Does anyone have a used copy that I might purchase from them? I would need it by April 2001 preferably. Condition unimportant as long as it's readable. Contact: ilikerobots@hotmail.com

Tim O'Brien follows familiar patterns in most of his stories, long and short. It is these patterns that are explored here in regard to communication amongst and between foot soldiers in Vietnam. This is a well-researched book, and one that I recommend highly for all afficianados of Tim O'Brien and the craft of writing in general.

I would like to publicly state that Jill Colella is a total babe.

Cliff's notes once again delivers as a fantastic study aid. By no means should you use this as a replacement for the book. O'Brien has emerged as one of the greatest modern writers on the subject of war, and it would be a pity to overlook his writing. But if you are looking for help to write a paper on the topic, or just curious to discover more about the underlying meaning of the novel, don't hesitate to buy Cliff's Notes.

On all major topics in urology international specialists discuss those original papers, that influenced diagnosis and therapy the most. If YOU want to survive in discussions amongst your colleagues you definitely need this collection of papers describing landmarks like "Anderson-Hynes", "Burch", "Boari", "Whittacker-Test" and many many more.

If you are looking for info on O'Brien's life AND novels, this book is for you. It may be the single most important source for my Masters Thesis!

Tim O'Brien has written a wonderful informative and easy to use reference book about the best zoos, aquariums and wildlife sanctuaries in the U.S. Listed by state, each entry includes information on hours of operation, location, special exibits, admission prices and other nearby attractions. There are over 200 places reviewed, each unique and Mr. O'Brien lets you know what to see and what to miss. This guide can be used by both children and adults to find great animals all over the United States. We use it extentsively and it is a joy to read. I can only hope that it comes back in print for everyone to see.

I liked this book because it was funny,sad,easy to read,and I couldn't put the book down for a second. The most exiting
piece was when the grandmother choked the drunk father.

I think that this book was excellent it was easy to read after I finished the book i felt sad because of what Ellie's dad did to her but i was happy because they arrested him at the end i liked the part when birdie had her puppie's and Dex's dog was the dad. i also like the part when Dex kisses Ellie and runs up the street and everytime we finished a chapter we didn't want to put the book down. That's how good the book was. i wish that they could make a movie. It will be so nice it was so funny when Ellie's grandma jump's on top of Ellie's dad it was a very good book.

I think it was a very good book and I did not want to let it go.I loved when we saw the author and asked her questions. The part of the book that was really sad was when the father cut her fingers off.

Does a writer who shares the same name as a famous guy who writes about his years in 'Nam sell as many books?? That's one question I think I know the answer to!

This book is filled with 169 off-the-wall, hilarious, zany questions. Tim O'Brien is truly a gifted comic. Who else could have thought of such questions as:

If white wine goes with fish, do white grapes go with sushi?

Do Roman paramedics refer to IVs as "4's" ?

Does distressed leather come from very tense cows?

These, and the other 166 questions in this book are side-splittingly funny. If you like off-the-wall humor, you'll love this book.

Tolstoy -- step aside.

Joyce -- suck my toe.

Alright, fine, that's it...I admit, I'm the writer. But alas, I think this some cool stuff. Dig it. Love it. Leave it. Amen.

I'm not a big fan of Tim O'Brien's writing: It's a stylistic thing. I believe that he is neither a natural raconteur nor a gifted observer, either of which is what turns a book into a great read. If you've read much at all about the Vietnam subjective experience you are bound to have come across bits of this book because in it O'Brien does show flashes of pure story telling talent and these bits have been excerpted and published as essays and short stories. The premise of this book is an autobiographical look at the author's life leading up to and including his tour of duty in Vietnam. In it he thoughtfully and sensitively addresses the plethora of social, martial and political elements whirling about the Vietnam theatre of war. Unfortunately, he gets a bit tripped up in his attempts to showcase his Liberal Arts education by interweaving quotations from Socrates through Plato, Homer and various poets into the narrative. I suppose that the point could be made that in doing so he is attempting to demonstrate on the one hand that war and its aftermath and injustice are inseparable and always have been and on the other hand that because of this the Vietnam war and its product is no more or less noble than any of the 'heroic' wars of legend. I'd rather not argue that point, expecially in the context of a memoir of one man's single year of experience of the Vietnam War. What I would argue is that O'Brien's attempts at literary flight fall flat, probably because they have the look and feel of a college essay, or mere highfalutin literary contrivance. In my opinion, O'Brien fails to bridge the gap between legend and the miserable year he spent working as a foot soldier and clerk typist in Vietnam. If you would like to experience examples from each of the two archetypes I refered to above try, for great observational skill the book by Tobias Wolff on his experience in Vietnam titled 'In Pharoah's Army,' and for great storytelling Phillip Caputo's book 'A Rumor of War.' You'll love them both, I'm sure. As for this one, I would only recommend it to fans of puerile sentimentality (altho' who could expect more from a 21 year old?), and those who, like myself, want to expose themselves to just about everything out there on the subject that shows literary promise. In the final analysis, this book promises much but delivers unevenly.

