American · b. 1941
Philip Caputo is an American author and journalist, a former U.S. Marine and Pulitzer Prize–winning war correspondent, best known for his classic Vietnam memoir A Rumor of War.
Philip Caputo served as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam in 1965, among the first American combat troops sent to the war, an experience that shaped his life and work. He later became a journalist, sharing a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting at the Chicago Tribune and covering conflicts around the world.
His memoir A Rumor of War (1977) was a landmark — one of the first and most powerful accounts of the Vietnam experience, tracing his transformation from idealistic young officer to disillusioned, morally wounded veteran. Searing and honest, it became a classic of war literature and helped change how America understood the war.
Caputo has since written novels and further nonfiction, often exploring war, violence, and moral complexity. He is recognized as one of the essential chroniclers of the Vietnam War and the costs of combat.
by Philip Caputo
Philip Caputo's classic Vietnam memoir. As one of the first U.S. Marines sent to Vietnam in 1965, Caputo arrived full of idealism and left transformed by combat, moral injury, and the murder charges he faced. A searing, honest account of how war corrupts the men who fight it.
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