The war in Vietnam and its dehumanizing effect on its participants figured widely in Mr. Herr’s writing life. Mr. Herr lived for many years in England, where he grew to know Stanley Kubrick and eventually wrote a book about their friendship and collaboration. But it was “Dispatches” that declared Mr. Herr’s unimpeachable credentials as a witness to the fearsome fury of combat and, perhaps more terrible, the crippling apprehension that precedes it. In the last years of his life, he became a serious devotee of Buddhism and no longer wrote, his daughter said. Then he spent the next 18 months in New York working on the book before his experiences in Vietnam caught up with him.

Source: New York Times June 25, 2016 02:03 UTC