This is an excellent piece of literature. O'Brien is at his finest as he transcribes his experiences during the vietnam war. If you read "The Things They Carried" (which he wrote after this) you'll definately love this book. It's also interesting to observe some of the similarities to the characters in this memoir to those in The Things They Carried. It's exceptional, honestly. You wont be disappointed.

A thinking man in Vietnam was a dangerous thing. Being a soldier in Vietnam was a dangerous thing. Tim O'Brien was both and somehow he managed to live to survive it and tell his story. He ends up in Vietnam after unsuccessfully dealing with his conflict between doing the right thing and being a courageous man. He tells of his decision not to follow his well planned escape route and stay with his country and its proposal to send him to Viet Nam. O'Brien describes Vietnam as a place with nameless soldiers and Buddys, faceless enemies and endless minefields.

This is an excellent text for learning about the experience of the Vietnam war, the choices that young man were faced with at that time and basic dilemmas in making moral decisions. It is a well written book which makes for a quick, satisfying read.

The Things They Carried is an emotional look at the lives of the soldiers in the Vietnam War. O'Brien tells the secrets of war. He shares the burdens that each man has in his heart. The way each person's death and each decision is eating away at them on the inside, but on the outside they act tough. Reading this book helped me to understand the psychological motives that allow people to cope with even the most alien of worlds. Displacing themselves from the war was a main tool the soldiers used. O'Brien made it clear that stories were what sustained the men, and repeating them was what empowered them. The final chapter of the story, in which Tim described Linda's tragic death, was the undercurrent of the whole war. Each chapter contained unspoken love and a deep sorrow for what they were forced to leave behind. Memories of the pain and intense feelings will haunt the soldiers for ever. However, it is only in their dreams and stories that they can ever change and deal with this era of their lives.

Being required to read a book is like having food shoved down your throat... For my senior English class I was required to read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. As a piece of literature it was excellent; as a piece of reading material it was even better. Words are a lot like food sometimes, and this book was an addictive delicacy. The Things They Carried deals with the Vietnam War in a new and improved light. The soldiers are more than hardened juveniles; they have personalities as distinct as the colors of the spectrum. The novel illustrates how people deal with situations that they couldn't prevent. It's an in-your-face look at how people react according to the "fight or flight" theory. The group of soldiers have been thrown together due a war that many of them cannot justify. Some are there for the love of violence; some are there out of force. And the author who doubles as the narrator is there even though he does not feel the war is worth his life. The Things They Carried has this fluidity to it that makes it absolutely captivating. Any book dealing with war has the difficult task of upholding the true reality of the gore and anguish of battle. Tim O'Brien's book reads like an autobiography even though it's considered a work of fiction, but if the story is truly fictional then O'Brien is a literary genius. O'Brien takes readers into the heart of battle and leaves them there to witness the brutality of war on their own. They suffer alongside the soldiers; they feel the pain of watching the people around them die. They feel the weight of the things they carried. They feel the weight of war.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, is a magnificently composed work of fiction. O'Brien writes so vividly, that the reader will be experiencing a gut-check by the time they are finished with this book. He captures many of the soldiers' feelings and emotions, by writing about the items that they had with them during the Vietnam War. These few items represent the soldiers' lives as they fought their way through Vietnam's elephant grass, and rice paddies. Mental objects are also close at the soldiers' hand. Love, grief, pain, terror, memory, and guilt weigh heavily on these young men's minds, as well as their hearts. O'Brien 's characters are one of a kind, and many readers can relate to these people as one of their own. He describes his character's actions as real as one could be, and this is one of the most important reasons that help the reader relate to this novel in a way that they can understand. This novel is a success on every step known to man, because O'Brien takes this reading in many different directions. He describes in terror the killing of one of the soldiers, pulsates in writing of one's love, and captivates the reader to go with him on the wild and untamed journey of Vietnam.

