THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

EDITOR'S PICK

For a shorter but powerful read, try The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. This moving collection of linked stories explores the emotional landscape of soldiers before, during, and after the Vietnam War. O’Brien’s writing is intimate and sincere, offering a deeply human view of wartime experience—perfect for reflective reading by the shore.

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.   The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.  Taught everywhere from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing.