It's probably necessary and certainly a good idea to provide some sort of historical context for the consideration of Herr's work. This can be done by assigning supplementary reading or lecturing on the history of the Vietnam War. As a Vietnam War veteran myself, I relate my own personal experiences of the war to students to compare with Herr's. If you, or any older students, have direct experience with the Vietnam era, this is a useful approach.
Students respond very strongly to the graphic depiction of the inhumanity and insanity of the war.
They want to know more about the causes of the Vietnam War and the political climate of the United States at the time. On a personal level, Herr emphasizes his troubling, even macabre, attraction to the war, its combination of bloodshed, madness, camaraderie, and heroism. Herr is also adept at capturing the officialese of the U.S. military establishment. Many of the formal and stylistic qualities of Dispatches connect Herr to postmodernism. Original Audience Dispatches is a very contemporary book in terms of its values andits point of view.