The Vietnam War spawned a large number of informative and artistically successful memoirs and novels. These personal accounts and works of fiction helped readers to understand the war from a variety of perspectives and often in considerable depth. In addition, they reflected societal attitudes and helped to transform those attitudes, especially regarding American war veterans and the war itself.

Coming-Of-Age Memoirs

Some of the best novelists of the war, such as Philip Caputo and Tim O'Brien, first wrote memoirs of their actual experiences before turning to novels. The two genres share narrative techniques and thematic concerns, most strikingly the coming-of-age motif, with the young soldier typically advancing from idealism and naïveté to disillusionment and skepticism regarding those political and military figures who controlled the prosecution of the war and the fate of its combatants. Among these coming-of-age memoirs are O'Brien's If...