Vietnam Zippos

This book showcases for the first time the personalized Zippo engravings by American soldiers made during the Vietnam War (1964-1973). Drawn from the collection of American artist Bradford Edwards and other private collections, the chrome-plated brass bears witness to the uncensored feelings of young men at war; their testimony is shocking, and both hilarious and poignant in its bitter satire. Soldiers engraved love, death, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll onto the canvases of their Zippo lighters, in a real-life version of the war portrayed in Francis Ford Coppola's epic film Apocalypse Now. Of the thousands of documents on the Vietnam War, none is so raw, so immediate and so resonant today.