Marine Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas is beginning his 13 month tour of duty in Vietnam and leading Bravo Company as they hump through the mountainous jungle just south of the DMZ.  He and his men are constantly on edge, engaging the enemy and following impossible orders from politically motivated superiors as morale collapses amidst brutal death and suffering.  Monsoon rains, mud, leeches, stifling heat, tigers, snakes, disease and malnutrition complicate the Sisyphean ordeal of surviving each long day and night.  Like Norman Mailer’s The Naked and Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line, Marlantes thrusts the reader into the horror of ambushes, firefights, and hand-to-hand combat.  Not for the faint of heart – Matterhorn is destined to join those classics of combat literature.

The author claims crows are the most common native wild being that humans regularly encounter. The populations of these black birds that star in myths and folktales of the ages are rising exponentially, mirroring human population growth.  Every one of us probably has a crow story.  Haupt shares her experiences of tending to an injured fledgling crow, observes “intelligent” and “caring” behavior from a crow family, and relates how crows, in some ways are like primates (they use tools)! Studying these familiar birds and their fascinating ways Haupt opens our eyes to the deeply relevant question of our own place in the urban /wild landscape and how we interact with our fellow creatures.