The subject is the Vietnam War. Dispatches (1977) reports remarkable front-line encounters with an acid-dazed infantryman who can’t wait to get back into the field and add Viet Cong kills to his long list (‘I just can’t hack it back in the World’, he says); with a helicopter door gunner who fires indiscriminately into crowds of civilians; with daredevil photojournalist Sean Flynn, son of Errol, who disappeared somewhere inside Cambodia. Although Michael Herr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Herr) has admitted that parts of his book are fictional, this is meaty, essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the horror and madness of Vietnam. It has been praised as the best reportage ever to come out of the Vietnam War. Herr captured the feel of the war and how it differed from any other theatre of combat, as well as the flavour of the time and the essence of the people who were there.
Available in paperback at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dispatches-Picador-Michael-Herr/dp/0330255738/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389795771&sr=8-1&keywords=dispatches
208 pages in Picador paperback edition
ISBN 978-0330255738
