This extensive site offers brief descriptions of O'Brien's works, biographical and bibliographical information, as well as links to interviews with the author, to other scholarly works, and to Vietnam related sites.

BIOGRAPHY
Tim O'Brien (b. 1946) was born in Austin, Minnesota, attended public schools, and received a B.A. summa cum laude from Macalester College. Immediately following graduation, he was drafted into the U.S. Army (1968-1970), earning a Purple Heart medal. On his return to civilian life, he pursued graduate work at Harvard University and worked as a national affairs reporter for the Washington Post.

His first novel, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973), is a semifictionalized account of his own Vietnam experiences. All of O'Brien's novels are either set in Vietnam or focus on characters haunted by the war: Northern Lights (1975), Going after Cacciato (1978), which won a National Book Award, The Nuclear Age (1985), The Things They Carried (1990), and In the Lake of the Woods (1994).

In an interview, O'Brien explained that his preoccupation with the Vietnam War was part of his need to write with "passion." Writing "good" stories, he went on to say, "requires a sense of passion, and my passion as a human being and as a writer intersect in Vietnam, not in the physical stuff but in the issues of Vietnam; of courage, rectitude, enlightenment, holiness, trying to do the right thing in the world."