Karl Marlantes served as a Marine Corps Lieutenant in Vietnam, and will talk about his memoir What It Is Like To Go To War. Written nearly 40 years after his own tour of duty in Vietnam, Karl Marlantes' book recounts his experience of going to war and coming home through the lens of time and memory, illuminated by insights drawn from his study of history, literature, psychology, and philosophy.
Mr. Marlantes grew up in a small logging town on the
Oregon coast, attended Yale University on a National Merit Scholarship, and
went on to study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he
was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for
valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. He is the author of the New York
Times best seller What It Is Like to Go to War and the novel Matterhorn, which
won numerous prizes, including the William E. Colby Award given by the Pritzker
Military Library, the Center For Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize,
the 2011 Indies' Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year, the American
Historians James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical American Fiction,
and the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation's James Webb Award for Distinguished
Fiction, The American Library Association W. Y. Boyd Literary Novel Award for
2011, and The Vietnam Veterans of America Excellence in the Arts Award for
2012.
This statewide speaking tour by Mr. Marlantes is part of
the War Comes Home/California Reads initiative, a public dialog about returning
veterans. This project seeks to engage Californians in the tough questions
about what it means to return from war, and to rejoin one's community. What are
the responsibilities toward those who have been sent to war, and how can we
bridge the gap of experience between those who served and those who have
not?
Cal Humanities has chosen Karl Marlantes' memoir, What it
is Like to Go to War, as the California Reads book of 2014. Readers across the
state are encouraged to read the book, and join the discussion. 43 public
libraries (including over 240 branch libraries) will present programs in communities
across the state. Hundreds of
activities, including book discussions, speakers, film screenings, writing
workshops, poetry readings, oral history projects, service projects, and
information fairs are planned with support provided by grants and programming
resources from Cal Humanities. More
information about Mr. Marlantes' statewide tour can be found at www.calhum.org.
California Reads is a program of Cal Humanities in
partnership with the California Center for the Book. It is supported in part by
the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Institute of Museum and
Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology
Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.
