Synopses & Reviews
The classic Vietnam memoir, as relevant today as it was almost thirty years ago. In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern historys ugliest wars, he returned homephysically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.
A Rumor of War is more than one soldiers story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered Americas indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as Caputo explains, of “the things men do in war and the things war does to men.”
“A singular and marvelous work.” The New York Times
After serving in Vietnam, Philip Caputo worked at the Chicago Tribune, where he was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team of journalists covering election fraud. He went on to become a correspondent covering the Middle East and the Soviet Union. Caputo also has written six novels and a second volume of memoir. He divides his time between Connecticut and Arizona.
When it first appeared, A Rumor of War brought home to American readers, with terrifying vividness and honesty, the devastating effects of the Vietnam War on the soldiers who fought there. And while it is a memoir of one young man's experiences and therefore deeply personal, it is also a book that speaks powerfully to today's students about the larger themes of human conscience, good and evil, and the desperate extremes men are forced to confront in any war.
A platoon commander in the first combat unit sent to fight in Vietnam, Lieutenant Caputo landed at Danang on March 8, 1965, convinced that American forces would win a quick and decisive victory over the Communists. Sixteen months later and without ceremony, Caputo left Vietnam a shell-shocked veteran whose youthful idealism and faith in the rightness of the war had been utterly shattered. A Rumor of War tells the story of that trajectory and allows us to see and feel the reality of the conflict as the author himself experienced it, from the weeks of tedium hacking through scorching jungles, to the sudden violence of ambushes and firefights, to the unbreakable bonds of friendship forged between soldiers, and finally to a sense of the war as having no purpose other than the fight for survival. The author gives us a precise, tactile view of both the emotional and physical reality of war.
When Caputo is reassigned to headquarters as "Officer in Charge of the Dead," he chronicles the psychological cost of witnessing and recording the human toll of the war. And after his voluntary transfer to the frontlines, Caputo shows us that the major weapons of guerrilla fighting are booby traps and land mines, and that success is measured not in feet but in body counts. Nor does the author shrink from admitting the intoxicating intensity of combat, an experience so compelling that many soldiers felt nostalgic for it years after they'd left Vietnam. Most troubling, Caputo gives us an unflinching view not only of remarkable bravery and heroism but also of the atrocities committed in Vietnam by ordinary men so numbed by fear and desperate to survive that their moral distinctions had collapsed.
More than a statement against war, Caputo's memoir offers readers today a profoundly visceral sense of what war is and, as the author says, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men."
This edition includes a twentieth-anniversary postscript by the author.
“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 insistand the insistence is all the more powerful because it is implicitthat 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 War is a terrifying book.”John Gregory Dunne, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Caputos 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 rereadif 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
Review
"This is news that goes beyond what the journalists brought us, news from the
heart of darkness. It was long overdue." Newsweek
Synopsis
The classic Vietnam memoir, as relevant today as it was almost thirty years ago.
In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home--physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.
A Rumor of War is more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America's indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as Caputo explains, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men."
"A singular and marvelous work." --The New York Times
Synopsis
The classic Vietnam memoir, as relevant today as it was almost thirty years ago. In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home--physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.
"A Rumor of War" is more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America's indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as Caputo explains, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men."
"A singular and marvelous work." --"The New York Times"
The classic Vietnam memoir, as relevant today as it was almost thirty years ago. In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home--physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.
"A Rumor of War" is more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America's indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as Caputo explains, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men."
"A singular and marvelous work." --"The New York Times"
About the Author
Philip Caputo worked nine years for the
Chicago Tribune and shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his reporting on election fraud in Chicago. The author of seven works of fiction and a second volume of memoir, he divides his time between Connecticut and Arizona.