A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo

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"This book is not a work of the imagination. The events related are true, the characters real, though I have used fictitious names in some places. I have tried to describe accurately what the dominant even in the life of my generation, the Vietnam War, was like for the men who fought in it." In 1965, Marine Lieutenant Philip Caputo began his three-year enlistment as a member of the first ground combat unit to fight in Vietnam. He returned from his tour of duty physically whole but emotionally shattered. A decade later, Caputo's A Rumor of War helped to end American indifference to its Vietnam veterans, becoming -- along with Tim O'Brien's Going after Cacciato and James Webb's Fields of Fire, a basic text on the Vietnam war.

From the Publisher

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


 

Publishers Weekly

20th-anniversary edition of Caputo's memoir of fighting in Vietnam. (Nov.)

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