Susan Ellingwood, “Readers Weighed in on the Best Books About the Vietnam War” (2017)

In a review by Susan Ellingwood of ‘Dispatches,’ by Michael Herr:

“Here’s what the 1977 Times review had to say about this book: ‘If you think you don’t want to read any more about Vietnam, you are wrong. ‘Dispatches’ is beyond politics, beyond rhetoric, beyond ‘pacification’ and body counts and the ‘psychotic vaudeville’ of Saigon press briefings. Its materials are fear and death, hallucination and the burning of souls. It is as if Dante had gone to hell with a cassette recording of Jimi Hendrix and a pocketful of pills: our first rock-and-roll war, stoned murder.’ ”    —The New York Times (September 15, 2017)