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Summary: The Saving Private Ryan of literature
Review: I've had many favorite books in my day, and even went so far as to carry one around with me everywhere in college (no, not the Bible either), but never have I felt so compelled to turn back to page one and start again just minutes after finishing the book. This book moved me more than any other book on Vietnam has. I think it's because the view from inside the trenches at Khe Sanh and other places of such horror is very grainy, although the horror is often contrasted with speculations on insanity and random observations of beauty. He'll put you on a chopper loaded with dead bodies, but desribe the sunset. There is no escaping the bloody details of dismemberment here, and there is no apology for putting you right there, examining the myriad ways a human body can be pulled apart. Herr's position in the war is easy to relate to as well, for me anyway, because it seems the only tolerable way to have been there: as a correspondent, he has the choice to stay or go, but makes the choice to stay and oftentimes even puts himself in extremely dangerous and intense situations without really explaining why. Any driven individual who is not put off by such accounts of violence and who can appreciate and understand Herr's choice to be there will find this book fascinating. But don't expect to smile.
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Summary: Herr makes words rain like bullets
Review: I am not a lover of war books, and would not ordinarily pick up any text primarily about war. But, like others, I was assigned Dispatches in a college class. I love it--it is one of the six or seven books of my life. But it does not seem primarily a book about war as much as it is about language, about the odd languages used by the officers in Vietnam, about the lingos employed by the grunt privates--the entire strange verbiage of a unique time and place. Everyone in love with words should read it.
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Summary: The best of a good bunch...
Review: I read Dispatches when it first came out and still find it to be the best of all books from the Viet Nam war. For history you might want to read Stanley Karnow's Viet Nam, for the best in fiction try Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and for an oral history nothing is better than Gloria Emerson's Winners and Losers, which is a stunning and even handed look at the most controversial of all wars. I have always counted Dispatches as one of the ten best books that I have ever read.
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Summary: Realism Meets Apocalypse Now
Review: This book, by Micheal Herr, demostrates the power of documenation. Herr's DISPATCHES grabs you by the throat and demands you to finish the book.The content of DISPATCHES reads smoothly with a conversational tone. It is as if you invited Herr over for dinner and over the course of the evening he told you about his experiences in Vietnam. The stories he tells don't come across as patriotic hymns to the USA, nor do they slam the government for it's involvement in Vietnam; they just present Herr's experience, which was Hell. Herr helped write Francis Ford-Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW, and it's no surprise to see a parallel style and content in his book. The prose cinematically evokes both the claustrohphobic aspects of Saigon and the living kudzu beyond: The Jungle. Just like APOCALYPSE NOW, with vivid setting and character analysis, Herr has effectively communicated the "Vietnam Experience."
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Summary: Understandably a recommended text about the Vietnam War
Review: Born in the UK in 1963, Vietnam became a nightly news bulletin, about which I understood very little. Later in life I have tried to understand what all the media attention was about, and the history behind the war. As part of my voyage of discovery reading this book assisted in graphically reiterating the impressions of the desperate plight of the vietnam combat soldiers fighting in a war without definite objectives, against a people who had been involved in the struggle for self-rule over many years. I dont think anybody who was not involved in the fighting can experience what it was like, but this book certainly helps to gain an insight.
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Summary: This book absolutely blew me away
Review: A combat journalist's account of his time in Vietnam during the early years of the war, this book combines harrowing realism with excellent descriptive prose. The author effectively breathes life into all of the people included in his stories, and reading "Dispatches" is very much a total immersion in his experiences. I cannot recommend this book more strongly. (One side note: astute readers may notice a number of quotes in "Dispatches" that were used as lines in Stanley Kubrick's late 1980's film "Full Metal Jacket." Check out the copyright date on the book if you have any doubt about which is the original.)
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Summary: A must read in understanding the Vietnam War
Review: This novel has been both praised and criticised by reviewers and readers. Some doubt that the writers experience encompass the grunt experience, but as the corresepondents experience it is second to non. Well written and realistically gruesome at times, Herr will stand as one of the most eloquent and discussed authors to come out of the war. Patches Of Fire, By Albert French, is the best novel about vietnam i have read, and will follow Herr's Dispatches in becoming a clasic.
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Summary: Amazing book
Review: I was required to read this book for a college seminar called "The American Experience in Vietnam." We read approx 10 books that semester, and this one remains my favorite. In fact, it is one of my favorite books in general. It moved me.
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Summary: This is one hell of a way to experience the Vietnam war.
Review: I had to read this for an english class, and so I started out with a less than positive opinion of the book. It's tough at first; Herr's writing totally disorients the reader in the beginning, but as the story progresses, I found that I was totally engulfed in Herr's memories. Herr's imagery and New Journalism style are very powerful. By the time I was done reading, it felt as though I had really been there.
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Summary: A TIMELESS MASTERPIECE, JUST READ IT!
Review: "DISPATCHES" LEAVES AN IMPRINT IN MY MIND. THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK WHERE HE'S LYING IN AN HOTEL ROOM AND LOOKING AT THE OLD MAP ON THE WALL IN THE SAIGON HEAT. IT PUTS ME THERE, ON EDGE.
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