40 Books About the Vietnam War and Era

In 2022 – we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Throughout the year, we’ll be highlighting lists of 40 things related to the Vietnam war/era.
During The Wall’s 40 Anniversary, we look at 40 books that were shaped by the Vietnam War and Era:
- Boots on The Ground: America’s War in Vietnam by Elizabeth Partridge
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
- We Were Soldiers Once… and Young: la Drang The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam by Hal Moore and Joseph L. Galloway
- Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
- The Wall by Eve Bunting
- Hue 1968 by Mark Bowden
- A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo
- The Vietnam War: A Concise International History by Mark Lawrence
- The Greatest Beer Run Ever by John Chick Donohue and JT Molloy
- Vietnam a History by Stanley Karnow
- Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines by Jeanne Walker Harvey
- Dispatches by Michael Herr
- The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
- The Education of Corporal John Musgrave: Vietnam and its Aftermath by John Musgrave
- Donut Dollies in Vietnam: In Baby Blue Dresses and OD Green by Nancy Smoyer
- Letters on The Wall: Offerings and Remembrances from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Michael Soffarelli
- Close Quarters by Larry Heinemann
- The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford
- Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans by Wallace Terry
- Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam by Lynda Van Devanter
- Year of the Jungle by Suzanne Collins
- Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam by Walter Dean Myers
- Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam by Cynthia Kadohata
- Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler from the Vietnam War and Pop Stardom to Murder and an Unsolved, Violent Death by Marc Leepson
- Promise Lost: Stephen Joyner, The Marine Corps, and the Vietnam War by Dan Moore
- Reporting Vietnam: Volume 1 and Reporting Vietnam: Volume 2 by The Library of America
- The Vietnam War by Geoffrey Ward and Kenneth Burns
- The Vietnam Reader Edited by Stewart O’Nan
- The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966 by Rick Atkinson
- Embars of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Frederick Logevall
- My Father, My Son by Elmo Zumwalt and John Pekannen
- Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic
- Father, Soldier, Son: The Memoir of a Platoon Leader in Vietnam by Nathaniel Tripp
- Fortunate Son by Lewis B. Puller Jr.
- Our Year of War: Two Brothers, Vietnam, And a Nation Divided by Daniel P. Bolger
- The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War by Denise Chong
- Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse’s 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C. by Diane Carlson Evans
- Hill 488 by Ray Hildreth and Charles W Sasser
- Siege of Khe Sanh: The Story of the Vietnam War’s Largest Battle by Robert Pisor