Thailand books

[Daveo]

Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan by Bill O' Reilly - Killing Series..

The powerful and riveting new book in the multimillion-selling Killing series by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard Autumn 1944. World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat.

 

The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan. Across the globe in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are preparing to test the deadliest weapon known to mankind. In Washington, DC, FDR dies in office and Harry Truman ascends to the presidency, only to face the most important political decision in history: whether to use that weapon.

And in Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito, who is considered a deity by his subjects, refuses to surrender, despite a massive and mounting death toll. Told in the same page-turning style of Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, and Killing Reagan, this epic saga details the final moments of World War II like never before.

[Daveo]

Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini: The Most Infamous Commando Operation of World War II

BY GREG ANNUSSEK

The Allied invasion of Italy pressed on through the summer of 1943, the strutting dictator, Mussolini, was overthrown and imprisoned by his own people in a remote mountaintop resort. Furious at the turn of events, Adolf Hitler, Il Duce's sworn ally, promised to rescue Mussolini and restore the Rome-Berlin Axis.

On September 12, a small convoy of glider aircraft suddenly began crash-landing near the hotel-prison where Mussolini was held and German commandos poured out of the half-wrecked planes. The soldiers quickly overwhelmed the hotel and seized Mussolini, who had watched the drama unfold from a second-story window.

"I knew my friend Adolf Hitler would not abandon me," said a grinning Mussolini to his rescuers. Hitler's rescue of Mussolini was one of the most famous commando operations of the twentieth century and shocked a war-weary world.

It was also the dramatic culmination of the bizarre relationship between Hitler and Mussolini-a relationship that had disastrous consequences for the globe.

In this vivid and lively narrative filled with drama, intrigue, action, and some of history's most notorious characters, author Greg Annussek recounts the dramatic story of Germany's secret six-week operation to find and rescue the prisoner Mussolini and restore him to power.

[Daveo]

Why Marines Fight by James Brady

United States Marines, for more than two centuries, have been among the world’s fiercest and most admired of warriors. They have fought from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan and Iraq, in famous battles become bone and sinew of American lore.

But why do Marines fight? Why fight so well? Why run toward the guns? Now comes a thrilling new book, pounding and magnificent in scope, by the author some Marines consider the unofficial “poet laureate” of their Corps. James Brady interviews combat Marines from wars ranging from World War II to Afghanistan, their replies in their own individual voices unique and powerful, an authentically American story of a country at war, as seen through the eyes of its warriors.   Culling his own correspondence and comradeship with hundreds of fellow Marines, Brady compiles a story - lyrical and historical - of the motivations and emotions behind this compelling question. Included are the accounts of Senator James Webb and his lance corporal son, Jim; New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly; Yankee second baseman (and Marine fighter pilot) Jerry Coleman, and of teachers, firemen, authors, cops, Harvard football players, and just plain grunts, as well as the unforgettable story of Jack Rowe, who lost an eye and other parts and now grows avocados and chases rattlesnakes. Their stories poignantly and profoundly illustrate the lives and legacies of battlefront Marines. Why Marines Fight is a ruthlessly candid book about professional killers not ashamed to recall their doubts as well as exult in their savagely triumphant battle cries.  A book of weight and heft that Marines, and Americans everywhere, will want to read, and may find impossible to forget.

[Daveo]

What If?: Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been by Robert Cowley..

'Anyone interested in military history or indeed history in general will find it fascinating to read.'

What If? is a collection of counterfactual essays dealing with military events. Concentrating on some of the most intriguing military history turning points of the last 3,000 years, twenty celebrated historians, including Alistair Horne and John Keegan, have come together to produce a group of essays that enhance our current understanding of decisive events.

'Pure, almost illicit pleasure. What makes these essays tremendously diverting is how little they strain one's sense of credibility.' Andrew Roberts,

'These informed, elegant essays authoritively analyse incidents over the past 3,000 years.' The Times. 'One of the delights of the book is that broad speculative analysis is built from a mass of exciting detail. This make for a top-class bed-side read.'

[Daveo]

Shot in the Heart

BY MIKAL GILMORE

Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977.

Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man.

It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave."

Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin.

Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.

