Philip Caputo, Author of Definitive Vietnam Memoir, Dies at 84

Philip Caputo, whose unflinching Vietnam memoir A Rumor of War became a touchstone of American war literature, died Thursday at his home in Norwalk, Conn. He was 84, reports the New York Times. His son Marc said in a statement on Facebook that the cause was cancer. A former Marine lieutenant, Caputo turned his 16-month tour leading a platoon near Danang into a book that sold about 2 million copies, was translated into 15 languages, and later adapted into a CBS miniseries. Critics placed it alongside works like Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Michael Herr's Dispatches; John Gregory Dunne wrote that to simply call it the best book on Vietnam was to "trivialize it."

Caputo, who shared a 1973 Pulitzer Prize at the Chicago Tribune, used the memoir to probe how war distorts morality, recounting, among other episodes, taking responsibility for the deliberate killing of two civilians by men under his command. The book's success allowed him to leave daily journalism and write novels, including the acclaimed Acts of Faith, set in Sudan. A Chicago-area native who once fled suburban boredom to enlist in the Marines, Caputo later covered conflicts as a foreign correspondent and returned to Saigon as it fell in 1975. He is survived by his wife, Leslie Ware, two sons, a sister, and three granddaughters. Read the Times' full obituary.