George Epstein: ‘Whiplash,’ a bad book worth a read

I read almost everything. Fiction in the form of mysteries, thrillers, character studies, science fiction, and lots of historical fiction. I read books on math and science and anthropology and sociology. I read biographies and general history and military history. I do not read autobiographies and memoirs. They are filled with lies because the authors can’t face the truth about themselves.

“Whiplash: When the Vietnam War Rolled a Hand Grenade into the Animal House,” by Denis O’Neill, is even worse. It’s a self-published fictionalized memoir (easy to find as a Kindle book). But a fellow Dartmouth alum lent me a copy and said I should read it. It’s a version of the author’s senior year at Dartmouth in 1969-70. That may seem to be a book for a minuscule audience, but it just might be worth a wider readership.