Why read In That Time?

Book cover of In That Time: Michael O'Donnell and the Tragic Era of Vietnam

Book description

In That Time tells the story of the American experience in Vietnam through the life of Michael O'Donnell, a promising young poet who became a soldier and helicopter pilot in Vietnam. O'Donnell wrote with great sensitivity and poetic force about his world and especially the war that was slowly engulfing…

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Why read it?

1 author picked In That Time as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Brett Dakin

Author

I was blown away by this intimate account of America’s disastrous intervention in Indochina, told through the life of one soldier.

Michael O’Donnell served as a helicopter pilot during the war, was shot down, and remained MIA for thirty years. While living in Laos in the late 1990s, I met US military personnel who were searching for the remains of soldiers just like O’Donnell, a mission that continues to this day.

What makes O’Donnell’s story especially moving is that he was a poet, the author of one the best-known poems of the war, captured in a letter home from Vietnam.…

From Brett's 3 favorite reads in 2023.