[Daveo]

The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival by Stanley N. Alpert.....

On January 21, 1998, the night before his thirty-eighth birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley N. Alpert was kidnapped off the streets of Manhattan by a car full of gun-toting thugs looking to use his ATM card.

He ended up blindfolded in a Brooklyn apartment as his captors changed their plans, alternately threatening him and his family, seeking legal advice, expounding on the "gangsta" life, and offering him the services of their prostitute girlfriends as a birthday present. All the while, Alpert, still blindfolded, talked with them, played on their attitudes and fears, and memorized every detail he could in the event that he ever managed to get out of there alive. Filled with immediacy, drama, and extraordinary characters, The Birthday Party reads like a thriller-but every word is true.

[Daveo]

Over the Moat: Love Among the Ruins of Imperial Vietnam by James Sullivan...

James Sullivan's Over the Moat details his travels in Vietnam to bicycle from Saigon to Hanoi. He has just finished graduate school and has an assignment to write a magazine story about a country that is still subject to a U.S. trade embargo.

But in Hue, the old imperial capital of Vietnam, the planned three-month bike trip in the fall of 1992 takes a detour. Here, in a city spliced by the famed Perfume River and filled with French baroque villas, he finds himself bicycling over a moat to visit a beautiful shop girl who lives amid the ruins of the last imperial dynasty of Vietnam.

She falls for him, but there's a catch. Several other suitors are vying for her hand, and one of them is an official with the city's police force.

Over the Moat is the story of Sullivan's efforts to win Thuy's favor while immersing himself in Vietnamese culture, of kindly insinuating himself in Thuy's colorful and warm family, and of learning how to create a common language based on love and understanding.

[Daveo]

Bangkok 8

(SONCHAI JITPLEECHEEP #1)

by John Burdett...

A thriller with attitude to spare, Bangkok 8 is a sexy, razor-edged, often darkly hilarious novel set in one of the world’s most exotic cities. Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz.

Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep - a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I. - is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones and captures her heart in the process.

In a city fueled by illicit drugs and infinite corruption, prostitution and priceless art, Sonchai’s quest for vengeance takes him into a world much more sinister than he could have ever imagined.

[Daveo]

The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison

BY WARREN FELLOWS

In 1978 Warren Fellows was convicted of heroin trafficking between Thailand and Australia.

He was consequently sentenced to life in Bang Kwang prison, known as the Bangkok Hilton.

This is the story of his 12 years behind bars, the abuse of human rights and the squalid conditions he endured.

[Daveo]

Welcome to Hell: One Man's Fight for Life Inside the Bangkok Hilton
by Colin Martin
 Written from his cell and smuggled out page by page, Colin Martin’s autobiography chronicles an innocent man’s struggle to survive inside one of the world’s most dangerous prisons. 
After being swindled out of a fortune, Colin was let down by the hopelessly corrupt Thai police. Forced to rely upon his own resources, he tracked down the man who conned him and, drawn into a fight, he accidentally killed that man’s bodyguard. 
Colin was arrested, denied a fair trial, convicted of murder and thrown into prison, where he remained for 8 years. Honest and often disturbing, but told with a surprising humour, Welcome to Hell is the remarkable story of how Colin was denied justice again and again.

[Daveo]

Vortex by Matt Carrell..

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6835172.Matt_Carrell

In nature, the vortex takes many forms. On land or at sea it is mesmerising, powerful and destructive.

When Andy Duncan secures a dream job in an Asian investment company, he discovers that the same forces apply in business. The pursuit of power, money and status blurs moral boundaries and once the first line is crossed the vortex will drag you in.

Duncan is learning to play the game, but those around him are changing all the rules and he soon realises that his career, his freedom and even his life may be at stake.

He is thrown many lifelines, the question is whether he can trust his saviours and whether he's willing to pay the price they demand.

[Daveo]

The Year of Living Stupidly: Boom, Bust, and Cambodia by James Eckardt..

The title is not a lie: the guy writing the book frequently drinks to excess, smokes (and not just the cigarettes made by the major tobacco companies), has bad companions, and frequently gets into trouble because of the above.

