
The Things They Carried
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Buy Now for £14.99
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Narrated by:
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Bryan Cranston
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By:
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Tim O'Brien
About this listen
This modern classic and New York Times best seller was a finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award and has become a staple of American classrooms. Hailed by The New York Times as "a marvel of storytelling", The Things They Carried’s portrayal of the boots-on-the-ground experience of soldiers in the Vietnam War is a landmark in war writing. Now, three-time Emmy Award winner Bryan Cranston, star of the hit TV series Breaking Bad, delivers an electrifying performance that walks the book’s hallucinatory line between reality and fiction and highlights the emotional power of the spoken word.
The soldiers in this collection of stories carried M-16 rifles, M-60 machine guns, and M-79 grenade launchers. They carried plastic explosives, hand grenades, flak jackets, and landmines. But they also carried letters from home, illustrated Bibles, and pictures of their loved ones. Some of them carried extra food or comic books or drugs. Every man carried what he needed to survive, and those who did carried their shattering stories away from the jungle and back to a nation that would never understand.
This audiobook also includes an exclusive recording “The Vietnam in Me,” a recount of the author’s trip back to Vietnam in 1994, revisiting his experience there as a soldier 25 years before, read by Tim O’Brien himself.
The Things They Carried was produced by Audible Studios in partnership with Playtone, the celebrated film and television production company founded by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and producer of the award-winning series Band of Brothers, John Adams, and The Pacific, as well as the HBO movie Game Change.
©1990 Tim O'Brien (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Editor reviews
Critic reviews
Only stumbled upon this book following Tim O'Brien's appearance on The Vietnam War documentary by Ken Burns. Both of these reflections on the conflict have been utterly mesmerising in their own ways. A great introduction to the subject for a person previously unaware of this most important topic in recent American history.
Magnificent
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Powerful and very moving
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Unforgiving and Unforgotten
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Fantastic
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Funny, sad, thought provoking and throughly enjoyable
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Masterful stories indelibly told
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At times the storylines are bizarre and reminiscent of "Apocalypse Now" but full of meaning. At others the stories are deep but more homely. The last chapter concerns the effects of PTSD on the author and the people around him. Though recognised now with therapy, theoretically, available PTSD is protracted torture which some cannot endure to this day.
Masterfully written and superbly narrated
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Tim O'Brien ponders this and explains that there cannot, at least not really. It is not short stories or non-fiction or a novel, but some of all these things and these tales and memories and anecdotes of Vietnam all coalesce into a book with great gravit, punch and poetry. Here the war is so intense that it overrules all else and there is an authentic and truthful power in the layers of the narrative that can't be described, at least by me.
Bryan Cranston's reading is wonderful.
What is a true war story?
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This isn't a book about guts and glory, it's about the human mind and the many corridors it wanders to keep surviving.
Narrated perfectly by Brian Cranston.
One man's story, the tales of many.
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Amazing book
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