Mr. Singleton is Reading: If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

In If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, Tim O'Brien writes about his life as a U.S. combat soldier in Vietnam. The book shows how awful and mistaken the war was; how much suffering it caused the Vietnamese people, and how damaging it was for U.S. soldiers.

It's a good book to read in combination with Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, and Ambrose Bierce's writing about the U.S. Civil War.

This kind of writing reminds me of what photographer Lisette Model said about her photographs of people: "The more specific you are, the more general you are." When we get to look in detail at one person's experiences, we can engage with a situation emotionally, and later, think about how that tragedy was repeated millions of times.

 GoodReads says:

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.

 

 

 

*quick note from Ms. D* If you liked The Things They Carried, try this book too. Also, read Slaughterhouse Five, it might change your world.