Remembering Philip Caputo, who wrote an unflinching Vietnam War memoir
5/15/202647 min
Philip Caputo wrote the 1977 acclaimed and unflinching memoir ‘A Rumor of War,’ about leading a Marine platoon during the Vietnam War. It taught him a painful truth. “I had discovered that I had a capacity to be violent and dark in my actions in a way that totally shocked me,” he told Terry Gross in 2005. He went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Caputo died May 7 at 84.
Also, celebrated naturalist and nature documentarian Sir David Attenborough turned 100 this month. We listen back to his 1995 interview with Terry Gross about working in the field.
John Powers reviews the new film ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin.’
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David Bianculli· Host0:18
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. One of the most unflinching and acclaimed memoirs of the Vietnam War was about a young lieutenant, one of the first Americans to fight in the war, leading a Marine platoon through the jungle. A Rumor of War was written by Philip Caputo, who died last week at the age of 84. In reviewing the book in 1977, John Gregory Dunne described it as, quote, "Heartbreaking, terrifying, and enraging. It belongs to the literature of men at war," unquote. The book became a bestseller and was adapted into a TV miniseries. After the war, Caputo became a journalist and was part of the Chicago Tribune Pulitzer Prize-winning team that uncovered violations of voting procedures in a March 1972 primary. While a foreign correspondent in Lebanon during their civil war, he was captured by Palestinian militants and held for a week. Later, in another incident, he was shot multiple times by a different group of militants in Beirut. He returned to the States, and during convalescence for his injuries, he wrote A Rumor of War. Caputo went on