‘Nam Lit — Five Landmark Books About America’s War in Southeast Asia

WARRIOR VOICES have resonated through the millennia, from the earliest historical accounts. War stories have been a staple of literature, documenting courage under fire, cruelty to others and self, and the toll that haunts veterans long after their military service has ended. The Vietnam War produced a remarkable record of thousands of works of fiction and nonfiction, significantly more books than about any other American conflict in history. New Yorker staff writer Dexter Filkins states that the best Vietnam War literature “captured the ways the conflict splintered the psyches of the men who fought it and how it rattled around in their minds, and in the minds of the people who loved them, long after the fighting ended.”