--- product_id: 50242728 title: "The Things They Carried (Flamingo): An award-winning history and politics memoir of the Vietnam War" price: "18581CFA" currency: XOF in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.sn/products/50242728-the-things-they-carried-flamingo-an-award-winning-history-politics store_origin: SN region: Senegal --- # Award-winning narrative depth Historical Vietnam War insight Masterful literary craftsmanship The Things They Carried (Flamingo): An award-winning history and politics memoir of the Vietnam War **Price:** 18581CFA **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 📖 Dive into the untold stories of Vietnam — where history meets haunting beauty. ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Things They Carried (Flamingo): An award-winning history and politics memoir of the Vietnam War - **How much does it cost?** 18581CFA with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.sn](https://www.desertcart.sn/products/50242728-the-things-they-carried-flamingo-an-award-winning-history-politics) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Award-Winning Memoir:** Critically acclaimed for its powerful storytelling and poetic prose that elevates war literature. - • **Literary Novel Unity:** Blends memoir and novelistic structure with recurring characters and thematic depth for a compelling read. - • **Top-Ranked Bestseller:** Join thousands of readers who rated it 4.4 stars, making it a must-have for history and literary enthusiasts. - • **Immersive Vietnam War Stories:** Experience the raw reality and emotional complexity of combat through interconnected narratives. - • **Cultural and Historical Reflection:** Offers nuanced perspectives on America's Vietnam involvement and its lasting impact on society. ## Overview The Things They Carried (Flamingo) is an award-winning memoir by Tim O'Brien that weaves together a series of interconnected stories about the Vietnam War. Combining the emotional depth of a novel with historical reflection, it captures the complex realities faced by soldiers and the enduring impact of the conflict on American society. Highly rated and critically acclaimed, this book is a definitive read for those seeking a profound literary and historical experience. ## Description A sequence of stories about the Vietnam War, this book also has the unity of a novel, with recurring characters and interwoven strands of plot and theme. It aims to summarize America's involvement in Vietnam, and her coming to terms with that experience in the years that followed. Review: Moving, powerful and compelling - A tremendous set of stories, revealing the reality of life for a combat soldier in Vietnam. Even in such a controversial and ugly war, there is really beauty in the human spirit, amidst all of the tragedy. Review: Immersed in the writer's war - Tim O'brien can really write. It's refreshing after reading so many poorly written books to come across a writer like this. He uses language skilfully to evoke experiences of war and to give a kind of poetic meaning, or poetic void of meaning to the scenes he witnessed. The first chapter is really brilliant and many of the others are also very good. However, I can't help but also feel there is a gap between an approach like this and the reality of the war itself. Time and again films and books will tell you that Vietnam was hell and pointless and seek to immerse you in the experience of it. Yet I have never once come across storytelling which honestly tries to consider the alternative argument. I mean, certainly it was a horrible experience and I don't want to disrespect that, but there were also reasons for the fight, however muddied they became or were perceived to be. Reading a book like this I get a sense of the writer's absolute self involvement, and wonder if it wasn't so much the war that was different to those preceding it, but the post-war generation who fought it who had lost their moral certainties. Certainly worth reading and appreciating for O'brien's talent with the English language and the experience of Vietnam he captures. ## Features - Fourth Estate ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | 3,730 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 71 in Short Stories (Books) 107 in War Story Fiction 626 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 15,382 Reviews | ## Images ![The Things They Carried (Flamingo): An award-winning history and politics memoir of the Vietnam War - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81mwY5CLXFL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Moving, powerful and compelling *by A***E on 20 June 2026* A tremendous set of stories, revealing the reality of life for a combat soldier in Vietnam. Even in such a controversial and ugly war, there is really beauty in the human spirit, amidst all of the tragedy. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Immersed in the writer's war *by K***I on 16 January 2016* Tim O'brien can really write. It's refreshing after reading so many poorly written books to come across a writer like this. He uses language skilfully to evoke experiences of war and to give a kind of poetic meaning, or poetic void of meaning to the scenes he witnessed. The first chapter is really brilliant and many of the others are also very good. However, I can't help but also feel there is a gap between an approach like this and the reality of the war itself. Time and again films and books will tell you that Vietnam was hell and pointless and seek to immerse you in the experience of it. Yet I have never once come across storytelling which honestly tries to consider the alternative argument. I mean, certainly it was a horrible experience and I don't want to disrespect that, but there were also reasons for the fight, however muddied they became or were perceived to be. Reading a book like this I get a sense of the writer's absolute self involvement, and wonder if it wasn't so much the war that was different to those preceding it, but the post-war generation who fought it who had lost their moral certainties. Certainly worth reading and appreciating for O'brien's talent with the English language and the experience of Vietnam he captures. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ There never will be wars to end wars *by L***L on 14 July 2013* Tim O Brien, a Vietnam vet, has written a book of short stories about how a young man came into that war, various stories about himself and company members within the war, and what happened, to him, and to others, later - sometimes a whole generation later. However, that is only one way of describing this book. Which is not only a superb anti-war piece, without polemic, but a kind of meditation on that - or any - war, its brutality, but also the nobility, not, absolutely not, of war itself, or of the abstractions with which the old marshall the young to make the ultimate sacrifice, but the nobility of what might have been. The nobility of the potential of those sacrificed lives had they not been sent to die and to kill. That potential was sacrificed whether the young came back to live and breathe amongst us, holding their damage, or whether parts of them were returned in body bags. This is a book profoundly against war. But above all, O Brien is a writer, so because the profound experience of that war is what has shaped him, this is the subject of his writing. He writes, as he tells us, a story, which is a distillation of the truth. But the story, which he tells us `is not a game. It's a form' is there because `I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth' `What stories can do, I guess, is make things present' This is a story of compassion towards the young men who were made to do things young men should not have to do. It is full of patchwork surprises. Certain horrific images become recycled, and looked at in different ways. Rather than linear progression, and not even in `peeling off the layers of an onion' form, what O Brien does is to look from different angles, different viewpoints, to look immediately, to look through memory, to unpick images and put them together again in slightly changed context. It is a beautiful piece of revelation, but make no mistake, will never be able to be used by those who tell lies to young men about the nobility of what they are about to do. `A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue,nor suggest morals of proper human behaviour, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it.If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue.' There is absolutely no sentimentality within these pages, but there is beauty in the unflinching facing of horror. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.sn/products/50242728-the-things-they-carried-flamingo-an-award-winning-history-politics](https://www.desertcart.sn/products/50242728-the-things-they-carried-flamingo-an-award-winning-history-politics) --- *Product available on Desertcart Senegal* *Store origin: SN* *Last updated: 2026-10-03*