Recommended Readings

Quicklinks: Fiction by Tim O’Brien | Nonfiction by Tim O’Brien | About Vietnam | About Tim O’Brien | Web Resources | For Young Readers

To learn more about Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried or the Vietnam War, the Chicago Public Library recommends the following list of print and online resources. For details, please visit or call your neighborhood Chicago Public Library, or call (312) 747-4300.

Books by Tim O’Brien

• If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, 1973
• Northern Lights, 1975
• Going After Cacciato, 1978
• The Nuclear Age, 1985
• The Things They Carried, 1990
• In the Lake of the Woods, 1994
• Twinkle, Twinkle, 1994
• Tomcat in Love, 1998
• July, July, 2002

Selected Nonfiction by Tim O’Brien

“Simplistic Demagoguery”
Washington Post, October 23, 1973

“The Vietnam in Me”
New York Times Magazine, October 2, 1994

“We’ve Adjusted Too Well”
The Wounded Generation: America After Vietnam
Edited by A.D. Horne
Prentice-Hall, 1981

“The Violent Vet”
Esquire, December 1979

Selected Bibliography: Vietnam

The Vietnam War: An Almanac
By John S. Bowman
World Almanac Publications, 1985

The Best and the Brightest
By David Halberstam
Random House, 1972

America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950-1975
By George C. Herring
Wiley, 1979

Vietnam: A History
By Stanley Karnow
Penguin Books, 1991

Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War
By Stanley I. Kutler
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996

The Vietnam Reader: The Definitive Collection of American Fiction and Nonfiction on the War
Edited by Stewart O’Nan
Anchor Books, 1998

Selected Bibliography about Tim O’Brien and His Writing

A Trauma Artist: Tim O’Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam
By Mark Heberle
University of Iowa Press, 2001

Tim O’Brien
By Tobey Herzog
Twayne Publishers, 1997

Understanding Tim O’Brien
By Steven Kaplan
University of South Carolina Press, 1995

Web Resources

The Things They Carried: Readers’ Group Companion
Books @ Random
Random House’s reader’s guide provides discussion questions, a brief biography and suggestions for further reading.

Chicago War Memorial and Monuments
City of Chicago
A comprehensive listing of memorial sites in Chicago, this site profiles the monuments, statues, sculptures and plaques located in Chicago neighborhoods, parks and historic districts.

Be Good, Smile Pretty
(PBS)
An interactive companion website to Independent Lens’ PBS documentary Be Good, Smile Pretty. The documentary chronicles filmmaker Tracy Droz Tragos’ personal journey to know her father 30 years after his death in Vietnam. The site features detailed information about the film, including an interview with the filmmaker, as well as links and resources pertaining to the film’s subject matter. The site also features a “talkback” section for viewers to share their ideas with one another, preview clips of the film and much more.

Tim O’Brien Websites

Tim O’Brien on the WWW
Links to bibliographic information, interviews, essays, study guides and reviews of many of O’Brien’s books. Includes a large selection of links related to The Things They Carried.

Writing Vietnam
1999
Homepage for the Brown University conference on “Writing Vietnam,” held in 1999. Includes a written transcript and audio file of Tim O’Brien’s keynote address.

About the Vietnam War

The American Experience: Vietnam Online
(PBS)
Developed to accompany the PBS series Vietnam: A Television History, this site includes a who’s who of key players; a comprehensive, hot-linked timeline spanning from 1945 to 1997; personal reflections; images and technical data for the weapons and equipment of the war; speeches and reports from Presidents Johnson, Eisenhower and Kennedy, the State Department and others; interactive maps; and a glossary.

Battlefield: Vietnam
(PBS)
A good source for a brief history of the Vietnam War, as well as a timeline covering 1954 – 1975, an overview of guerrilla tactics, information about aircraft and a list of additional web resources.

Echoes From the Wall
(Teach Vietnam)
This site is designed to be a comprehensive and balanced set of resources for teaching and learning about all perspectives of the Vietnam War. Includes the State of Illinois model for teaching “Echoes From the Wall.”

Vietnam: Stories Since the War
(PBS)
1998
Part of the PBS show P.O.V., this site encourages individuals to contribute their personal stories about the war.

Vietnam War Bibliography
By Richard Jensen
2003
A thorough bibliography compiled by Richard Jensen, professor of history emeritus, University of Illinois at Chicago. Includes an extensive selection of online resources.

For Younger Readers

Almost Forever
By Maria Testa
Candlewick, 2003 (Ages 9-12)
Live the year 1968 through the lyrical, painful and hopeful expressions of a family whose father is in Vietnam trying to save lives.

Always to Remember: The Story of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
By Brent Ashabranner, photographs by Jennifer Ashabranner
Scholastic, 1992 (Ages 10 and up)
Take a tour of this powerful and important monument in Washington, D.C., and meet the man who worked tirelessly to have it created and the woman who designed it.

The Century for Young People
By Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster
Doubleday, 1999 (Ages 9-13)
The war in Vietnam was a major event of the 20th century and, with strong photographs and powerful words, this book examines its place in our history.

Fallen Angels
By Walter Dean Myers
Scholastic, 1988 (reissued 2003) (Ages 14 and up)
Richie Perry left a tough life in the inner city for the Army and fought even more horrific battles in Vietnam.

The Journal of Patrick Seamus Flaherty, United States Marine Corps
(“My Name Is America” series)
By Ellen Emerson White
Scholastic, 2002 (Ages 11-15)
Instead of college, 18-year-old Patrick chooses to join the Marines, and this imaginary journal follows him from home to basic training to the misery of war in Vietnam.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: The Diary of Molly McKenzie Flaherty
(“Dear America” series)
By Ellen Emerson White
Scholastic, 2002 (Ages 11-15)
Patrick’s younger sister is home in Boston and trying to come to terms with what the war means as she records her thoughts about the world in her diary.

Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam
By Walter Dean Myers, illustrated by Ann Grifalconi
HarperCollins, 2002 (Ages 10 and up)
This book takes the reader right inside the heart-pounding emotions of a soldier who sees with his own eyes that his enemy is only another young man.

Voices From Vietnam
By Barry Denenberg
Scholastic, 1995 (Ages 12 and up)
This is an amazing chronological collection of first-person accounts of what it was like to fight in America’s longest war.

The Wall
By Eve Bunting, illustrated by Ronald Himler
Clarion, 1990 (Ages 7-10)
Pay a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with a boy and his father who go to remember and pay tribute to a beloved family member.