A great starting point for students seeking an introduction to Tim O'Brien and the critical discussions surrounding his work.

This collection brings together a selection of recent representative critical essays on O’Brien from a variety of perspectives. After opening with several short introductory essays, the volume moves on to consider O’Brien’s semi-autobiographical coverage of his experience in Vietnam and discusses O’Brien’s most famous work, The Things They Carried, in addition to several of his other works. Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources:

A chronology of the author's life
A complete list of the author's works and their original dates of publication
A general bibliography
A detailed paragraph on the volume's editor
Notes on the individual chapter authors
A subject index