Why Are We in Vietnam?

**"It is impossible to walk away from this novel without being sharply reminded of the fact that Norman Mailer is a writer of extraordinary ability."--*Chicago Tribune***

**Featuring a new foreword by Mailer scholar Maggie McKinley**

Published nearly twenty years after Norman Mailer's fiction debut, *The Naked and the Dead, * this acclaimed novel further solidified the author's stature as one of the most important figures in contemporary American literature. Ranald "D. J." Jethroe, Texas's most precocious teenager, recounts a brutal hunting trip he took to Alaska--in a story of fathers and sons, myth and masculinity, character and corruption. Both entertaining and profound, *Why Are We in Vietnam? *is an exceptional, timeless work awaiting discovery by a new generation of readers.

**Praise for *Why Are We in Vietnam?***

"A book of great integrity. All the old qualities are here: Mailer's remarkable feeling for the sensory event, the detail, 'the way it was, ' his power and energy."**--*The New York Review of Books***

"A tour de force, a treatise on human nature."**--*The* *Dallas Morning News***

"A brilliant piece of writing."** *--Newsweek* **

"Original, courageous, and provocative."** *--The New York Times* **