They Marched Into Sunlight is unlike any book ever written about Vietnam and the Sixties. As with his other books, Maraniss relies on meticulous detail and a rich narrative style to tell the story. And the story itself is different and amazing. There have been powerful books about soldiering in Vietnam, excellent books analyzing American policy in Vietnam, many books portraying the antiwar movement and the Sixties culture back home, but no book that dramatically brings those three worlds together. Three different worlds that were about the same thing. Maraniss has done this by focusing on a few days in October 1967 and two battles that were going on simultaneously, a battle in Vietnam and a protest in America. He brings characters from each to the climactic moments on the battlefields of war and peace. In Vietnam, the battle involves the Black Lions battalion of the First Infantry Division, who walked into an ambush that killed 61 men and wounded another 60. In America, the protest takes place at the University of Wisconsin against recruiters for Dow Chemical Company, makers of napalm and Agent Orange. Characters from all sides--in Vietnam, battalion commanders, lieutenants, privates, medics, Viet Cong soldiers; in America, a university chancellor, student leaders, police officers--show the cultural and political forces that clashed.

Maraniss, who was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin in 1967, writes with great sympathy of the protesters and the liberal university administrators who had to defend the Dow presence as a matter of free speech. He also writes about the bravery and anguish of the soldiers in Vietnam whose higher officers bungled them into an ambush, and whose line officers walked into the death trap with them. The battle writing is of the caliber of John Keegan. It is a portrait of the country caught in its worst disaster--from the President to the foot soldier.