First Mariner Books edition 2009
Copyright © 1990 by Tim O'Brien
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce
selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
First published in 1990 by Houghton Mifflin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-618-70641-9
Printed in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Of these stories, five first appeared in
Esquire: "The Things They Carried,"
"How to Tell a True War Story," "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,"
"The
Ghost Soldiers," and "The Lives of the Dead." "Speaking of Courage"
was
first published
in The Massachusetts Review, then later, in a revised
version,
in Granta. "In the Field" was first published in
Gentleman's Quarterly. "Style,"
"Spin," and "The Man I Killed" were first published, in different
form, in The
Quarterly. "The Things They Carried" appeared in The
Best American Short
Stories 1987. "Speaking of Courage" and "The Ghost
Soldiers" appeared in
Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards (1978 and 1982). "On
the Rainy River"
first appeared in Playboy. The author wishes to thank the
editors of those
publications and to express gratitude for support received from the
National
Endowment for the Arts.