About Michael Herr. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Michael Herr was a freelance journalist writing for Esquire magazine at the time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature. This 46-page guide for “Dispatches” by Michael Herr includes detailed chapter summaries and analysis covering 13 chapters, as well as several more in-depth sections of expert-written literary analysis. A journalist for Esquire in 1967/68, he was eyewitness to some of the famous battles (Hue, Khe Sanh) of the war, as well as to long-forgotten skirmishes. Michael Herr, the American writer and war correspondent famous for writing Dispatches, described as “the best book I have ever read on men and war … Michael Herr was born in 1940 in Syracuse, New York. Study Guide for Dispatches. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Dispatches at Amazon.com. The electricity of the language. He died in 2016, aged seventy-six. Michael Herr was a novelist and war correspondent. "Dispatches" is Michael Herr’s account of his time in Vietnam and became an instant classic when it was published in 1977. He is the author of… More about Michael Herr Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. He later chronicled those experiences in his memoir, Dispatches. Dispatches study guide contains a biography of Michael Herr, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. show more Born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1940, he began reporting from Vietnam for Esquire in the 1960s, during the height of the war. Michael Herr, the American writer and war correspondent famous for writing Dispatches, described as “the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time” by John le Carré, has died aged 76. First published almost four decades ago, 'Dispatches' consists of a loose narrative built around the years that the author spent in Vietnam during the war there. SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality study guides for challenging works of literature. Herr’s work doesn’t so much loom over contemporary war writing as course within it, a dark ideal and omen all at once. No one could write like Michael Herr. He was a writer and former war correspondent best known as the author of Dispatches (1977), a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire magazine (1967-1969) during the Vietnam War. The power—and futility—of bearing witness. We all tried: scribes and grunts, killers and chroniclers, fool novelists and crackpot journos.