 "Excellent look into front line Vietnam" | 2008-06-06 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3D6436F1KHPMK |
| I thought this book was the best book on Vietnam that I have ever read. Its a facinating look into life as a line officer in a front line Marine Infantry batallion during the early part of the war. Caputo holds nothing back when it comes to describing life on the front line and what goes through the minds of these young, too young Marines who fought on the front line. An excellent read and I highly reccomend it. |
| |
| "Well written and engrossing" | 2008-06-03 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1I15H07V231FK |
| Its a page turner from start to finish. A very unique view of the war. |
| |
 "Caputo wasn't much of a marine" | 2008-05-31 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1R15QOLD077TE |
| Caputo wasn't much of a marine. He started complaining about Vietnam before he arrived. Every page is filled with criticism, cynicism, griping, complaining, and self-serving tripe. He wanted to be a hero, but he didn't have what it took to be anything but a whining wimp. Certainly he writes well. But writing well and living well are entirely different. He doesn't understand honor or duty. Sure the war was politicized, but so is every war. Sure the rules of engagement were stupid, but a soldier serves. Caputo did not serve; rather he whined. Many of us who served in Vietnam believed there were many things that made no sense. But we didn't turn tail and run. We served. For those who want to understand what is was like to be a soldier in Vietnam, read "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young" or "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts". If you want to know what is was like to be useless in Vietnam, read this book. |
| |
 "Real life account" | 2008-05-29 |
| - Reviewed By tlangholff |
I assigned this book to my college students for a closer glimpse of the Vietnam Conflict. I had not read it before, but had done research and study on the subject. I found Caputo's book to be insightful, controversial and thought provoking. He doesn't glamorize the war but explains how it effected soldiers and one of the many reasons it was such a mess. Throughout the book, Caputo shows how the conditions changed the average American teenager into a robotic killer and how their experiences stayed with them. In the end, he speaks against the war, but not in the normal Jane Fonda version of bashing the military and labeling them rapists and baby killer. Caputo talks about how the government was at fault and created the situations that lead to PTSD and other issues for returning soldiers.
A must read to understand the war and its effects on our soldiers. |
| |
| "Remebering Vietnam - A Review of "A Rumor of War"" | 2008-05-25 |
| - Reviewed By User: AFSDOEM2R35GR |
In keeping with the theme of this Memorial Day weekend, I would like to offer my thoughts on "A Rumor of War," a classic tale of Vietnam. Philip Caputo has crafted one of the most moving and disturbing testaments to the men who fought and died in that far away land. When the book was first published in 1977, the New York Times called it "The troubled conscience of America speaking passionately, truthfully, finally." I became aware of this classic memoir when my friend, Capt. Kyle Kalkwarf, West Point Class of 2002, told me that it was one of the best books about war he had ever read. He recommended that I add it to my reading list. He was right in doing so.
Caputo's recollections of his time as a Marine in Vietnam are filled with anger and sorrow at the misbegotten policies promulgated in Washington and carried out with disastrous results by General Westmorland and his subordinates. The author makes it clear in his introductory remarks how he felt and feels about that war and the impact that it had upon him and his comrades in arms:
"Beyond adding a few more corpses to the weekly body count, none of these encounters achieved anything; none will ever appear in military histories or be studied by cadets at West Point. Still, they changed us and taught us, the men who fought in them; in those obscure skirmishes we learned the old lessons about fear, cowardice, courage, suffering, cruelty and comradeship. Most of all, we learned about death at an age when it is common to think of oneself as immortal. Everyone loses that illusion eventually, but in civilian life it is lost in installments over the years. We lost it all at once, and in the span of months, passed from boyhood through manhood to a premature middle age. The knowledge of death, of the implacable limits placed on a man's existence, severed us from our youth as irrevocably as a surgeon's scissors had once severed us from the womb. And yet, few of us were past twenty-five. We left Vietnam peculiar creatures, with young shoulders that bore rather old heads. . .
