means: War is Hell.

I looked at all the Vietnam lists on Amazon. My favorite is *Saigon* by Anthony Grey.

I first came upon the name James Webb from The Nightingale Song by Robert Timberg. It was Webb's relentless courage told in Timberg's book that made me interested in reading Fields of Fire. And this book is amazing. The characters are unique and play important roles as an ensemble to complete the book. I got a realistic sense of how people would act when placed in a situation as the characters themselves and tended to question my own sense of how I would act. This book makes you think.

Although I've had "Fields of Fire" for years, I had never managed to read it until I read "The Nightengale's Song", which chronicled the lives of Webb and four other Naval Academy graduates (also a great book). I only regret that I had not read "Fields of Fire" years ago. It is one of the most honest, realistic, and gut-wrenching war novels I have ever read. I think it ranks with the likes of "The Killer Angels", "The Naked and the Dead", and "All Quiet on the Western Front" as one of the best novels written about ANY war.

I did not serve in Viet Nam (I was in the Navy), so I won't pretend to truly understand how the grunt really experienced the war. However, I am certain that "Fields of Fire" probably comes closer to conveying an understanding than any book written on Viet Nam. I have read other, non-fiction accounts of platoon-level fighting in Viet Nam (e.g., "We Were Soldiers Once .. and Young" and "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts"), and the descriptions of everything from the nightly patrols, the constant sense of fear, and just the brutality of so much around them could have been interchanged with Webb's descriptions. Further, Webb, as a highly decorated Marine in Viet Nam, is qualified as few could be to have written this book - he lived it. Much is surely autobiographic.

In short, one of the best books I have ever read, period.

I would rank this as one of the best vietnam era novels I have read. The way james webb introduces and describes the characters really brings you into the book. This was one of those books that I felt disappointed when it was finished, I have re-read this book twice already and have only owned it for a few month's I would suggest this book to anyone interested in vietnam era novels and of course those that are not. This is a great book.