You know you're reading an incredibly written and detailed book when you have nightmares about it. 
 I won't go into the nightmare I had about being in a war with my friends in New Zealand (it was quite bizarre and I'd rather not recount it) but it occurred when I was in the middle of The Things They Carried, and I never have dreams about being in a war, so I can only attribute it to Tim O'Brien's resounding words on his experiences in Vietnam. 
 O'Brien makes it a point to tell his readers that this is not a non-fiction book -- it is a work of fiction, and not everything is completely true because "sometimes it's just beyond telling." But the horrors and everyday life experienced by O'Brien and his comrades in Vietnam flys off the pages and makes you feel some small ounce of what those soldiers actually felt. 
 Read this book! It will be shocking at times, and in the end, like any good war story, it leaves you with no forced happy ending, because what in war is happy?