Tom Bissell - The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam

Powerful eloquent and in-depth. The Father of All Things is a one-of-a-kind accomplishment. The Washington Post Book World

Combines the virtues of distance and immediacythe cool perspective that comes from investigating a war that was pretty much over before the author was born and the searing immediacy of being raised by a troubled veteran of that lost war Supple, complex and a relief from the most recent waves of books about Vietnam.

The New York Times Book Review

Stunning. Embraces the sometimes difficult, invariably challenging ties all men have with their fathers. The stories of our relation ships with our dads are in these pages. Finding them is finding ourselves.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Engrossing. By turns hilarious, grief-stricken, perplexed and enlightening, Bissell's account of [the father-son] trip offers a new understanding of the war, one designed for all those Americans who, though too young to remember it, still live in its shadow. Salon

Ambitious. Bissell writes with conviction, and his prose, if sometimes swashbuckling, has moments of startling beauty.

The New Yorker

If all sons learned even a tenth as much about their fathers wars as Tom Bissell has learned about the war his father, John Bissell, fought as a Marine officer in Vietnam, the United States would be in a much better place today. Live and learn, [The Father of All Things] tells us, or be condemned to repeat the errors of the past.

The New Leader

A triumph. Vivid and commanding Adventurous in structure, urgent in content. The Seattle Times

In this touching, sometimes comic portrayal of a son's struggles to understand and cope with a father's dark experiences in Vietnam, Tom Bissell's maturing talents are on full display. He shows that wars never end, not only for the warriors but also for their children.

Philip Caputo

Bissell is a terrific prose stylistnervy, metaphor-mad. He takes nothing for granted [and] brings an urgency and freshness to [The Father of All Things]. The Dallas Morning News

Bissell is a recognized teller of the odd, the curious and the wondrous; a young man who can fathom deep truths from what he experiences and observes. Bissell brings us along on what is truly a journey of discovery. The Decatur Daily

So well written it leaves the reader breathless. Tucson Citizen

Bissell comes at the subject with a fresh perspective A probing and poignant look at the complicated legacy of warand often quite funny to boot. New York magazine

Bissell seems to be shaping his own genre An eccentric blend of travelogue, history and histrionic self-revelation Impressive.

Detroit Free Press

A remarkable story that teaches us new things about the lingering legacy of war and about the power of the human spirit not only to endure but also, through hard-earned love and understanding between a father and his son, to triumph. It is also an exciting and wonderfully nuanced travel memoir that allows the reader surprisingly deep and abiding insights into a culture to which we as Americans are inextri cably bound.

Bruce Weigl

There is something freshand often raw, funny and enlightening in [Bissell's] take on this well-parsed topic. Time Out New York

A fine combination of travel narrative and a terse, research-based his tory of the war's perverse aspects. Combines precise description with mordant humor. Time Out Chicago

An exuberant amalgam of anecdotal memoir, fact-based imagining, popular history, travel narrative, and interviews with sons and daughters of Vietnamese and American veterans. We should be thankful Bissell has opened this dialogue. AARP, The Magazine

A permanent contribution to the essential literature of America's cat astrophic misadventure in Vietnam. Bissell has brilliantly combined a deep portrait of his conflicted relationship with his warrior father, a fair-minded but shattering account of the war itself, and a vivid trav elogue of present-day Vietnam. In every branch of this endeavor, the bravery of Bissell's engagement, his intelligence, and his uncanny eye for the conclusive detail are on rich display. This is a triumphant piece of work. Norman Rush

The Father of All Things is at once a beautifully lyrical travel narrative, memoir, history, and political critique. Beyond that, Bissell has cre ated an inimitable book ambitious and extensive in scope, a scope not bogged down by its own broadness, one grand in subject and line-by line precision. A stunning book, it is a new way to look at and read the war. Mary Magazine

Well-crafted, insightful. A unique accomplishment that, astound- ingly, stands alone among the thousands of books written about the Vietnam War. Veteran

Tom Bissell
THE Father OF All Things

Tom Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea and God Lives in St. Petersburg and a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine and The Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2006 he was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2007 Conde Nast Traveler named Chasing the Sea one of the eighty-six best travel books of all time. His work is often anthologized and has been published in six languages. He currently lives in Las Vegas, where he is a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Also by Tom Bissell

FICTION

God Lives in St. Petersburg and Other Stories

NONFICTION

Chasing the Sea:

Being a Narrative of a Journey Through Uzbekistan, Including Descriptions of Life Therein, Culminating with an Arrival at the Aral Sea, the World's Worst Man-Made Ecological Catastrophe, in One Volume

HUMOR

Speak, Commentary.

The Big Little Book of Fake DVD Commentaries, Wherein Well-Known Pundits Make Impassioned Remarks About Classic Science-Fiction Films

(with Jeff Alexander)

Of course, for my father: all things

For my friends Gary Sernovitz, Jeff Alexander, Dan Josefson, Matthew McGough, and Andrew Miller

And for my Vietnamese friends, who showed me their country

War is the father of all and king of all.
Some he shows as gods, others as men.
Some he makes slaves, and others free.

HERACLITUS

last night i flew with a division of three helo's out over the western side of taqaddum. it is low light level over here which just means there is now moon light, very dark, it is hard to tell the ground from the air. we went for a landing and decided it was too dusty so we headed back in to the airfield and practiced lands on the runway, while we were doing our touch and goes there was alot of small arms fire east of us about 3 to 5 miles in the city of well i can't say cause i can't spell it. anyways i thought it was cool, on the nvg's (night vision goggles) you can see all the tracers shooting high in the sky. but i don't know what they are shooting at there was nothing over there.

FROM A U.S. MARINES 3/17/04

E-MAIL FROM IRAQ

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