Dispatches

Michael Herr went to Vietnam for Esquire in 1967 and took nearly a decade to write the book, which abandons the conventions of war reporting for the rhythms of the soldiers’ own speech. He later worked on the scripts for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, and the language of American Vietnam on film largely descends from this. John le Carre called it the best book he had read on men and war.