This book will change the way you think about war. It is about the Vietnam conflict, and it will give texture and emotion to what soldiers go through on the battlefield. It is very real, and will be hard for many to read. If you are easily offended, don’t pick it up (and try not to think about war while you’re at it). The author is a Yale graduate and former Rhodes scholar who went to Vietnam at the age of 23. In the space of a single book, he will help you understand the internal politics of war, the complexities of fighting, the sadness of the real conflict, and how truly young and inexperienced the soldiers are. As soon as I finished this, I picked up his non-fiction book What It Is Like To Go To War and will read it very soon. This one will stay with me a long time and will be one of the very few fiction books I own worth reading more than once.
I actually didn’t read Matterhorn, I listened to it. My friends Matt Parker and Alex Hamilton convinced me to give Audible.com a try and I really like it so far. It’s like Netflix, but you get to keep every book that you download. If you like audiobooks at all, check it out. Matterhorn was their pick for Audiobook of the year in 2010 and because I was reading other books on war, decided to try it. Excellent – would be a good read as well and I’ll probably read it next time, but a great audiobook.