Michael Herr, author of the Vietnam-era 'Dispatches,' dies

NEW YORK (AP) - Michael Herr, whose visceral nonfiction novel "Dispatches" exposed the ravages of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, has died after a long illness. He was 76.

His death Thursday in an upstate New York hospital was confirmed by Knopf, which published the book in 1977.

Part of the New Journalism literary wave of the time with Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and others, the novel was a memoir of sorts of Herr's stint as a war correspondent for Esquire magazine. It was published at a time when many veterans were reluctant to publicly reveal the horrors they experienced in Vietnam.

Sonny Mehta, chairman of Knopf, said the strength of his wartime storytelling endured through the decades. The book was used in college classrooms and elsewhere as a teaching tool.

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