Books like Letters From Long Binh — picked by fans

Vietnam was a war complicated by political lies, class antagonism, and generational trauma.

The author seamlessly blends non-fiction with fiction, creating verisimilitude which references memoir without always being bound by the weight of facts, freeing the narrative. The horrors and hollowness of war are recounted through intimate encounters, unrequited loves, and imagined lives. In doing so, he keeps alive the friends and lovers who have died.

I found a catharsis in the clarity and coolness of his internal voice, which needs no embellishment to deliver its emotional blow. In writing about the everyday violence both during and after the conflict, he reminds us of the importance of love and morality.

Matterhorn is one of the most memorable works of realistic fiction written about The Vietnam War. The author and a Marine infantry officer, decorated for valor during combat several times in duty tours in Vietnam, presents a striking story about the true nature of warfare. The Marines of Bravo Company with whom his protagonist serves present the sheer toil, strength of character, the cost of lost and wounded brothers, unique personalities, moments of weakness and courage, laughter and sadness, brothers-in-arms’ trust, and the will to literally survive until the battle ends and the next one begins. Matterhorn inspired me while I wrote my debut military novel.

I recommend this book because my author friend, John Schembra, and I served together in Vietnam. He drew on his experiences to write a wonderful novel about the Military Police in Long Binh/Bien Hoa during the Tet Offensive in 1968, The reader is taken back to that war with believable characters, historical settings, and a great plot. Reading his book helped me write my story, set during the actual time we were there. He helped teach me how to write.

As Tom took Basic Combat Training, learning to become an infantryman and kill, his religious beliefs would not allow him to kill. He applied for conscientious objector status, but he wound up in Vietnam where he worked as a clerk at the sprawling Long Binh Post. He is treated as a coward and faces criminal charges, but he keeps his faith. As a Christian, this book helped me come to grips with my military time, not wanting to kill, and fortunately, I never had to.

I love these passionate and powerful poems by a former Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam.

Hood uses humor, wit, and an attention to the world—both in combat and back home—that’s unlike much “war” poetry out there. He takes us into what he calls “the dark of the word” and brings us out to the light.

Few books capture such a down-to-earth, colloquial, and plainspoken voice—Casey’s book won the Yale Younger Series, and one can see why.

These poems seem elusively simple on the surface, as if a young soldier is just speaking to you at a bar or on a street corner; however, they capture, overall, a cacophony of voices that probe the depths of war, soldiering, humanity, and memory.

I love this book because it’s a beautiful and honest reckoning with what it means to serve, particularly as an enlisted American soldier in Vietnam. Weigl focuses on combat, homecoming, the horror faced by civilians, and he does it with a subtle plainspoken language that draws in every reader.

The images are remarkably stark and fresh; each poem also carries an undercurrent of sonic attention, a musicality that limns the harsher moments of the book—hence, that “Song” of Napalm.

Micus’s poetry awed me with its beauty and precision of language. Because he published this book long after Vietnam, many of the poems confront that long “after” which comes with war: purpose, the search for community, PTSD and suicide, and moral injury.

I find myself going back to many of these poems to experience his remarkable voice.

As a Vietnam veteran, teacher of war literature, and writer, I am disappointed that I never interviewed Michael Herr. I can only imagine what such an encounter might have been like with this larger-than-life figure, at least the persona (adrenaline junky, reporter on drugs) found in this fragmented collection of war reportage. With its New Journalistic style and content, the sensory-overload writing might be best described as a collection of literary illumination rounds (their underlying message—war is hell and addictive). As a freelance journalist, Herr arrived in Vietnam wanting to reveal the large ugly truths about the war, which he succeeds in doing, but I find the soldiers’ personal war stories more gripping and truthful. For me and even Herr, the real surprise is that this book ultimately chronicles the author’s own war story of innocence lost: the anti-war reporter becomes just as addicted to war as some of his… show more.

How music became so readily available to Vietnam soldiers is emphasized in Armed with Abundance. Trying to remedy the tenuous morale among GIs, the U.S. military provided them with “creature comforts” in an effort to make war easier, and certainly more palatable. Lair finds that consumption and satiety, more so than privation and sacrifice, defined the experience of most soldiers' Vietnam deployments. She reveals that in 1969 and 1970, for example, soldiers purchased nearly 500,000 radios, 178,000 reel-to-reel tape decks, and 220,000 cassette recorders. Rock and roll was there to stay!