Looking at War From Many Angles

By: David Mamet — Mr. Mamet, a playwright, screenwriter and film director, is the author of "Theatre," recently published in paperback, and coming in June, "The Secret Knowledge" (Penguin).

The best book to come out of Vietnam, and yet the author wasn't stationed there. Ronald J. Glasser was a major in the Army Medical Corps, serving at Camp Yuma in Japan, where he operated on soldiers just hours from the battlefield. "365 Days" is a collection stories about what he witnessed and what others witnessed. It is a book about combat and combatants, especially notable for its depiction of women in wartime—like this nurse in a hospital under attack during the Tet offensive in 1968: "Joan stumbled through the dark, toward the traction patients. A mortar round, exploding with terrifying noise, took away the north end of one of the wings, sending fragments down the rest of the ward. People were screaming, fires seemed to be burning everywhere. She tripped and was getting to her feet when a second round went off. The blast came through the window, and, searing past her, lifted her up and threw her against one of the striker frames."

365 Days

365 Days - A Must Read!

“The last chapter of this book is already justly famous. The rest of the book deserves to be. It will be, too. Its quiet eloquence, its factual precision, its emotional restraint braided into the horror and pain of the subject matter make it a book of great emotional impact.” —Thomas Lask, New York Times

“The most convincing, most moving accounts I have yet read about what it was like to be an American soldier in Vietnam.” —Peter Prescott, Newsweek

“365 DAYS lifts the lid on the physical side of war. Stephen Crane could not have been a better guide.” —Robert Sherrill, Chicago Sun-Times

“A moving account about tremendous courage and often suffering....a valuable and redemptive work.” —William Styron, The Washington Monthly

“Chilling, shocking, extremely moving, heartrending. There is no other way to start thinking or writing about 365 DAYS.” —Robert Armstrong, Minneapolis Tribune

“Until the Wilfred Owens and Henri Barbusses and Anton Myrers of the Vietnam War reveal themselves, this book will serve as the standard 'Lest We Forget.’” —Josiah Bunting, Atlantic Monthly

“I felt my pulse rising as I red, but could not put the book down. If you can emerge from the experience unshaken, you're a better man then I am.” —John Barkham, Saturday Review Syndicate

“Glasser's professional concern melts with the compassion and sensibility of a gifted storyteller, and we are given scenes of wrenching power...A valuable and redemptive work.” —William Styron, Washington Monthly