"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien: A Collection of Short Stories

product reviewer: Bought for a college course. Surprisingly engaging book that made it difficult to put down. Relatively short read that keeps you reading till done

United States on Dec 08, 2023

Robert Hungerford: This is a very down to earth realistic insight into life as an American soldier in the Vietnam war. Terrible!!

Canada on Nov 14, 2023

Terry Wellard: Good value

United Kingdom on Oct 26, 2023

Alex Gardiner: This is an American classic. I’ve read loads of fiction and non-fiction on the conflict and this really stands out.

United Kingdom on Oct 15, 2023

Leonardo: Un libro dove forma e contenuto raggiungono una simbiosi davvero straordinaria; metamoderno, nella sua decostruzione del medium del "racconto di guerra," e al contempo nel suo utilizzo cosciente e puro.
Lo stile è diretto, sommario, nell'asprezza distaccata della narrazione; la certezza espressiva nel racconto rende evidente più che mai l'ambiguità di tutto ciò che è la guerra, quella guerra, il coraggio, la paura, la fraternità dei soldati.

Italy on Jun 26, 2023

Colonel D: Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam veteran and in “The Things They Carried” he uses a series of vignettes of varying length to tell stories of an infantry platoon serving in ‘Nam. While this is a work of fiction it feels very much like a factual accounting of these soldiers experiences while serving ‘in country’ and once they’ve returned back home. No doubt much of what O’Brien has written here was inspired by things that he lived through back then and the characters derived from actual comrades from his unit.

Some chapters are better than others; the book starts out literally with “the things they carried” and describes the equipment an infantryman of that era would be encumbered with as well as the weight of each item. This might sound weird but if you have ever gone on a long hike you start to consider how much each piece of gear weighs relative to its worth in comfort or survival before it goes in your pack. I enlisted in the Army in the mid seventies a few months after the fall of Saigon and served with many Vietnam veterans. Our uniforms and equipment were the same stuff that O’Brien and his team mates would have had so this section of the book connected...

United States on Jun 01, 2020

Ronnie: When I commenced this 'Nam War story, given the unusual style of writing, I was far from sure I would stick with the author. I once worked in VietNam, way over 25 years ago, so many of the countryside descriptions came alive to me. Apart from the passages, or chapters, where Mr O'Brien talks about himself, the characters are fictional but the tales told were based on facts or events elsewhere in 'Nam over the whole period of that war. By the time I got half-way through his book, he had pulled me in,and having read a few stories set in other wars, and also in the same conflict, this one above all, brought home to me the horrors and the stresses and strains on extraordinary "ordinary" soldiers. The author almost became a draft dodger and even that tale left me thinking, as in, a lot. His phrase, too scared to be a coward, has stayed with me. This is an intellectual look at war and the stories which evolve from these wars, but this too was told for any human to understand. For once, the book reviews written and re-printed on the book's opening pages were absolutely accurate. This was one fine work. Thank you Mr O'Brien. Bigger thanks to all who served and continue to serve.

United Kingdom on Oct 13, 2019

J. M. Alexander: This is a brilliant and sensitive book about Vietnam. Although I wasn’t there, I served in the military during that period, safely stateside, and was glad to not go to a war that was so difficult to explain and justify. Nevertheless, I felt a sense of guilt for no other reason than that my peers were fighting and dying there. I have talked to others who stayed out of harm’s way while otherwise serving, and the same feeling was at least lurking in their psyche. Perhaps as a result, and having lived through a time when the country was torn apart by this distant conflict, I avoided the books and films that came out soon after the conflict ended. But as time passed, it became easier and appropriate to examine the experiences of those who were actually engaged in this misguided war.

A couple of years ago I read “The Matterhorn”. Like this book, it is a novel, but one obviously based on the experience of the author who served in Vietnam. I found The Matterhorn quite compelling, and the recollection that sticks in my mind was of the terrible physical hardship, and the complete exhaustion of the troops. There was much more to the book, but that is what stayed with me. I...

United States on Mar 19, 2014