The Vietnam War still has the power to divide Americans between those for it and those against. Today it also divides us, just as surely, between 
 those who remember its era firsthand and those  
 not yet born when the troops came home.   
There may be no better bridge across these     
twin divides than Tim O'Brien's novel in     
stories The Things They Carried.    

The details of warfare may have changed since Vietnam, but O'Brien's semiautobiographical account of a young platoon on a battlefield without a front, dodging sniper fire and their own misgivings, continues to win legions of dedicated readers, both in uniform and out.