"Gold's technique has a directness that carries the reader through his slim volume almost as though the words had a physical force of their own." -- The Arizona Daily Star "[Sergeant Dickinson] develops a compelling portrait of a soldier entangled in the ruinous affliction of violence and guilt that is both moving and disturbing." -- The Bloomsbury Review "This book scares the hell out of me--and it should. It puts me in mind of From Here to Eternity and Michael Herr's Dispatches; the first, not a comparison in scope but because Jones depicted the Army as a place that, contrary to popular myth, made men no better than they were (sometimes, considerably worse); the second, because Herr's excellent reportage exactly conveyed the sense of how absolutely alone in war men can sometimes be. Jerry Gold isn't talking about the glory of war, nor the 'romance' of death. [Sergeant Dickinson] could be--is--about any war. All enemies are the same and distinctions cease to matter and the only reality is that men die. As I said, this book scares me.

This truth should terrify." -- Andrew Gettler , Chiron Review "There are books about wars and books about War. The former tend to be historical or personal remembrances, while the latter may be removed from any real experience of this century's most lasting impression--one of nearly continual war and upheaval. In [Sergeant Dickinson] by Jerome Gold, we find one of those true blends of the personal and the universal. This is the particular novel of Vietnam experience that manages to express the universal of combat. The conversations with fellow soldiers and realistic barracks life would be reason enough to buy this novel. But the author digs deeper, and shows us a mind beginning to collapse inward from the very force of combat. It is no nervous breakdown that the soldier undergoes in this novel; rather, it is a moral breakdown.

The novel comes across as a true and courageous narrative of one man's trip into a not-too-distant hell." -- Phillip A. Collins , The Fiction Review.