I’m within a day or two of finishing up Shelby Foote’s The Civil War - A Narrative, and I’m looking to start educating myself a bit more about the Vietnam War and the Korean War. I’ve read The Best and the Brightest, about the political leaders behind Vietnam, and I’ve read basically nothing about Korea. I’m looking for something like Foote’s book, something that gives the narrative of the war and also the times around it. For example, I loved Delivered From Evil, Robert Leckie’s book about WW II. I also enjoyed his saga of the revolutionary war.
Best nonfiction, IMO is Dispatches, by Michael Herr 365 Days, by Ronald J. Glasser Nam, by Mark Baker A Rumor of War, by Philip Caputo
and for a nurses perspective, you can’t beat * Home Before Morning*, by Lynda Van Devanter.
Best fiction Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien The Names of the Dead, by Stewart O’Nan Meditations in Green, by Stephen Wright
Can we have some more Korea reccommendations, please, particularly non-fiction? (Audio is even better!) That’s my dad’s war, and there just isn’t much about it.
Clay Blair - The Forgoten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953. My favorite when I did my undergrad thesis on the war. Gives a great set up to the post WW II shrinking of the US Army, and how they paid the price for that in the first few months of the Korean War.
Max Hastings - The Korean War. As Hastings is British, it is skewed quite a bit on the Commenwealth forces, but interesting to see the view from across the pond.
