{"title":"Alex Vernon","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"eyes-of-orion-book-alex-vernon-9780873386333","title":"The Eyes of Orion","description":"Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Book Award, The Eyes of Orion is a highly personal account of the day-to-day experiences of five platoon leaders who served in the same tank battalion in the 24th Infantry Division during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.  While professional soldiers and historians will undoubtedly glean much from this narrative, the heart of the account concerns the experiences of the five young lieutenants as they prepared for and served in combat―from their deployment to Saudi Arabia through their six months in the desert training for war, their four days in combat and several weeks of occupation in Iraq, and finally their homecoming. The authors treat their combat experience in Saudi and Kuwait from the perspective of junior officers, all in their twenties and just out of college (four are graduates of West Point and one received his commission through an ROTC program), who served on the front line―facing physical, personal, moral, and leadership challenges.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50103715463441,"sku":"CIN0873386337G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51521000243473,"sku":"GOR005494456","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0873386337.jpg?v=1773921016"},{"product_id":"approaches-to-teaching-the-works-of-tim-o-brien-book-alex-vernon-9781603290760","title":"Approaches to Teaching the Works of Tim O'Brien","description":"“The works of Tim O’Brien are among the most significant recent contributions to a lengthy canon of war literature,” write the editors of this volume; they serve “as an ideal point of entry for discussions of war and its human impact.” The author of the highly acclaimed \u003cem\u003eThe Things They Carried\u003c\/em\u003e, O’Brien is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of a National Book Award for Going After Cacciato.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis volume in the \u003cem\u003eApproaches to Teaching \u003c\/em\u003eseries considers the range and depth of O’Brien’s writing, with an emphasis on works that focus on the Vietnam War. Part 1, “Materials,” provides information on O’Brien’s life and an overview of his literary output. It also directs readers to critical and reference works on subjects encountered in his writing. The twenty-three essays in part 2, “Approaches,” provide historical background on the Vietnam War; explore narrative issues in O’Brien’s works, such as the melding of fiction, nonfiction, and memoir; and suggest ideas for teaching the author’s works in a variety of classroom and conceptual settings (e.g., composition, American literature, war fiction, narrative theory, postmodernism).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50393976668433,"sku":"CIN1603290761G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1603290761.jpg?v=1758794467"},{"product_id":"most-succinctly-bred-book-the-kent-state-university-pres-9780873388559","title":"Most Succinctly Bred","description":"This is an \"\"essayistic\"\" memoir on being a soldier. Alex Vernon's most succinctly bred explores war by exploring around war, by operating in the margins. Vernon records his ongoing relationship with war and soldiering, from growing up in late Cold War 1980s middle America to attending West Point, going to and returning from the first Gulf War, and watching, as a writer and academic, the coming of the second Iraq war. Unlike a mere essay collection, this book has a trajectory, and the chapters, appearing in rough chronological order, loop in and out of one another. It is not a narrow autobiography that attempts to account only for the writer's life; it uses that life to illuminate the lives of its readers, to tell us all about the time and place in which we find ourselves. War has seasoned this reluctant soldier; it has wounded him as it wounds all soldiers. But war has not stopped Alex Vernon's life. A large part of what we read here is a fascinating story of recovery. He dares to tell the stories of recuperation without naming them as such, without being in the least maudlin about his experiences, or his suffering. Full of surprises, most succinctly bred tells all of the truth Vernon can muster in a language that is lively, rich, suggestive. This is a book that aims high in an artful, subtle way.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51332608819473,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51332611440913,"sku":"CIN0873388550VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0873388550.jpg?v=1773915503"},{"product_id":"soldiers-once-and-still-book-alex-vernon-9781587296239","title":"Soldiers Once and Still","description":"Looks back through the twentieth century in order to confront issues of self and community in veterans' literature, exploring how war and the military have shaped the identities of Ernest Hemingway, James Salter, and Tim O'Brien, three of the twentieth century's most respected authors.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51403069751569,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51403069980945,"sku":"GOR014260055","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1587296233.jpg?v=1751056171"},{"product_id":"peace-is-a-shy-thing-book-alex-vernon-9781250358493","title":"Peace Is a Shy Thing","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\"Vietnam made me a writer.\" --Tim O'Brien\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others--not to mention countless exchanges with Tim O'Brien himself--\u003ci\u003ePeace is a Shy Thing\u003c\/i\u003e provides a nearly day-by-day, gripping account of O'Brien's thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam and gives equal diligence to reconstructing O'Brien's writing process.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e This meticulously researched biography explores the life and journey that turned O'Brien into a literary icon and a household name. It includes an unpublished short story about O'Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e's coverage of Watergate, and a 1989 attic exchange between American and Vietnamese writers on the eve of the publication of O'Brien's most beloved book, \u003ci\u003eThe Things They Carried\u003c\/i\u003e, years before the two countries normalized relations.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ePeace is a Shy Thing\u003c\/i\u003e is as much a history of the era as it is a story of O'Brien's life, from his small-town midwestern mid-century childhood, to winning the National Book Award and his status as literary elder statesman. A story which Vernon, a combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a literary scholar trained by officers and professors of the Vietnam era, is uniquely suited to tell.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51637223784721,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51637223948561,"sku":"NIN9781250358493","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51697068835089,"sku":"CIN1250358493VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52864075333905,"sku":"CIN1250358493G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53450556211473,"sku":"NGR9781250358493","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1250358493.jpg?v=1750986360"},{"product_id":"reading-hemingway-s-for-whom-the-bell-tolls-book-alex-vernon-9781606354728","title":"Reading Hemingway's for Whom the Bell Tolls","description":"A line-by-line analysis of one of Hemingway's greatest novels     Published in 1940, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is widely considered a masterpiece of war literature. A bestseller upon its release, the novel has long been both admired and ridiculed for its depiction of Robert Jordan's military heroism and wartime romance. Yet its validation of seemingly conflicting narratives and its rendering of the intricate world its characters inhabit, as well as its dense historical, literary, and biographical allusions, have made it a work that remains a focus of interest and study.     Alex Vernon, in this contribution to the Reading Hemingway series, mines the historical record to unprecedented depths, examining Hemingway's drafts and correspondence, synthesizing the body of literary criticism about the novel, and engaging in close textual analysis. As a result, new and important insights into the complex situation of the Spanish Civil War—integral to the novel—emerge, enriching our understanding of the novel. Through Vernon's comprehensive work, contemporary readers and scholars are reminded that For Whom the Bell Tolls is still vital, significant, and relevant.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51793128489233,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51793128751377,"sku":"NGR9781606354728","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52849682481425,"sku":"NIN9781606354728","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53266455167249,"sku":"CIN1606354728G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781606354728.jpg?v=1773917493"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-alex-vernon.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}