This book is partly an attempt to capture something of its [the war's] ambivalent realities. Anyone who fought in Vietnam, if he is honest about himself, will have to admit he enjoyed the compelling attractiveness of combat. It was a peculiar enjoyment because it was mixed with a commensurate pain. Under fire, a man's powers of life heightened in proportion to the proximity of death, so that he felt an elation as extreme as his dread. His senses quickened, and he attained an acuity of consciousness at once pleasurable and excruciating. It was something like the elevated state of awareness induced by drugs. And it could be just as addictive, for it made whatever else life offered in the way of delights or torments see pedestrian." (Pages xv-xvii)
Caputo's last comments in the section just quoted seem to be eerily in keeping with the themes of the stunning films, "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now."
In one of the most gripping passages in the book, Caputo recaptures the spectrum of emotions he felt during a helicopter assault - running the gamut from fear to courage:
"A helicopter assault on a hot landing zone creates emotional pressures far more intense than a conventional ground assault. It is the enclosed space, the noise, the speed, and, above all, the sense of total helplessness. There is a certain excitement to it the first time, but after that it is one of the more unpleasant experiences offered by modern war. On the ground, an infantryman has some control over his destiny, or at least the illusion of it. In a helicopter under fire, he hasn't even the illusion. Confronted by the indifferent forces of gravity, ballistics and machinery, he is himself pulled in several directions at once by a range of extreme, conflicting emotions. Claustrophobia plagues him in the small space: the sense of being trapped and powerless in a machine in unbearable, and yet he has to bear it. Bearing it, he begins to feel a blind fury toward the forces that made him powerless, but has to control his fury until he is out of the helicopter and on the ground again. He yearns to be on the ground, but the desire is countered by the danger he knows is there. Yet, he is also attracted by the danger, for he knows he can only overcome his fear by facing it. His blind rage then begins to focus on the men who are the source of the danger - and of his fear. It concentrates inside him, and through some chemistry is transformed into a fierce resolve to fight until the danger ceases to exist. But this resolve, which is sometimes called courage, cannot be separated from the fear that has aroused it. Its very measure is the measure of that fear. It is, in fact, a powerful urge not to be afraid anymore, to rid himself of fear by eliminating the source of it. This inner, emotional war produces tension almost sexual in its intensity. It is too painful to endure for long. All a soldier can think about is the moment when he can escape his impotent confinement and release this tension. All other considerations, the rights and wrongs of what he is doing, the chances for victory or defeat in the battle, the battle's purpose or lack of it, become so absurd as to be less than irrelevant. Nothing matters except the final, critical instant when he leaps out into the violent catharsis he both seeks and dreads." (Pages 277-8)
Caputo's thoughtful and passionate recounting of the growing up that he did in the cauldron of Vietnam added to my understanding of what many of my generation experienced as they fought in Southeast Asia and returned to a country that had grown sick of the fighting. As our nation once again wrestles with combat fatigue and the questions of when to withdraw and how to withdraw from Iraq, I am grateful that this time around - unlike the situation that existed in the late `60's and 70's - even those who oppose the war have not showered those returning from the Gulf with opprobrium. They desire our admiration and our gratitude.
Thanks Kyle, for recommending this book, and for your continuing service to our nation.
Al |
| |
| "Excellent!" | 2008-02-24 |
| - Reviewed By User: A12HNDI7WUQVS |
| I was very impressed with the order of A Rumor of War. The book shipped quickly and arrived between the 7-14 day window. The service was professional. The book details matched the quality of the book. I am very pleased with the service provided. |
| |
| "If not the best, what IS the best experience of Vietnam?" | 2007-12-15 |
| - Reviewed By User: A31UIIPFBGOPT6 |
| Caputo's book doesn't need another review. I will offer mine anyway, if nothing else to contrast it with Wolff's "In Pharoah's Army," an inferior book. First, I wish I could have written "A Rumor of War." I wasn't ready to write about the war soon after I returned from Vietnam, in 1967. Not even after a couple years of college in 1971, when I camped on the mall with 1,200 other Vietnam Vets Against the War (including John Kerry). Caputo had the advantage of education on me. Not just that, I needed a lot more time to experience other things and gain a broader perspective. But he made it all perfectly clear when he had a dialogue in the officer's mess with the chaplain and the doctor, "The chaplain's morally superior attitude had rankled me, but his sermon had managed to plant doubt in my mind, doubt about the war. Much of what he had said made sense: our tactical operations did seem futile and directed toward no apparent end. . . . Twelve wrecked homes. The chaplain's words echoed. That's twelve wrecked homes. The doctor and I think in terms of human suffering, not statistics." AND THIS WAS IN 1965, before things really got going in Vietnam. If you want to know what the BS about body counts was--that ended up in a lawsuit by General Westmoreland against Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, if you want to know what Vietnam was like because you are too young to have learned about it during that time in America and the world's history, read this book. If you want to know how it relates to more recent events, try my own memoir, Waiting for Westmoreland, that finally came out so many years later. |
| |
| "Best Literature onThe Viet Nam War" | 2007-10-20 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2VI98KUXGUO6O |
Pulitzer Price winner Philip Caputo held me on the edge of my seat with his autobiographical experience as a young marine lieutenant in the first year of the US major troop deployment period. I, as a 21 year old enlisted man, was also was part of that initial troop operation with the 1st Infantry Division just north of Saigon.
