Dispatches.

New York:: Knopf,, 1977.. First Printing of the First Edition. A Near Fine tight copy with spots to the margins of three pages in a Fine, bright unclipped dust jacket. A nice copy of this classic of reportage on the war. No names or marks to the book or text. Michael Herr went to Vietnam in 1967 virtually unknown as a writer but armed with press credentials for Esquire Magazine he quickly rose above the crowd of writers covering the war with his brilliant, unorthodox prose. Herr's six extended pieces in this collection capture the war and its participants like no other writer except for Tim O'Brian in his equally masterful "The Things They Carried." Herr was one of the original Gonzo New Journalists in the company of such literary trail-cutters as Hunter S Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote and Gay Talese. Herr when not hunkered down in the battle for Khe Sanh spent many off hours in the company of three other flamboyant correspondents: Tim Page, Dana Stone and Sean Flynn. Page would survive his experience in Vietnam but Stone and Flynn would disappear, their bodies never found. Herr found himself in as much danger as the soldiers he set out to document in a war that was more disillusioning than understandable. "Dispatches" is as good as (war) writing gets; Herr puts the reader right where he is, so that his experience becomes yours which is about as close as most people would ever want to get to the real thing.