Tonight (Monday, November 7th) at 7 p.m., in the Young Auditorium, Chancellor Kopper will present the 2016 Chancellor’s Regional Literary Award to novelist and U.S. Army veteran Tim O’Brien, who wrote The things they carried, a work of fiction about soldiers’ Vietnam War experiences that won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, and also was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Read more about The things they carried: PEN America talks about the book being challenged in three high schools because of profanity, National Public Radio interviews O’Brien, SparkNotes provides context and summary, and you can preview the text at Google Books. You can access a biography of O’Brien in Literature Criticism Online, an Andersen Library subscription database.
But the best way to know a work is to read it! Andersen Library has a print copy of The things they carried, and if that copy is checked out, UW-Whitewater students and staff may request a copy from other UW campus libraries by using the free UW Request service. Requested items arrive in 2-5 weekdays. An audiobook copy is available also (2nd-floor Browsing Audio Books, PS3565.B75 T482 2013). In addition, O’Brien has written other works that are available from Andersen Library and other UW campus libraries, such as If I die in a combat zone; box me up and ship me home (3rd-floor Main Collection, DS557.A69 O27 1973) and Going after Cacciato (3rd-floor Main Collection, PS3565.B75 G6), which are also about the Vietnam War.
If you’d like assistance with finding additional resources, please ask a librarian (choose chat or email, phone 262-472-1032, or visit the Reference Desk).
