‘The Sorrow of War,’ by Bao Ninh

“Sorrow of War” offers the North Vietnamese perspective by tracing the “war-haunted life of Kien, a former infantryman turned writer, as he struggles to overcome his terrifying memories of combat and salvage the wreck that his life has become.”

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‘The Things They Carried,’ by Tim O’Brien

“The Things They Carried,” which came out in 1990, is more than a book about the horror of fighting. It examines “with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear, by questioning the role that imagination plays in helping to form our memories and our own versions of truth.”

Nonfiction

‘The Best and the Brightest,’ by David Halberstam

In “The Best and the Brightest,” Halberstam sets out to discover how the United States got involved in Vietnam. It is a “valuable contribution to the literature not only on Vietnam but on the way Washington and our foreign policy establishment work,” showing us how “bureaucratic considerations triumphed over ideological or even common-sense ones.” According to The Times 1972 review, the “book’s main and most remarkable contribution is to introduce us in depth to the architects of America’s involvement in Vietnam.”

‘Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans,’ by Wallace Terry

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For black soldiers, fighting in Vietnam was especially bad. “Not only were they dying at a disproportionate rate — they made up 23 percent of the fatalities during the early years of the war — but they also faced discrimination within the military in terms of decorations, promotions and duty assignments.” This oral history gives the “reader a visceral sense of what it was like, as a black man, to serve in Vietnam and what it was like to come back to ‘the real world’.”