Peace Is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien

The first literary biography of Tim O’Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews.

“Vietnam made me a writer.” –Tim O’Brien

Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others–not to mention countless exchanges with Tim O’Brien himself–Peace is a Shy Thing provides a nearly day-by-day, gripping account of O’Brien’s thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam and gives equal diligence to reconstructing O’Brien’s writing process.

This meticulously researched biography explores the life and journey that turned O’Brien into a literary icon and a household name. It includes an unpublished short story about O’Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the Washington Post‘s coverage of Watergate, and a 1989 attic exchange between American and Vietnamese writers on the eve of the publication of O’Brien’s most beloved book, The Things They Carried, years before the two countries normalized relations.

Peace is a Shy Thing is as much a history of the era as it is a story of O’Brien’s life, from his small-town midwestern mid-century childhood, to winning the National Book Award and his status as literary elder statesman. A story which Vernon, a combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a literary scholar trained by officers and professors of the Vietnam era, is uniquely suited to tell.

Author: Alex Vernon
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 05/27/2025
Pages: 560
Weight: 1lbs
Size: 9.25h x 6.12w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781250358493
Language: English