Vietnam ─ A View from the Front Lines

Vietnam: A View from the Frontline traces the American experience of Vietnam from the war's popular inception to its morale-crushing and bitter conclusion. Vietnam features a grunt's-eye view of the conflict - from the steaming rice paddies and swamps of the Mekong Delta, to the triple-canopy rainforest of the Central Highlands, to the forlorn Marine bases that dotted the DMZ. Like Karl Marlantes' groundbreaking novel 2010, Mattherhorn, this book will change the way we think about Vietnam. Told in uncompromising, no-holds barred language of the soldiers themselves, the stories contained within this book detail everything from heroism to fragging, from helicopters hitting the LZs to rampant drug use. It is a true and grippingly accurate portrait of the American war in Vietnam through the eyes of the men and women who fought in that far away land while a few are drawn from medics, corpsmen, nurses and widows. The book is based on rich collections housed at the National Archive, the Center of Military History, and at the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech.

Andrew Wiest, author of Boys of ’67, was an advisor to History Channel’s Vietnam in HD and has written or edited several books on the Vietnam War, including Vietnam's Forgotten Army (winner of the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award), Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land, and America and the Vietnam War Generation. Mr. Wiest lives in Hattiesburg, MS where he is the Charles W. Moorman Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi.