Hearts and Minds is a classic, comic, unique and wonderful novel that celebrates a generation of young Americans who sacrificed so much in the Vietnam War. Hearts and Minds belongs on the top shelf next to Catch-22. Funny, tragic, unconventional and captivating; it takes you where you’ve never been before, in Vietnam or any other war zone.
Unforgettable characters
Guy Lopaca, an Army-trained interpreter who can barely say “I can’t speak Vietnamese” in Vietnamese, but has no trouble chatting with stray dogs and water buffalo
“Virgin Mary” Crocker, a pragmatic Army nurse who earns a fortune spending nights with homesick soldiers, while yearning for the unavailable boy across the table
Paul Gianelli, a heroic builder of medical clinics who doesn’t want to be remembered badly after he leaves, so he never goes home
Tyler DeMudge, whose cure for every problem is a chilly martini, a patch of shade, and treating every terrible event in life as “good training” for enduring it again
Sgt Dong, who blames the French for mistresses and neckties, blames the Americans for drugs, and knows the secret ingredient in the best pork noodle soup
Capt. Billy Bloat, the medal-winning sole survivor of a deadly mission to deliver lobster tails to a battalion cookout
And then there’s Arthur Grissom, whose loneliness and heartache are insurmountable, until… he looks into a pair of Martian eyes
PRAISE FOR HEARTS and MINDS
A deeply-felt, brilliantly written comedy… Very funny novel that misses few opportunities, but one that is invariably respectful, compassionate and often downright admiring toward its cast of clowns.
Kirkus “exceptional merit” review
A creative new-generation film director might turn this into Vietnam’s M*A*S*H.
John M. DelVecchio
Author of The 13th Valley
Wonderful, funny, painful, delightful, thoughtful, and intelligent book. If there is only one book about the war in Vietnam that you have the time or energy to read, this is it!
An Amazon Reviewer
An unusual, affecting first novel… unfolds with beguiling tenderness, humor and wisdom.
Booklist
One of the best novels about Vietnam I’ve ever read. Artful and resonant… With this novel he jumps into the class with Tim O’Brien and Joseph Heller.
An Amazon Reviewer
Wonderful and wonderfully well written. It is a singular addition to the literature of the Vietnam War.
Bernard Edelman, Editor
Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam
The book Robin Williams would have written if he could have – and the one Kurt Vonnegut would have if he’d served there.
An Amazon Reviewer
we’ve finally got our very own Catch-22… It’s a very funny and insightful story… If you were there get this book and read it…hell, get it and read it even if you weren’t there. You won’t be disappointed.
An Amazon Reviewer
Hearts and Minds is the new edition of the book
previously published under the title Of Rice and Men.