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Overview
Hailed as the most important novel to emerge from the Vietnam War, Fields of Fire launched a spectacular writing career for James Webb in 1978. A much-decorated former marine who fought and was wounded in Vietnam, Webb tells the story of a platoon of tough, young marines enduring the tropical hell of Southeast Asian jungles while facing an invisible enemy--in a war no one understands. It is a powerful work that brilliantly expresses the basic ambiguity of war: the repulsion of war's destruction contrasted with the grisly attraction of war as the ultimate test of survival.Editorials
Houston Post
Few writers since Stephen Crane have portrayed men at war with such a ring of steely truth.Newsweek
In swift flexible prose that does everything he asks of it--including a whiff of hilarious farce just to show he can do it--Webb gives us an extraordinary range of acutely observed people, not one a stereotype, and as many different ways of looking at that miserable war. . .Fields of Fire is a stunner.Philadelphia Inquirer
James Webb has rehabilitated the idea of the American hero--not John Wayne, to be sure, but every man, caught up in circumstances beyond his control, surviving the blood, dreck, and absurdity with dignity and even a certain elan. Fields of Fire is an antiwar book, yes, but not naively, dumbly anti-soldier or anti-American. . . . Webb pulls off all the scabs and looks directly, unflinchingly on the open wounds of the Sixties.Portland Oregonian
A novel of such fullness and impact, one is tempted to compare it to Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead.Time
Webb's book has the unmistakable sound of truth acquired the hard way. His men hate the war; it is lethal fact cut adrift from personal sense. Yet they understand that its profound insanity, its blood and oblivion, have in some way made them fall in love with battle and with each other.Book Details
Published
August 1, 1978
Publisher
Prentice Hall Trade
Pages
344
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780133142860