Publishers Weekly - Audio
10/30/2017
Actor Wilson’s sensitive reading heightens Stanton’s story of one soldier and his platoon during the brutal 1968 Tet Offensive. Stanley Parker, a typical American teenager, is spurred to join the Army in 1967 by a patriotic desire to serve his country and naive visions of battlefield glory. He and his fellow members of Echo Company arrive in-country and are plunged into the chaos of firefights, booby traps, and a relentless and elusive enemy. Parker is wounded three times; he eventually makes it home, but the trauma of war stays with him. Wilson brings a calm, world-weary spirit to his reading that effectively captures the disillusionment and emotional exhaustion of Parker’s time in Vietnam. His recounting of a child being killed by the Viet Cong for accepting a can of peaches from Parker and his resulting emotional breakdown is presented with heart-wrenching clarity, as are numerous scenes of death and destruction. Wilson ever so slightly picks up the pace and adds energy to recount Parker’s return to Vietnam in 2014, where he meets a former Viet Cong soldier at a site where the two fought against each other. It makes for a very moving ending to this intense war story. A Scribner hardcover. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Doug Stanton, one of our most artful practitioners of literary nonfiction, has long had a knack for finding stories that put a human face on war. Here is raw combat captured in all its pathos, exhilaration, terror, and sense of brotherhood. Novelistic in detail and compulsively readable, Stanton’s searing tale of war and homecoming will soon find its place on a rarefied shelf alongside Matterhorn, A Bright Shining Lie, The Things They Carried, and We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young—which is to say, among the classics of the Vietnam War.” —Hampton Sides, author of The Kingdom of Ice, Blood and Thunder, and Ghost Soldiers
"From harrowing scenes of battle to those of heart-rending tenderness, I felt I’d joined the young paratroopers of Echo Company in their journey through the Tet Offensive of 1968. Doug Stanton writes about the personal for the millions. It’s an amazing story of a group of young men who lived history.” —Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn
“The Odyssey of Echo Company is a majestic, masterful book. I couldn’t put it down, even in its most aching, tearful moments. War has such a dark heart, and Doug Stanton doesn’t shy away from that, but he also shows us the better hearts of human beings, and that’s what makes this book so profoundly moving and unforgettable.” —David Finkel, author of Thank You for Your Service and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
“Although the characters in Doug Stanton’s newest book are ordinary Americans from unexceptional backgrounds, odyssey is the right word to describe their harrowing experiences in the Vietnam War. There was a Homeric quality in their battle to survive the Tet Offensive, as well as in their homecoming, when they found themselves strangers in their own land. In this tale of men at war, Stanton once again proves himself to be both a superb journalist and a master storyteller.” —Philip Caputo, author of A Rumor of War and Some Rise by Sin
“Doug Stanton has done it again. In The Odyssey of Echo Company we go to war in Vietnam, up close and personal with patriotic young working-class Americans who take us through their daily lives of brutal face-to-face combat and how it changed them forever. This is a book for all Americans to read for the enduring lessons of what happens when we commit our precious young to the ravages of combat. It is a civic duty to read The Odyssey of Echo Company.” —Tom Brokaw
“Doug Stanton is a superb nonfiction writer who grabs you and holds you from first page to last. Readers who follow him on this odyssey through Vietnam and the American psyche will never forget it.” —David Maraniss, author of They Marched into Sunlight
“Gathered in this fine book are the stories of a few soldiers in one reconnaissance platoon in one company who were in the worst of the fighting in 1967–68. Doug Stanton has captured the horror, the tragedy, the extreme courage, and the devoted brotherhood of these men in exceptional and sensitive detail. They are not stories for the fainthearted. But they are emotionally rewarding for a reader to experience.” —John Laurence, author of The Cat from Hue: A Vietnam War Story
“We are finally ready to learn about Vietnam, and no book tells the story better than this one.” —Library Journal, starred review
“Doug Stanton has written a powerful story that not only delves into combat but what makes a real warrior. He discusses the intricate home relationships that help to mold soldiers, and their relationships within the unit that produces a cohesive combat unit. A tremendous book, I highly recommend it. Like his other two books this was hard to put down.” — Brigadier General (Ret) Remo Butler, U.S. Army Special Forces
“A highly readable, dramatic, often heart-tugging story of the Tet effort from an all-American grunt’s viewpoint.” —MilitaryTimes
“Doug Stanton has crafted a compelling portrait of the men of Echo Company, innocent and vulnerable young Americans who faced brutal fighting during the Tet Offensive. Against the broad tableau of the Vietnam War, Stanton has masterfully reported the lives and losses of this small reconnaissance platoon and the rawness of combat they endured. It is one of the most intimate war stories of our time.” —Robert Giles, Curator (ret.), Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University
Library Journal
★ 09/01/2017
Fresh out of high school in 1966, Stanley Parker enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. The second of the Parker brothers to serve in the armed forces, Stanley wanted to go to Vietnam because "that's where the fighting was." On December 27, 1967, he celebrated his 20th birthday in the midst of a fierce firefight. By the time he left Vietnam in 1968, his unit Echo Company (First Battalion Airborne) had engaged in 17 combat assaults. On January 30, 1968, the Viet Cong launched a massive counterattack, the Tet Offensive, leading Echo Company to be constantly under attack. In the first 34 days of the offensive, the unit lost three men; 31 more were wounded for a 75 percent casualty rate. Parker was injured three times, rejecting his third Purple Heart because accepting the award meant a mandatory return back to the United States. Stanton (In Harm's Way) is a sympathetic observer. By focusing on Parker's story, from high school through the war's long aftermath, the author gives shape (though not meaning) to a conflict that was more disillusioning than most. VERDICT We are finally ready to learn more about Vietnam, and no book tells the story better than this one.—David Keymer, Cleveland
Kirkus Reviews
2017-07-17
An admiring history of men who fought in the Vietnam War.Of the original 45 members in Recon Platoon, Echo Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry, 2nd Brigade, of the 101st Airborne Division, three were killed in action. Add to that the many wounded, and the platoon suffered a 75 percent casualty rate. In a breathless, sometimes-overwrought narrative that nonetheless keeps the soldiers at the center, Stanton (Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, 2009, etc.) tells the story of this group of men and how they endured the 1968 Tet Offensive, one of Vietnam's vital turning points. The author, who has written two other military histories that fall in the same blood, guns, and trumpets category as this one (an adaptation of his previous book will be released as a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film in 2018), effectively evokes the rush, chaos, misery, and tragedy of combat. Stanton burrows into the mechanics of how men work in teams that of necessity must be extremely close-knit, especially in a conflict as chaotic as Vietnam. The author has a keen eye for detail and uses the words—both in letters from the time and from recent interviews with the men—to generally fine effect. The decision to render history in the present tense is always curious. Some writers believe it lends immediacy where others will see a false authority, but it is generally effective in rendering the madness of war. Stanton does not concern himself with the debates over the war or its legacy; his emphasis is on this group of men and their experiences then and since. A flawed but readable piece of Vietnam War history, and readers will sympathize with these young men captured in a time and place that few can imagine.
