With an introduction by Kevin Powers A groundbreaking piece of journalism which
inspired Stanley Kubrick's classic Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket. We took s
pace back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality.
Our machine was devastating.
And versatile. It could do everything but stop. Mi
chael Herr went to Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire.
He returned to te
ll the real story in all its hallucinatory madness and brutality, cutting to the
quick of the conflict and its seductive, devastating impact on a generation of
young men. His unflinching account is haunting in its violence, but even more so
in its honesty. First published in 1977, Dispatches was a revolutionary piece o
f new journalism that evoked the experiences of soldiers in Vietnam and has fore
ver shaped our understanding of the conflict.
It is now a seminal classic of war
reportage.
