SOURCE: Garvey, Michael O. “A Predator of Experience.” Commonweal 122, no. 10 (19 May 1995): 30.

In the following review, Garvey applauds In Pharaoh's Army for capturing not only the horrors of war, but also the unique and beautiful moments arising out of wartime conflicts.

The AP photographer Horst Faas, who took many pictures of the war in Vietnam, replied memorably when an interviewer once suggested that his attraction to the subject of combat might be more than strictly professional: “Vot I like eez boom boom. Oh yes,” he said.

Faas and other boom-boom aficionados would be disappointed by Tobias Wolff's essays on arms and men. Some readers of In Pharaoh's Army might suspect that Tobias Wolff himself is bemused by the unconventional nature of his memoir and even slightly apologetic that he can't manage to sound a little more like Michael Herr, Philip Caputo, Tim O'Brien, and other shaken veterans of the...