A Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War brings together interviews with fellow Marines and with men who fought with the 1st Viet Cong Regiment to provide a firsthand chronicle of Operation Starlite, which, in 1965, became the first major clash during America's involvement in Vietnam. Reprint.

A graphic account of the first major clash of the Vietnam War

On 18 August 1965, U.S. Marines of Regimental Landing Team 7 (RLT 7) and Viet Cong soldiers of the 1st Viet Cong Regiment met each other in a ferocious struggle that would continue for several more days. Operation Starlite, as the Marines called it, took place on the Van Tuong Peninsula, about 10 miles south of the Marine base at Chu Lai. It was a significant battle for many reasons. Though the Marines and Viet Cong had encountered each other in small-sized patrols and ambushes before, Operation Starlite was the first time they met in open battle in regimental-sized formations. Both sides learned several lessons about how the enemy fought, and each came to appreciate the other as a formidable foe. In the short term, the tactical victory won by the Marines validated such operational concepts as vertical envelopment, amphibious assault, and combined arms that had not been put into practice on a large scale since the Korean War. It proved that Marine ground troops and their junior officers and noncommissioned officers, as well as Marine aviators, were just as tough and reliable as their forebears who had fought in World War II and Korea. In the long term, Starlite foreshadowed the American military's commitment to conventional warfare in Vietnam and showed how difficult it would be to defeat Communist forces in South Vietnam.

From his controversial coverage of Vietnam, which incurred the wrath of President Johnson but won him a Pulitzer Prize, to his unforgettable and daring on-the-ground reporting of the Gulf War during one of the greatest airborne assaults in history, Peter Arnett has established himself as the leading voice of American war reportage. In Live from the Battlefield, one of the most highly celebrated journalistic memoirs ever written, Peter Arnett gives us an engrossing account of the Vietnam era, as well as an indispensable portrait of battlefield reporting. Live from the Battlefield captures the adventures, gambles, and glories that have marked this master journalist's life with a vividness and intelligence rare in any memoir. But more than that, Arnett provides an insider's view of some of the greatest and most tragic events of the century in a book of singular and enduring importance.

Auf der Jagd nach Leia Organa. Kommandant Ellian Zahra wurde von Darth Vader mit der Aufgabe betraut, die verstreuten Reste der Rebellenflotte aufzuspüren, die seit der Schlacht von Hoth durch die Galaxie irren. Eine Aufgabe, die die ehrgeizige Frau besser nicht vermasseln sollte. Von der Brücke ihres Schiffs, der Tarkin's Will, ist es ihr offizielles Ziel, die Rebellen zu jagen. Aber insgeheim kennt sie nur ein Ziel: Leia Organa vernichten!