Recommendations for reading your way through the Vietnam War

Today, April 30, is a monumental day in American history: the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, 20 years after it officially started.

The death of a classmate from my high school, Gerald Collier, on Oct. 15, 1966, brought the war home for me and the other residents of my small town in the Thumb. More than 6,300 U.S service members died that year. The   bloodiest years were yet to come.

Throughout the war, approximately 3.4 million Americans were deployed to Southeast Asia, and 58,220 died. More than 400,000 Michiganians served, and around 2,650 died. They’re remembered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and on the grounds of Michigan’s state Capitol complex.

Though the war is in the rearview mirror, one way to not lose track of its impact is to read about it. Here are some recommendations.

Numerous combat veterans turned authors have written dramatic and intense novels and memoirs including Phil Caputo’s “A Rumor of War”; Tim O’Brien’s “If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home,” “The Things They Carried” and “Going After Cacciato,” which won a National Book Award; Karl Marlantes’ “Matterhorn”; and Denis Johnson’s “Tree of Smoke,” which won a National Book Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. These books are often brutal in their depictions of the horror and surrealness of war.

I would be remiss not to mention East Lansing author Bill Murphy’s fine book “Not for God and Country,” about his experiences as a Marine in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. When I interviewed Murphy, he told me, “I’ve looked down at my hands countless times and wondered how these hands could’ve done the things we did.”

There’s no shortage of books on the causes, history and impact of the war that provide a context for what has been called the “never-ending war.” Neil Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam,” which won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award, and Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History” are a good place to begin.

Two books that have a local connection are John Ernst’s “Forging a Fateful Alliance: Michigan State University and the Vietnam War,” a detailed look at MSU’s entanglement with the Diem regime of South Vietnam, and Frances FitzGerald’s “Fire in the Lake,” which won her a Pulitzer for her undaunted look at the backstories of the Vietnam War. Fitzgerald married another Vietnam War reporter, Jim Sterba, who was an editor at The State News and went to Vietnam as a correspondent for The New York Times three years after graduating from Michigan State.

A fictionalized version of the early days of U.S. intervention, Juris Jurjevics’ “Red Flags,” follows an Army cop sent to investigate corruption in South Vietnam. Jurjevics was a refreshing voice until his death in 2018.

Another fictional work I recommend is Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer,” a Pulitzer-winning spy novel from the point of view of a communist sleeper agent who, following the war, becomes part of the United States’ Vietnamese community and works on a “Platoon”-like Hollywood version of the war story.

Different points of view on the Vietnam War have been probed with books like Kristin Hannah’s “The Women,” which provides a compelling look at the role of nurses in Vietnam; Wallace Terry’s “Bloods,” which was one of the first books to cover what the war meant to Black service members; and former Detroiter Eli Greenbaum’s “Hell, No, We Didn’t Go,” by former Detroiter Eli Greenbaum, retells first-person stories of conscientious objectors to war.

Another former Michiganian, David Maraniss, details the bloody battle of Ong Thanh and antiwar demonstrations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in his 2004 book, “They Marched into Sunlight.”

Other books on the Vietnam War I recommend are Doug Stanton’s “The Odyssey of Echo Company”; former U.S. Sen. James Webb’s “Fields of Fire”; Larry Heinemann’s “Paco’s Story”; James Crumley’s “One to Count Cadence”; Max Boot’s “The Road Not Taken”; Mark Bowden’s “Hue 1968”; and Robert Mason’s “Chickenhawk.”