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AudibleInk - If I Die in a Combat Zone : Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
Your Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
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Manufacturer: Broadway
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FREE SHIPPING on Orders over $25!
Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 959.7043092
EAN: 9780767904438
ISBN: 0767904435
Label: Broadway
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 1999-09-01
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: 1999-09-01
Studio: Broadway
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Gripping and Intense
Comment: In this memoir Tim O'Brien recounts the testing of his moral principles and the continuing broadening of his understanding of the concepts of courage and bravery. The author successfully presents the reader with compelling insights into the moral dilemmas encountered by a young man dealing with the entirety of serving as an American soldier in Vietnam, including, the draft, the expectations of family and a small mid-western town versus his views on being a part to an immoral war. Throughout the book he struggles with what it means to be courageous and brave. Mr. O'Brien imposes the time line of his experience over these struggles with his internal demons, and sets those struggles against real combat and real casualties. He captures the daily tedium, punctuated by brief episodes of terror with the matter-of-fact style of Solzhenitsyn's "One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich." He is skillful in capturing the reader in the milieu of complex ethical uncertainties and the brutality that was Vietnam. This is apparent by Chapter 10, where he rocks the reader back on his heals with a very direct and simply-written two-page chapter.
Though it was written by a 21-year-old, this book may be the seminal Vietnam Era corollary of Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage," written when Crane was 24.
Chip Auger - 7th Marines, RSVN 1967-68
Customer Rating:
Summary: numb
Comment: More or less everything I know about the Vietnam War I have taken from American movies. This, I accept, is not the ideal grounding on the subject. If there is a decent Vietnamese account, on celluloid or in print, then I have never come across it. Not that I have been looking that hard.
Tim O'Brien's book is the first piece of non-fiction I have read about the conflict. Written in 1968 as the grunt's eye view, I am sure it was hard-hitting and thought provoking at the time. Now, if I am being really honest, it seems a little tame. Perhaps the movies have numbed me when it comes to Vietnam. Maybe I have just grown up in a world where far worse things happen. I am sure the failing is all mine.
It is a well-written book, I just couldn't connect to it in the way I have done with his fiction. I loved July, July and would happily recommend it to just about anyone. If I Die In A Combat Zone has perhaps become less shocking as the years have gone by. But it might just be me that thinks that.
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Summary: Stunning and moving
Comment: Tim O'Brien fan and have not read this book? You will not be disappointed. Never read O'Brien? Get ready for a mind trip that will leave you addicted to what great literature is all about.
Stunning and moving memoir of O'Brien's Vietnam years. It will move you. Period. If it does not, then you are not human.
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Summary: Reluctant Participant
Comment: Being much more familiar with Tim O'Brien's fiction, one may not know what to expect in his memoir about his tour of duty in Vietnam. Written in the same style with a wry sense of humor, O'Brien challenges the war in a way few have.
Courage and morality are continuing themes that O'Brien explores through his actions as well as literary quotes. It is very clear that O'Brien was uncomfortable with the war even before being drafted. He even contemplates going AWOL. In a paradox, he lacks the courage to go to war or escape going to war. Nothing is more powerful than the last chapter. Going beyond patroitism and rituals, O'Brien is numbed as he returns home. The war has left a mark that is difficult to fathom.
Tim O'Brien does not flinch at the brutality of the war nor the American soldiers. Major Callicles seems straight out of Catch 22, yet he is all too real. The cruelty to a blind civilian has the ability to disgust. While making a statement, O'Brien's writing is both enlightening and entertaining. It is a remarkable perspective on a disastrous war.
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Summary: War Must Not Change
Comment: I've not read a ton of war books and picked up this one because it was on some list of best books of the century or somthing like that from Time. War must not change much, becuase the narrator in this book seems to be saying so much of what I have heard from soldiers coming back from the Iraq, etc. Lots of boredom with moments of great fear peppered in. I like this book a lot. The author's writing style is very matter of fact, but with as frugal as he is with his words, he says tons.
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