Hailed as the most important novel to emerge from the Vietnam War when first published in 1978, this book launched a spectacular writing career for James Webb that now includes four bestselling novels. 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. Filled with the sounds and smells of combat, it is nevertheless a book about people, an amazing variety of closely observed characters caught up in circumstances beyond their control. 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. Critics have compared this bestselling first novel to<i>All Quiet on the Western Front</i> and <i>The Naked and the Dead</i>, among other masterpieces, for authentically capturing the fury and agony of combat.<br><p>This is the real war in Vietnam, told without histrionics or self pity. For many years the novel has been a part of the recommended reading list of the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.</p>