Synopsis
A collection of short story-like episodes about the lives of a group of footsoldiers in Vietnam: their present existence in the alien jungle, their childhoods, and their futures in America after the war is long over.

Details
Publication Date:	1999-04-01
Edition Description:	Reprint

Size
Length:	273 pages
Height:	8.0 in
Width:	5.3 in
Thickness:	0.8 in
Weight:	8.0 oz

Publisher's Note
Since its first publication in 1979, "The Things They Carried" has become an unparalleled testament to the men who served in Vietnam--a classic work that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul.

Industry Reviews
"'The Things They Carried'...is one of the finest books, fact or fiction, written about the Vietnam War."
New York Times Book Review - Verlyn Klinkenborg

"Tim O'Brien hasn't forgotten; his brilliant story 'The Things They Carried' remains for many the definitive fictional work on the Vietnam War. A collection of linked stories about a platoon of soldiers with 'no sense of strategy or mission' regarding the war they are part of, the book is sewn up airtight by O'Brien using his real, younger self, who served as an infantryman in Vietnam, as one of the characters."
San Francisco Review of Books - Ann Collette

"...O'Brien plays with the embattled terrain of a soldier's memory, with his embellishments of memories in conscious reconstructions--stories told, then corrected--to startling and intriguing effects in narrative and language."
Harper's - Vince Passaro (08/19/1999)

"A classic work of lyrical fiction that reveals how it felt to be an American soldier in the booby-trapped jungles of Vietnam and to live afterwards haunted by that memory."
Hungry Mind Review - Patricia Kirkpatrick