EBOOK
About
How can you come back home after spending time in the most horrific place on Earth? Fought for nebulous reasons with devastating results on both sides, the Vietnam War was the conflict that changed America's relationship with war forever. 1968 is Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author and Vietnam veteran Joe Haldeman's account of this turbulent time in American history, as seen through the eyes of the people it most affected: the soldiers and their loved ones. John "Spider" Spiedel is a college dropout who is drafted into the war as a combat engineer. Scared, he tries to keep his head down and stay safe, a plan that works until the Tet Offensive, when he is wounded and sent stateside. Back home, his girlfriend, Beverly, has fallen in with the hippie movement in an attempt to rebel against the repressive values of American society. 1968 is not just a story of two young people attempting to find themselves in a tumultuous world-it's the account of a country trying to find itself as well. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Joe Haldeman including rare images from the author's personal collection.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"There are very few other SF authors better qualified to write about Vietnam-and America-during the war. . . . Haldeman fills the novel with recognizable artifacts of the '60s, recreating that lost world with an exuberance that I found hard to resist. . . . It is by a considerable margin the best book I have read this year."
Asimov's Science Fiction
"With corrosive, unsentimental wit, dead-on observation, and a hovering, unspoken sorrow, Haldeman magically gives us the essence of the century's single most traumatic year, when violence and madness asserted themselves as the real heart of the American experience."
Peter Straub
"A well-crafted, biting novel set in Vietnam and on the home front in the momentous year of its title . . . The author's voice of authenticity shines through in 1968's in-country segments in which Haldeman creates true-to-life evocations of the physical and emotional landscapes of the American fighting man's war in Vietnam."
Peter Straub