With an introduction by Kevin Powers A groundbreaking piece of journalism which inspired Stanley Kubrick's classic Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket We took space back quickly expensively with total panic & close to maximum brutality Our machine was devastating & versatile It could do everything but stop Michael Herr went to Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire He returned to tell the real story in all its hallucinatory madness & brutality cutting to the quick of the conflict & its seductive devastating impact on a generation of young men His unflinching account is haunting in its violence but even more so in its honesty First published in 1977 Dispatches was a revolutionary piece of new journalism that evoked the experiences of soldiers in Vietnam & has forever shaped our understanding of the conflict It is now a seminal classic of war reportage