My Detachment, Tracy Kidder
My Detachment, Tracy Kidder
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My Detachment
A Memoir

Author: Tracy Kidder

Narrator: Tracy Kidder

Unabridged: 6 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/06/2005

Synopsis

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains presents an “acerbic, honest, moving memoir” (The New York Times Book Review) of his tour of duty in Vietnam.

“With a terrible beauty, [My Detachment] tells an old story—the illusions of war—in a new and compelling way.”—USA Today

“Gripping . . . remarkable . . . poignant . . . perfectly rendered by one of our most original writers.”—The Boston Globe

My Detachment is a war story like none you have ever read before, an unromanticized portrait of a young man coming of age in the controversial war that defined a generation. Master storyteller Tracy Kidder reflects on his service in Vietnam, looking back at himself from across three and a half decades and confessions how, as a young lieutenant, he sought to borrow from the tragedy around him and to imagine himself a romantic hero.

Unrelentingly honest, rueful, and revealing, My Detachment gives us war without heroism, while preserving those rare moments of redeeming grace in the midst of lunacy and danger. The officers and soldiers of My Detachment are not the sort of people who appear in war movies—they are the ones who appear only in war, and they are unforgettable.

A CHICAGO TRIBUNE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

About The Author

Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder lives in Massachusetts and Maine.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paddyo1122

This book was not exactly what I expected it to be. I was looking for a war book to read and I was hoping to get one that had some action in it. This one did not. While it was interesting to read about his experiences in the army, I was waiting for a fighting scene but never got it. Like I said it w......more

Goodreads review by Michael

The Soul of a New Machine is one of my favorite books, an all time classic that transcends the bits and bolts of late 1970s computing to capture the ineffable process of invention. So when I saw Kidder had a memoir about his time in Vietnam, I picked this up. Kidder goes back in memory to find his wa......more

Goodreads review by Carl

My previous experience with Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains) was all about someone else. This one is all about him. Or a version of him. My Detachment was published in 2005, thirty-five years after he finished his two-year army enlistment, so this is a man in his mid-fifties looking back a......more

Goodreads review by David

I'm a big fan of Tracy Kidder, I believe I have read every book he has written from Soul of a New Machine through House, Schoolchildren and Mountains. He writes like a journalist and injects very little of himself in his novels; he demonstrates great compassion and sensitivity towards his subjects.......more

Quotes

“With a terrible beauty, [My Detachment] tells an old story—the illusions of war—in a new and compelling way.”—USA Today

“[An] acerbic, honest, moving memoir . . . [The] prose is drawn so tight it seems to shimmer under the reader’s gaze.”—The New York Times Book Review

“At once hilarious and sad, sweet and distressing, a compelling, candid, and poignantly comic portrait.”—Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting and A Civil Action

“You’d be hard pressed to find a better book, fiction or otherwise, about the challenges of retaining one’s humanity amid the chaos and carnage of war.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Gripping . . . remarkable . . . a poignant memoir . . . perfectly rendered by one of our most original writers.”—The Boston Globe

“Tweaking multiple genres, Tracy Kidder has written a war story without violence. . . . [Full of] candor and humor.”—The Village Voice

“Muted, ironic, thoughtful, My Detachment is a meditation in a time of war—and a candid depiction of how the misdirections of youth can shape and haunt a life.”—San Jose Mercury News

“Kidder’s great talent ever since his Pulitzer-winning The Soul of a New Machine has been his ability to take ordinary details and give them the shape, metaphors, and rhythms of a novel. . . . [The] book works because he’s so candid about his insecurities, and how they played into his need to deceive others (and himself) about his role in Vietnam.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“In Kidder’s world, the absurdities and dark comedy of war mix with danger and the solace of comradeship. The result is a breezy and concise tale, the work of a master craftsman. Don’t miss it.”—Houston Chronicle

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