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If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home Kindle Edition

4.4 out of 5 stars 1,208

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From the Publisher

Read more from the great American writer Tim O’Brien
Going After Cacciato Northern Lights America Fantastica July, July In the Lake of the Woods The things they carried
Going After Cacciato Northern Lights America Fantastica July, July In The Lake of the Woods The Things They Carried
Customer Reviews
4.3 out of 5 stars
745
4.1 out of 5 stars
92
3.9 out of 5 stars
437
3.7 out of 5 stars
547
4.1 out of 5 stars
1,579
4.4 out of 5 stars
14,080
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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this searing, 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 heartfelt, If I Die In A Combat Zone has been hailed as a masterwork of art in its genre. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Amazon.com Review

Over time, Tim O'Brien has used both art and artifice to shape his fictional accounts of Vietnam. Award-winning novels such as Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried offer up a surreal view of the war: a soldier who decides to walk to Paris, leaving only a trail of M&M's in his wake; a young man who imports his high-school girlfriend to his base camp high in the jungled mountains, only to lose her to a shadowy squad of Special Forces Green Berets and to "that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure" that was Vietnam. O'Brien's first account of the war, however, was written in the raw, unfiltered months following his return from Southeast Asia in 1969. If I Die in a Combat Zone has all of the eloquence and attention to language and detail that are a mark of the author's work; what is different about it is its straightforward, unembellished depiction of his personal experience of hell.

"When you are ordered to march through areas such as Pinkville--GI slang for Song My, parent village of My Lai ... you do some thinking. You hallucinate. You look ahead a few paces and wonder what your legs will resemble if there is more to the earth in that spot than silicates and nitrogen. Will the pain be unbearable? Will you scream or fall silent? Will you be afraid to look at your own body, afraid of the sight of your own red flesh and white bone? You wonder if the medic remembered his morphine."

O'Brien paints an unvarnished portrait of the infantry soldier's life that is at once mundane and terrifying--the endless days of patrolling punctuated by firefights that end as suddenly and inconclusively as they begin; the mind-numbing brutality of burned villages and trampled rice patties; the terror of tunnels, minefields, and the ever-present threat of death. Powerful as these scenes are, perhaps the most memorable chapter in the book concerns his decision to desert just a few weeks before he was sent to Vietnam. "The AWOL bag was ready to go, but I wasn't.... I burned the letters to my family. I read the others and burned them, too. It was over. I simply couldn't bring myself to flee. Family, the home town, friends, history, tradition, fear, confusion, exile: I could not run." Tim O'Brien went into the war opposing it and came out knowing exactly why. If I Die in a Combat Zone is more than just a memoir of a disastrous war; it is also a meditation on heroism and cowardice, on the mutability of truth and morality in a war zone and, most of all, on the simple, human capacity to endure the unendurable. --Alix Wilber

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005FY5YSY
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown; Reprint edition (August 24, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 24, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3260 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 242 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0767904435
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 1,208

About the author

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Tim O'Brien
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TIM O'BRIEN received the 1979 National Book Award in fiction for Going After Cacciato. His other works include the acclaimed novels The Things They Carried and July, July. In the Lake of the Woods received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was named the best novel of 1994 by Time. O'Brien lives in Austin, Texas.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,208 global ratings

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David
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on September 6, 2018
HK Legends
5.0 out of 5 stars Succinct and well written.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2017
5 people found this helpful
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punch
4.0 out of 5 stars a raw account of combat
Reviewed in France on September 4, 2017
Eileen Shaw
4.0 out of 5 stars "We must be honest or be silent."
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 25, 2013
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Spence Of Luton
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended
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