Casualties of War

by Daniel Lang

Book Overview

The book hailed by the Boston Globe as the best piece of writing to come outof the war is now a motion picture starring Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn. anexplosion of sales. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671672533
• Release Date: August 1989
• Publisher: Pocket
• Length: 123 Pages
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 4.2" x 0.3" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

A Good Read

This story really gives it to you about the monstrous things in the Vietnam War. There is insight given to how soldiers are trained to kill or be killed. The government decides, as often it does, what lives will or won't be spared, and what is considered fair and just. However, the evils committed by soldiers may be understandable - but they are not excusable. Women and children in small villages were not enemies of the Vietnam War, and should not have been treated as such. Understanding feelings and acting on them are two different things. Soldiers who target women and children are cowards with hatred in their hearts and they are not heroes. Those men who participated in the rape and murder knew they were wrong but they didn't care any more than the US government did. Those men should have been sentenced to life and gang-raped for what they did.

Casualties of War

The book Casualities of War was a good book, I would say the book would be read by 15 year olds and up because there are some tough words. I gave the book 4 stars because it was alittle boring at times but it was also really good when they got in the action parts. -East Detroit reader

Not All Casualties Are Left On The Battlefield

Not all the terrible incidents of war occur between opposing soldiers and armies. If that were the case, perhaps war could even be looked at as somewhat civilized. However, most atrocities fall upon innocent victims. Rape and murder, the destruction of homes and livelihoods, dislocation, all fall on the shoulders of those who would most likely wish that the war quietly passed them by. Aside from the victims on the receiving end of heinous atrocities, we must also consider the scared psyche and irreparable lives of those caught up in the insanity of war and commit said atrocities. For example, the main culprit in Casualties was barley twenty-years old, and he was saddled with responsibilities that are meant to be held by gods. He decided who lived and who died. It was his duty to preserve the lives of his men, while extinguishing the lives of this "enemies." This power is almost beyond the realm of human comprehension, let alone the young mind of a man-child. Who among us can claim to be certain that after witnessing numerous deaths, usually occurring in the most horrific fashion, that we wouldn't react in much the same way? War is a horrible and unpredictable beast. And once unleashed, this beast will wreak unspeakable, and reprehensible damage. This damage will forever scar the world in which we live. Not only will the lives, land, and economic aspects die, but also society dies every time war is waged. And eventually society itself will die.This is the lesson we can gather from Lang's provocative book. We learn that the casualties of war are not always left on the battlefield, but continue for as long as war exists.

This book appears in its entirety in "Reporting Vietnam"

This book appears in its entirety in Volume One of the Library of America's "Reporting Vietnam 1957-1969" published 1998.