And speaking of trouble, his marriage and family life can be fractious, too, especially when his vices and bad companions result in situations that upset his wife. All this is set within a larger dynamic of political and social trouble on which he reports, the financially risky life of a sometimes-freelance journalist, and the actual physical dangers which come from living and being working press in that part of the world during the 1980's and 1990's as history was being made in Cambodia, the financial system was collapsing in Thailand, and the small-time writer saw his income opportunities become less dependable and more hazardous (hence the period of time reporting and living hand-to-mouth in Cambodia while his family remained in relatively stable digs in Thailand). Though he has often ended up living in a place called the Peachy Flophouse while working, and details a lot of living conditions that most Americans would regard as barbarous, it is clear that he loves the adventure and novelty of his life and work, as do his fellow writers, even if some of his lifestyle choices take a toll on him physically and financially. While he occasionally makes stereotype-laden comments about his Thai wife and her family, he also lets it be known in print that he is blessed to have them and recognizes that he didn't deserve the boon of having his kids turn out as well as they did.

He worries about meeting his financial responsibilities towards them, and his stints of living away from his wife and kids during his journalistic career serve to insulate them from a lot of the poverty and violence he sees and reports on, and some of the vices he and some of his fellow journalists engage in. He ends the book with an account of how he finally gave up smoking in the hopes of living long enough to see his kids grow up, and a bit of information about how he came to live and work in that part of the world, and how lucky he is to have the life he does.

[Daveo]

Cambodia: Year Zero

BY FRANÇOIS PONCHAUD,

On its publication in France, Cambodia: Year Zero received worldwide attention as the first detailed account of the 1975 Cambodian Communist revolution - one of the most brutal and least understood revolutions in history.

Jean Lacouture, reviewing the French edition in the New York Review of Books, hailed it as "by far the best informed report to appear on the new Cambodia." Now, updated and with a new introductory note on the English translation, Cambodia: Year Zero remains the most authoritative source we have on contemporary Cambodia. Its author, Francois Ponchaud, was a missionary in Cambodia from 1965 until he was forced to flee Phnom Penh in May, 1975, just before the total victory of the Khmer Rouge.

He observed at first hand the evacuation of the city and later amassed testimony from scores of Cambodian refugees in Thailand, Vietnam, and France.

Their accounts of the horrors they endured - forced migration into the countryside, forced labor, starvation, disease, mass murder, separation of families - are presented in their own words, along with official radio and print communiques from the revolutionary government of Cambodia. Ponchaud traces the roots of the revolution in Cambodia's history - including the role that the United States and other foreign powers played and presents portraits of the revolutionary leaders. The shocking, close-up view Ponchaud provides is of a nation that has shut itself off from the outside world and a government that has systematically destroyed its own people and their past.

[Daveo]

Into the Darklands and Beyond

BY NIGEL LATTA

Would you recognise a child molester standing in a supermarket queue?

And if you did, would you understand what went on in his - or her - mind? Nigel Latta is a forensic psychologist. He spends his working life with the sort of people most of us would prefer to pretend didn't exist.

In this new edition of his ground-breaking book, which is the inspiration for the TVNZ series Beyond the Darklands, Nigel takes us inside the minds of some of the most chilling characters to walk our streets.

As writer and presenter of Beyond the Darklands, Nigel has updated his book to include new material on significant recent cases since it was last released in 2005. Now a respected media commentator and recognised expert in sexual abuse, sexual crimes and for his work with severely disturbed children and young people, Nigel is a regular columnist with Littlies Magazine and has a parenting slot on National Radio.

[Daveo]

Spycatcher

(SPYCATCHER #1)

by Matthew Dunn

The most electrifying espionage thriller debut in years--and one of the first in modern memory to be written by a former agent under his own name . . . Matthew Dunn spent years as an MI6 field operative working on some of the West's most clandestine missions. He recruited and ran agents, planned and participated in special operations, and operated deep undercover throughout the world. In Spycatcher he draws on this fascinating experience to breathe urgent, dynamic new life into the contemporary spy novel. Featuring deft and daring super spy Will Cochrane, Dunn paints a nerve-jangling, bracingly authentic picture of today's secret world. It is a place where trust is precious and betrayal is cheap and where violent death is the reward for being outplayed by your enemy. Will Cochrane, the CIA's and MI6's most prized asset and deadliest weapon, has known little outside this world since childhood. And he's never been outplayed. So far . . . Will's controllers task him with finding and neutralizing one of today's most wanted terrorist masterminds, a man believed to be an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general. Intending to use someone from the man's past to flush him out of the shadows, Will believes he has the perfect plan, but he soon discovers, in a frantic chase from the capitals of Europe to New York City, that his adversary has more surprises in store and is much more treacherous than anyone he has ever faced and survived - up to now.

[Daveo]

The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich A History Of Nazi Germany (English) Hardcover - January 1, 1978

by William L. Shirer 

Since its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer's monumental study of Hitler's German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of this century's blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. 

Shirer's unforgettable account of the pivotal characters and events of that critical era benefit from his many years as a reporter and his own personal recollections, as well as from the mass of historical documents retrieved from the German Foreign Office. 

The result is a brutally objective account of how Hitler wrested political control of Germany and managed to take the country with him on his mad six-year quest for world domination, only to see it go down in flames in the end.

[Daveo]

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

BY COLIN DICKEY

An intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history, Ghostland takes readers on a road trip through some of the country's most infamously haunted places - and deep into the dark side of our history. Colin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why?

His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie homes," Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places.

Some have established reputations as "the most haunted mansion in America," or "the most haunted prison"; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget.      With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living - how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted?

Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made and why those changes are made - Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved.

Spellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, Ghostland discovers the past we're most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.

[Daveo]

Quest: Searching for Germany's Nazi past : a young man's story by Ib Melchior..

The story of a young German's investigation into the years of the Third Reich that led to evil and destruction.

The authors efforts to bring some insight into the the Nazi mentality during the Hitler period and what made them into notorious Nazi war criminals.

[Daveo]

The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire by Anthony Everitt..

From Anthony Everitt, the bestselling author of acclaimed biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian, comes a riveting, magisterial account of Rome and its remarkable ascent from an obscure agrarian backwater to the greatest empire the world has ever known. Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., Rome grew to become the ancient world’s preeminent power. Everitt fashions the story of Rome’s rise to glory into an erudite page-turner filled with lasting lessons for our time.

He chronicles the clash between patricians and plebeians that defined the politics of the Republic. He shows how Rome’s shrewd strategy of offering citizenship to her defeated subjects was instrumental in expanding the reach of her burgeoning empire. And he outlines the corrosion of constitutional norms that accompanied Rome’s imperial expansion, as old habits of political compromise gave way, leading to violence and civil war. In the end, unimaginable wealth and power corrupted the traditional virtues of the Republic, and Rome was left triumphant everywhere except within its own borders. Everitt paints indelible portraits of the great Romans and non-Romans - who left their mark on the world out of which the mighty empire grew: Cincinnatus, Rome’s George Washington, the very model of the patrician warrior/aristocrat; the brilliant general Scipio Africanus, who turned back a challenge from the Carthaginian legend Hannibal; and Alexander the Great, the invincible Macedonian conqueror who became a role model for generations of would-be Roman rulers.

Here also are the intellectual and philosophical leaders whose observations on the art of government and “the good life” have inspired every Western power from antiquity to the present: Cato the Elder, the famously incorruptible statesman who spoke out against the decadence of his times, and Cicero, the consummate orator whose championing of republican institutions put him on a collision course with Julius Caesar and whose writings on justice and liberty continue to inform our political discourse today. Rome’s decline and fall have long fascinated historians, but the story of how the empire was won is every bit as compelling. With The Rise of Rome, one of our most revered chroniclers of the ancient world tells that tale in a way that will galvanize, inform, and enlighten modern readers.

[Daveo]

Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives by Daniel J. Levitin..

"Debunks the idea that aging inevitably brings infirmity and unhappiness and instead offers a trove of practical, evidence-based guidance for living longer and better." —Daniel H. Pink, author of When and Drive  SUCCESSFUL AGING delivers powerful insights: • Debunking the myth that memory always declines with age • Confirming that "health span" - not "life span" - is what matters • Proving that sixty-plus years is a unique and newly recognized developmental stage • Recommending that people look forward to joy, as reminiscing doesn't promote health Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people's wisdom and experience.

Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age. Successful Aging inspires a powerful new approach to how readers think about our final decades, and it will revolutionize the way we plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise.

[Daveo]

The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity by Tariq Ali..

The aerial attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, a global spectacle of unprecedented dimensions, generated an enormous volume of commentary.

The inviolability of the American mainland, breached for the first time since 1812, led to extravagant proclamations by the pundits. It was a new world-historical turning point.

The 21st century, once greeted triumphantly as marking the dawn of a worldwide neo-liberal civilization, suddenly became menaced. The choice presented from the White House and its supporters was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against terrorism or be damned. Tariq Ali challenges these assumptions, arguing instead that what we have experienced is the return of History in a horrific form, with religious symbols playing a part on both sides: ‘Allah’s revenge,’ ‘God is on Our Side’ and ‘God Bless America.’

The visible violence of September 11 was the response to the invisible violence that has been inflicted on countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine and Chechnya.

Some of this has been the direct responsibility of the United States and Russia. In this wide-ranging book that provides an explanation for both the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and new forms of Western colonialism, Tariq Ali argues that many of the values proclaimed by the Enlightenment retain their relevance, while portrayals of the American Empire as a new emancipatory project are misguided.

[Daveo]

Wild: Stories of Survival from the World's Most Dangerous Places

BY CLINT WILLIS

Wild brings together the best writing about men and women fighting for their lives in the wilderness, from Jon Krakauer's article on which he based his bestseller Into the Wild, to Carl R. Raswan's account of surviving raids, droughts, and sandstorms in the desert with the Bedouins, to Joe Kane's description of terrifying adventures on the Amazon.

Other accounts include: Philipe Descola telling of life with an isolated tribe of headhunters; Bill Bryson describing his life-threatening but hilarious adventures along the Appalachian Trail; and Eric Newby finding himself lost in some of the world's most daunting terrain, the unmapped Hindu Kush.

[Daveo]

Why Do Men Fall Asleep After S*x by Mark Leyner..

Did the mega-bestselling Why Do Men Have Nipples? exhaust your curiosity about stuff odd, icky, kinky, noxious, libidinous, or just plain embarrassing? "No," you say? Well good, because the doctor and his able-bodied buddy are IN! Again!

Now go-to authorities for that sort of thing, Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg, M.D., take on the differences between the sexes - those burning questions like, "Why Doesn't My Husband Ever Listen?" or "Why Does My Wife ALWAYS Have to Pee?" and of course, "Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex?" plus plenty of others to keep you fully informed.

Full of smart and snarky answers to an onslaught of new questions, all in the do-ask-we'll-tell spirit, that entertain and teach you something at the same time, Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? offers the real lowdown on all the myriad of the things that everyone wants to know about all things anatomical, medical, sexual, nutritional, animal, mineral, but would only ask a physician after a few too many.

Bigger, funnier, and better than ever, Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? proves that in the battle of the sexes, as in most things, a little Q&A is a safe, effective, minimally invasive remedy.

[Daveo]

Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters

BY JAMES M. TABOR

Ten days passed with no rescue attempt, while more than half an expedition was stranded and dying at 20,000 feet during a vicious Arctic storm. The bodies were never recovered. And, for reasons that have remained cloudy, there was no proper official investigation of the catastrophe.

This book begins as a classic tale of men against nature, gambling and losing - on one of the world's starkest and stormiest peaks. Reckoning by lives lost, it was history's third-worst mountaineering disaster when it occurred - but elements of finger pointing, incompetence, and cover-up make this disaster unlike any other. James M. Tabor draws on previously untapped sources: personal interviews with survivors and those involved in the aftermath, unpublished diaries and letters, and government documents.

He consults not only mountaineers but also experts in disciplines including meteorology, forensics, and psychology. What results is the first full account of the tragedy that ended a golden age in mountaineering.

[Daveo]

Dispatches

BY MICHAEL HERR

Written on the front lines in Vietnam, Dispatches became an immediate classic of war reportage when it was published in 1977. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone.

Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.