A Rumor of War.

Published in 1977, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War is one of the indispensable memoirs of the Vietnam War and, in the decades since its appearance, has taken its place among the enduring works in the literature of war. In March of 1965, Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home - physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone. Out of that experience he produced a book that is far more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, A Rumor of War shattered America's indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam, and in the years since it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as Caputo writes, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to them." Written with the immediacy of reportage and the moral weight of confession, the memoir traces the arc from the recruit's high-minded belief in the mission, through the disorienting violence of jungle combat, to the court-martial that closed Caputo's tour - and stands as one of the most honest, unsparing, and finally humane accounts of an American war ever written.