Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

Book excerpt: This debut novel of the Vietnam War from the veteran and famous Merry Prankster is a “cross between Joseph Heller and Hunter S. Thompson” (Booklist). Lt. Tom Huckelbee, leathery as any Texican come crawling out of the sage, and Lt. Mike Cochran, loquacious son of an Ohio gangster, make an unlikely pair training to be marine corps chopper pilots on their way to Vietnam. But they soon go through a strange transformation together—from a couple of know-nothing young men straight out of flight school into marine aviators caught in the middle of a disorienting war. Tough and comical, quiet and boisterous, and always vivid and poetic, Ken Babbs—who cowrote The Last Go Round with fellow Prankster Ken Kesey—is at the top of his craft in this debut novel. Who Shot the Water Buffalo? manages to capture the tumult of the 1960s in all its guts and glory through the eyes of a young man discovering what it means to be beholden to another. “An impeccable, humorous heirloom, a shock of napalm that smells like . . . victory.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)