More than fifty years in the making, Paul Tipton's Strange New Cowboys: My Vietnam Stories conveys the experiences of the young American men sent to fight the confusing and controversial war in Southeast Asia. Using a unique approach to fiction, mixing poetry and short story vignettes into the traditional narrative passages, Tipton gives the reader up close views of emotionally challenging episodes in combat, in boredom, in escapism, and after the war the personal challenges of coming home, of reconnecting, of finding one's way in a hostile and newly unfamiliar America. In the Preface to Strange New Cowboys, author Paul Tipton writes, "The stories are based on my experiences in-country and on the people I met while there. They are fictional stories, although too much of it is factual and I carry those parts with me daily. However, I am no hero and the characters in these stories are antiheroes. These are the stories that my experiences have generated over the last fifty years while trying to work out what really happened-and why."