Investigate the incident that has come to be known as the My Lai massacre. Summarize the events that occurred in My Lai. Using your summary and research, try to determine why such an incident might happen and what affect it had on popular opinion about the Vietnam War.

Read Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War, a book by a former North Vietnamese soldier. Compare and contrast the story that Bao Ninh tells with the stories in The Things They Carried.

Watch the movies The Green Berets (1968) and Platoon (1986). What are some of the reasons for such different portrayals of the Vietnam War? Using O'Brien's criteria, are either of these movies a "true" war story?

Read Tim O' Brien' s memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, and the rest of the stories in The...