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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorPaco's Story
Larry Heinemann · 209 pages
Paco Sullivan is the only man in Alpha Company to survive a cataclysmic Viet Cong attack on Fire Base Harriette in Vietnam. Everyone else is annihilated. When a medic finally rescues Paco almost two days later, he is waiting to die, flies and maggots covering his burnt, shattered body. He winds up back in the US with his legs full of pins, daily rations of Librium and Valium, and no sense of wha
The Pugilist at Rest
Thom Jones · 240 pages
14 stories grouped into four parts: the horrors of Vietnam; men at war with women; the difficulties of divorce, mental defects, and the ravages of cancer; and battling epilepsy and alcoholism.
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien · 256 pages
*The Things They Carried* (1990) is a collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O'Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. His third book about the war, it is based upon his experiences as a soldier in the 23rd Infantry Division.
Gods Go Begging
Alfredo Vea · 320 pages
"Jesse Pasadoble, a former infantry soldier who served his country with honor and courage, is now a defense attorney living in San Francisco. It was in Vietnam that Jesse learned to "hate death and to develop an almost anguished love of the living" during a horrific siege in which he should have died but didn't. For Jesse, the battle still rages: in his tortured memories; in the gang wars that ar
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. · 186 pages
Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
Smoky Joe's Cafe
Bryce Courtenay · 241 pages
Thommo and the surviving members of his platoon return from the Vietnam War to an Australia that regards them as mercenaries guilty of war crimes. Suffering from physical and mental problems, they band together to plot revenge.
The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam
Bao Ninh · 228 pages
The Sorrow of War - by turns bleak and poetic, pellucid and cunning - opens with Kien, an infantry cadre from Hanoi, engaged in the grim business of retrieving and burying the dead at the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war. From here, the novel ranges back to Kien's youth and the pains of adolescent love, and moves forward to his attempts, as a struggling writer in postwar Hanoi, to
Keeping Watch
Laurie R. King · 383 pages
Allen Carmichael came back from Vietnam a lifetime ago--but only now was he ready to return home. For years, he’s lived on the fringes of the law, using a soldier’s skills to keep watch over those too young to defend themselves. Some consider him nothing but a kidnapper for hire--the best in the business; others call him a hero. His specialty has been rescuing children from abusive parents and esc
People of the Whale
Linda Hogan · 316 pages
Raised in a remote seaside village, Thomas Witka Just marries Ruth, his beloved since infancy. But an ill-fated decision to fight in Vietnam changes his life forever: cut off from his Native American community, he fathers a child with another woman. When he returns home a hero, he finds his tribe in conflict over the decision to hunt a whale, both a symbol of spirituality and rebirth and a means o
The Honk and Holler Opening Soon
Billie Letts · 305 pages
The Ninth Configuration
William Peter Blatty · 152 pages
In an experimental government center for troubled Vietnam veterans, the inmates run the asylum. One works on an adaptation of Shakespeare--for dogs. Another fancies himself a caped superhero. Still others masquerade as frogmen, nurses, nuns, pirates, doctors. Yet Colonel Vincent Kane, the psychiatrist in charge, eyes all with a stoic reserve. Maybe too stoic: there's a mystery here. And its final
The Ha-Ha
Dave King · 360 pages
Howard Kapostash has not spoken in thirty years. The small repertory of gestures and simple sounds that he uses to communicate lead most people to assume he is disturbed. No one understands that Howard is still the same man he was before his tragic injury. But when he agrees to help an old girlfriend by opening his home to her nine-year-old son, the presence of this nervous, resourceful boy in his
What It is Like to Go to War
Karl Marlantes · 272 pages
From the author of the *New York Times* bestseller *Matterhorn*, this is a powerful nonfiction book about the experience of combat and how inadequately we prepare our young men and women for war. War is as old as humankind, but in the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion and literature -- which also helped bring them home. In a compelling narrative, Marlantes weaves rivet
Chase
Dean Koontz · 214 pages
A frightening novella from the #1 New York Times master of suspense Ben Chase is a war hero, but a reluctant one. He struggles with bitter memories and feels alienated from the culture to which he has returned. When he claims that a psychopath is stalking him, he has by then made such an outsider of himself that no one believes him. He must resurrect the repressed warrior within to save himself
Armor
John Steakley · 432 pages
Felix wanted to disappear. So he joined the armored infantry regiments invading the Bug home world. How long can the Engine in his mind beat the odds against survival?
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Jonathan Shay · 246 pages
The number of books on the Vietnam War is, by now, vast and varied. Until recently, however, there has been very little for the public to read about the psychological effect of that conflict on the men who fought in it. Gradually, it has come to be known that the combat veterans of Vietnam suffer, in appalling numbers, from what is known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Indeed, of the th
The Women
Kristin Hannah · 476 pages
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her br
The Other Side
Jason Aaron · 144 pages
*The Other Side* tells an unforgettable Vietnam war story from the point-of-view of two young soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Private Bill Everette is a US Marine. His opposite number, Vo Binh is a fighter for the People's Army of Vietnam. These two young men have never met. They are not even aware of each other's existence. And yet, in the battle-scared country of Vietnam, fighting a w
Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet
Lewis B. Puller Jr. · 400 pages
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen · 384 pages
Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles.
Born on the Fourth of July
Ron Kovic · 224 pages
This New York Times best seller (more than one million copies sold) details the author's life story (portrayed by Tom Cruise in the Oliver Stone film version)—from a patriotic soldier in Vietnam, to his severe battlefield injury, to his role as the country's most outspoken anti-Vietnam War advocate, spreading his message from his wheelchair.