It is as if Dante had gone to hell with a cassette recording of Jimi Hendrix and a pocketful of pills: our first rock-and-roll war, stoned murder.” Herr’s work as “beyond politics, beyond rhetoric, beyond ‘pacification’ and body counts and the ‘psychotic vaudeville’ of Saigon press briefings. . . The spy novelist John le Carré called “Dispatches” “the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time.” New York Times book critic John Leonard hailed Mr. It was instantly placed in the pantheon of great war literature, widely viewed as journalism alchemized seamlessly into art. It was one of the first books to confront the Vietnam War in all its hallucinogenic awfulness and jarring absurdities. “Dispatches,” published in 1977, drew resounding critical praise. His daughter Claudia Herr confirmed the death but declined to provide further details. Michael Herr, a Vietnam War reporter whose “Dispatches” remains one of the most powerful books about the ravages of combat and who later contributed to the screenplays of such bleak Vietnam-set films as “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket,” died June 23 near his home in Upstate New York.

Man of war vietnam editor