Tim O'Brien has written a novel that successfully explores the question of what is truth and illusion. Is an event the truth because it happens or is the truth what we believe happens? John Wade and his wife Kathy are recovering from a devastating political defeat at an isolated cabin on the shores of a Minnesota lake. One morning John awakens to find Kathy gone and the mystery begins or so the reader thinks.
Kathy's disappearance is the surface mystery, while the real mystery in this story is what has made John Wade the man he really is. Is he the slick politician and loving husband that he appears to be or is he a murderer? O'Brien reveals slowly through the book that John Wade was a lonely boy who was taunted by an alcoholic father, who then retreats into a world of magic tricks and illusions. After his father commits suicide, he creates the father he always wanted by envisioning him in his mind behind the "mirrors" he has put up to block the painful memories. Later, O'Brien begins to tell a stunningly graphic and horrifying tale of Wade's tour as a soldier in Viet Nam. The reader is thrown again and again into the agonziing re- telling of his memories of the My Lai Massacre. Wade's personna as the "Sorcerer" helps him endure these memories without going crazy. Wade covers up this event both psychologically and phyically by altering the records, but eventually things unravel when the fact of this incident becomes public.
O'Brien brilliantly uses third person narrative with fictionalized "interviews" from friends, family and people who knew the Wades as well as accounts of the investigation into the My Lai Massacre and finally different quotes from various historical events to give a real feeling to his work. As a reader you are drawn into this story as if you are reading a real event in the newspaper, it gives it a very eerie quality. There is a narrator of this story, not displayed in the traditional sense, but by small comments that appear in the footnotes of the interviews and finally taking a larger role in the end of the novel, perhaps echoing the readers point of view.
This is not a mystery in the traditional sense and frustrating to some readers may be the fact that there is not a tidy ending. There are no neat conclusions and the reader is left to ponder as is the narrator, the various hypothesis and eventual outcome of John and Kathy. This is a unique, dark tale that is more about the human psyche, the tricks we play ,secrets we keep and as in the story, there are no neat endings.

As a twenty-year-old college student, I have never talked with my uncle about his experience in the Vietnam War. It is the war that some schools and some veterans try to pretend never happened. Tim O'Brien in, In the Lake of the Woods, lets readers know that the Vietnam War really happened. John Wade suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome along with some self-esteem problems throughout the novel. John Wade's profession as a politician feeds his need for a perfect outward appearance. Throughout the novel the reader sees how under the surface John is falling apart. The novel starts out with a murder and works its way backwards from there. O'Brien uses interesting writing techniques and a unique structure that makes this book a mix between a murder mystery, and a police report. At first this book made me uncomfortable. The insights into my own insecurities were right on because I can see the discrepancies between appearances and reality in my own life. Also, O'Brien does not tie up all of the loose ends in this story. But hey, life's not like that and neither was the Vietnam War. If you can handle uncertainty and some gruesome details you will enjoy In the Lake of the Woods.

More than a book about Vietnam, or politics, or a marriage in crisis, "In the Lake of the Woods" is a brilliantly conceived and executed character study. John Wade resembles each of us more than we might be comfortable admitting. By revealing this man slowly, from oblique angles -- without ever fully answering the questions he raises -- Tim O'Brien simply acknowledges that we can never fully understand another person as well as the tidy conventions of fiction suggest we can. The biggest mystery in this story is not what happened between the Wades, but who they are and how they became themselves. The adventurous style of providing footnoted fragments of evidence may fall short in a few places; it is intriguing, however, and it is usually effective. The device also underscores the book's central premise: that all we can do in the search for truth is examine the evidence and choose our own hypotheses -- about John Wade, or about life.