The 100 best nonfiction books: No 9 – Dispatches by Michael Herr (1977)

A compelling sense of urgency and a unique voice make Michael Herr’s Vietnam memoir the definitive account of war in our time

Despite every other kind of progress, humanity still lives and dies in conditions of either war or peace, a truth reflected in our literature. There is still a place for a great war book such as Dispatches. Like its precursors, from Homer to Hemingway, whose company it keeps, Dispatches seems to begin mid-sentence, plunging its readers into the war zone before they can take up defensive positions:

“There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, coming back late to the city, I’d lie out on my bed and look at it, too tired to do anything more than just get my boots off. That map was a marvel, especially now that it wasn’t real any more.”

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