Called to Serve

Called to Serve

Author: Tom Weiner

Publisher: Levellers Press

Published: 2014-05-23

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 0981982042

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Stories of men and women confronted by the Vietnam War. Contains personal stories of Vietnam War Veterans, people who fled the country, people who refused to go to war, people who beat the draft, people who obtained Conscientious Objector status, and people who loved and supported them.


The World According to China

The World According to China

Author: Elizabeth C. Economy

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1509537511

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An economic and military superpower with 20 percent of the world’s population, China has the wherewithal to transform the international system. Xi Jinping’s bold calls for China to “lead in the reform of the global governance system” suggest that he has just such an ambition. But how does he plan to realize it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world? In this compelling book, Elizabeth Economy reveals China’s ambitious new strategy to reclaim the country’s past glory and reshape the geostrategic landscape in dramatic new ways. Xi’s vision is one of Chinese centrality on the global stage, in which the mainland has realized its sovereignty claims over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea, deepened its global political, economic, and security reach through its grand-scale Belt and Road Initiative, and used its leadership in the United Nations and other institutions to align international norms and values, particularly around human rights, with those of China. It is a world radically different from that of today. The international community needs to understand and respond to the great risks, as well as the potential opportunities, of a world rebuilt by China.


Confronting the War Machine

Confronting the War Machine

Author: Michael S. Foley

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 9780807854365

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Focusing on the draft resistance movement in Boston in 1967-68, this study argues that these acts of mass civil disobedience turned the tide in the antiwar movement by drawing the Johnson administration into a confrontation with activists who were largely young, middle-class, liberal, and from suburban backgrounds--the core of Johnson's constituency.


Rough Draft

Rough Draft

Author: Amy J. Rutenberg

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1501739379

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Rough Draft draws the curtain on the race and class inequities of the Selective Service during the Vietnam War. Amy J. Rutenberg argues that policy makers' idealized conceptions of Cold War middle-class masculinity directly affected whom they targeted for conscription and also for deferment. Federal officials believed that college educated men could protect the nation from the threat of communism more effectively as civilians than as soldiers. The availability of deferments for this group mushroomed between 1945 and 1965, making it less and less likely that middle-class white men would serve in the Cold War army. Meanwhile, officials used the War on Poverty to target poorer and racialized men for conscription in the hopes that military service would offer them skills they could use in civilian life. As Rutenberg shows, manpower policies between World War II and the Vietnam War had unintended consequences. While some men resisted military service in Vietnam for reasons of political conscience, most did so because manpower polices made it possible. By shielding middle-class breadwinners in the name of national security, policymakers militarized certain civilian roles—a move that, ironically, separated military service from the obligations of masculine citizenship and, ultimately, helped kill the draft in the United States.


A Time to Stir

A Time to Stir

Author: Paul Cronin

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-01-09

Total Pages: 711

ISBN-13: 0231544332

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For seven days in April 1968, students occupied five buildings on the campus of Columbia University to protest a planned gymnasium in a nearby Harlem park, links between the university and the Vietnam War, and what they saw as the university’s unresponsive attitude toward their concerns. Exhilarating to some and deeply troubling to others, the student protests paralyzed the university, grabbed the world’s attention, and inspired other uprisings. Fifty years after the events, A Time to Stir captures the reflections of those who participated in and witnessed the Columbia rebellion. With more than sixty essays from members of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the Students’ Afro-American Society, faculty, undergraduates who opposed the protests, “outside agitators,” and members of the New York Police Department, A Time to Stir sheds light on the politics, passions, and ideals of the 1960s. Moving beyond accounts from the student movement’s white leadership, this book presents the perspectives of black students, who were grappling with their uneasy integration into a supposedly liberal campus, as well as the views of women, who began to question their second-class status within the protest movement and society at large. A Time to Stir also speaks to the complicated legacy of the uprising. For many, the events at Columbia inspired a lifelong dedication to social causes, while for others they signaled the beginning of the chaos that would soon engulf the left. Taken together, these reflections present a nuanced and moving portrait that reflects the sense of possibility and excess that characterized the 1960s.


“Work or Fight!”

“Work or Fight!”

Author: G. Shenk

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2008-03-11

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9781403961778

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During World War I the U.S. demanded that all able-bodied men work or fight. White men who were husbands and fathers, owned property or worked at approved jobs had the benefits of citizenship without fighting. Others were often barred from achieving these benefits. This book tells the stories of those affected by the Selective Service System.


Draft No. 4

Draft No. 4

Author: John McPhee

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0374712395

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The long-awaited guide to writing long-form nonfiction by the legendary author and teacher Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer’s craft. In a series of playful, expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his career and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the most esteemed writers of recent decades. McPhee offers definitive guidance in the decisions regarding arrangement, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces, and he presents extracts from his work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny. In one essay, he considers the delicate art of getting sources to tell you what they might not otherwise reveal. In another, he discusses how to use flashback to place a bear encounter in a travel narrative while observing that “readers are not supposed to notice the structure. It is meant to be about as visible as someone’s bones.” The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from reporting to drafting to revising—and revising, and revising. Draft No. 4 is enriched by multiple diagrams and by personal anecdotes and charming reflections on the life of a writer. McPhee describes his enduring relationships with The New Yorker and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and recalls his early years at Time magazine. Throughout, Draft No. 4 is enlivened by his keen sense of writing as a way of being in the world.


Working-Class War

Working-Class War

Author: Christian G. Appy

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0807860115

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

No one can understand the complete tragedy of the American experience in Vietnam without reading this book. Nothing so underscores the ambivalence and confusion of the American commitment as does the composition of our fighting forces. The rich and the powerful may have supported the war initially, but they contributed little of themselves. That responsibility fell to the poor and the working class of America.--Senator George McGovern "Reminds us of the disturbing truth that some 80 percent of the 2.5 million enlisted men who served in Vietnam--out of 27 million men who reached draft age during the war--came from working-class and impoverished backgrounds. . . . Deals especially well with the apparent paradox that the working-class soldiers' families back home mainly opposed the antiwar movement, and for that matter so with few exceptions did the soldiers themselves.--New York Times Book Review "[Appy's] treatment of the subject makes it clear to his readers--almost as clear as it became for the soldiers in Vietnam--that class remains the tragic dividing wall between Americans.--Boston Globe


Bird by Bird

Bird by Bird

Author: Anne Lamott

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0307424987

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times). “Superb writing advice…. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” —The New York Times Book Review For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title: “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”