Synopses & Reviews
"The best American writer of his generation." —San Francisco Examiner
A New York Times Book of the Century
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist
A National Book Critics' Circle Award Finalist
Winner of the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France)
Winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize
Now with over two million copies in print, The Things They Carried is a classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene. It is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.
They carried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated Bibles, each other. And if they made it home alive, they carried unrelenting images of a nightmarish war that history is only beginning to absorb. Since its first publication, The Things They Carried has become an unparalleled Vietnam testament, a classic work of American literature, and a profound study of men at war that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul.
Review
"The Things They Carried is as good as any piece of literature can get....It is controlled and wild, deep and tough, perceptive and shrewd." Chicago Sun Times
Review
"[B]elongs high on the list of best fiction about any war....crystallizes the Vietnam experience for everyone [and] exposes the nature of all war stories." New York Times
Review
"Rendered with an evocative, quiet precision, not equaled in the imaginative literature of the American war in Vietnam. It is as though a Thucydides had descended from grand politique and strategy to calm dissection of the quotidian efforts of war....O'Brien has it just right." Washington Post
Review
"Powerful...Composed in the same lean, vigorous style as his earlier books, The Things They Carried adds up to a captivating account of the experiences of an infantry company in Vietnam....Evocative and haunting, the raw force of confession." Wall Street Journal
About the Author
A native of Worthington, Minnesota, Tim O'Brien graduated in 1968 from Macalester College in St. Paul. He served as a foot soldier in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, after which he pursued graduate studies in Government at Harvard University, then later worked as a national affairs reporter for the Washington Post. He now lives in Massachusetts.
Other books by Tim O'Brien include If I Die in a Combat Zone Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, Going After Cacciato, Northern Lights, The Nuclear Age, and In the Lake of the Woods. Going After Cacciato won the National Book Award in 1979. In the Lake of the Woods won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the society of American Historians and was selected as the best novel of 1994 by Time magazine. His latest novel, Tomcat in Love (1998), is published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House.