We arrived full of excitement not knowing what we were about to encounter. I still find it hard to explain the experience of unanticipated paralyzing fear, an environment of massive infrastructure development in the middle of a rubber plantations and mountain jungle, new deadly weapons design to counter our initial losses, the anything goes in Saigon, snakes and tigers, indiscriminate death and the general behavior of kids that had been raised with upper middle class values that simply didn't hold up when exposed the emotional sensationalism of this conflict.
Caputo does the best job describing that environment and the related
evolving behavior that became part of the daily experience. As you approach the end of the novel with stimulated enlightenment he drops the bomb.
Along side of "Making of a Quagmire" by another Pulitzer Prize winner, David Halberstan and "We were Soldiers Once ....And Young", Harold G. Moore, readers will share the true history of the journey through moral decadence to which no participant was exempt.
The three best (in my opinion as a Viet Nam Veteran) pieces of literature written on the Viet Nam War. They are, as writers, truly artist.
|
| |
| "I absolutely recommend this book!" | 2007-10-07 |
| - Reviewed By User: A17Z9ZTLHJAQBH |
| I've been wanting to read first-hand accounts of the Vietnam war for some time and have finally read several books within the last few months; "A Rumor of War", "Dispatches", "Vietnam/Perkasie" and "Letters from Vietnam." Standing above all is Philip Caputo's incredibly vivid "A Rumor of War." It's everything the other reviewers have said. But do try to read the other books too because it's facinating to read the differences and similarities between them and also gives a better, more rounded picture than any one work can paint. Right now I'm reading "Fields of Fire" which so far is terrific as well. |
| |
| "Tasting the War Inside Your Mouth" | 2007-09-11 |
| - Reviewed By casperrogue |
Caputo's first and most famous work "A Rumor of War" is a testimonial of his experiences as a 2nd lieutenant Marine serving in Vietnam in 1965.
On the surface, this book will remind you of so many other testimonials. War is hell, war is bad. Caputo's version of events are so descriptively described, you can taste the dirt of Vietnam in your mouth, feel the grime on your skin and see the fog of what was one of America's worst mistakes.
To get a good picture of what war is like and what it does to the human psyche, there is no better portrayal than what Caputo writes. You watch him turn from a gung-ho Marine being sent to protect a base from the VC, and maybe kill a few in the process, to a person so cynical, he orders his men to kill Vietnamese civilians and burn villages indiscriminately. The atrocities he and others committed were so great, you would expect him still serving a sentence in prison for his crimes. This is until you are reminded that this is a war, and that the hand of the US interests pushed him to insanity.
I thought this book was an incredible read for anyone who wants a discriptive, hands-on look on the effects of war. Captuo is not a hero in this book, and even more so, I can't help but think that he profits off the innocent he killed. It affects me so much, I don't feel that a perfect score on this novel does those who were characters any justice for their deaths. That is the underlying irony in a book about a "splendid little war" that was only considered an authorized use of force by an executive order.
This book plays so well into modern day politics and current events, there isn't any reason why "Rumor of War" should be tossed aside as irrelevant. So many similiarities in his tale sing to the tune of Americans serving in Iraq today. Anyone who is willing to delve into this novel will clearly see the picture, and taste the bitterness of it all. |
| |
Expedited Available
