This compelling book makes readers think about the Vietnam War in a different way. It asks tough questions, such as if there was any benefit to a war that not only killed millions but also divided America, split generations, and created a rift between America and the rest of the world. With dynamic spreads featuring pictures and easy-to-follow text, this book will inspire readers not only to study history but also to ask the all-important critical questions about the past so that we don’t make the same mistakes.
This compelling book makes readers think about the Vietnam War in a different way. It asks tough questions, such as if there was any benefit to a war that not only killed millions but also divided America, split generations, and created a rift between America and the rest of the world. With dynamic spreads featuring pictures and easy-to-follow text, this book will inspire readers not only to study history but also to ask the all-important critical questions about the past so that we don’t make the same mistakes.
Two brothers--Chuck and Tom Hagel--who went to war in Vietnam, fought in the same unit, and saved each other's life. They disagreed about the war, but they fought it together. 1968. America was divided. Flag-draped caskets came home by the thousands. Riots ravaged our cities. Assassins shot our political leaders. Black fought white, young fought old, fathers fought sons. And it was the year that two brothers from Nebraska went to war. In Vietnam, Chuck and Tom Hagel served side by side in the same rifle platoon. Together they fought in the Mekong Delta, battled snipers in Saigon, chased the enemy through the jungle, and each saved the other's life under fire. But when their one-year tour was over, these two brothers came home side-by-side but no longer in step--one supporting the war, the other hating it. Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and his brother Tom epitomized the best, and withstood the worst, of the most tumultuous, shocking, and consequential year in the last half-century. Following the brothers' paths from the prairie heartland through a war on the far side of the world and back to a divided America, Our Year of War tells the story of two brothers at war--a gritty, poignant, and resonant story of a family and a nation divided yet still united.
Based on classified documents and interviews, argues that American acts of violence against millions of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War were a pervasive and systematic part of the war.
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman, author of the World War I masterpiece The Guns of August, grapples with her boldest subject: the pervasive presence, through the ages, of failure, mismanagement, and delusion in government. Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, from Montezuma’s senseless surrender of his empire in 1520 to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam. Throughout The March of Folly, Tuchman’s incomparable talent for animating the people, places, and events of history is on spectacular display. Praise for The March of Folly “A glittering narrative . . . a moral [book] on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence.”—The New York Times Book Review “An admirable survey . . . I haven’t read a more relevant book in years.”—John Kenneth Galbraith, The Boston Sunday Globe “A superb chronicle . . . a masterly examination.”—Chicago Sun-Times
The book details the adventures of the eldest son of a working-class family from the urban Midwest who enters the army in the late 1960s and is transformed from a naive cowboy idolizer into a devious, larcenous, gun-carrying reprobate. He delves into the world of black market activities, prostitutes, drugs, and race relations and emerges a callous man for whom death is divided into two basic classes: bodies that are sent away and those that are dismissed as the impersonal enemy. Raised in an all-white environment and having had only one long-term exposure to a person of color, during a short period attending a seminary, he was taught to treat others fairly or to ignore them if their behavior warranted it. In the army, he encounters young men from every part of the country. Some require special treatment, while others introduce him to layers of the spectrum of life, which he did not know existed. He receives specialized training and, instead of being sent directly to Vietnam, is dispatched to Germany to participate in the Cold War in a very active manner. While in the army from 1967 to 1970, he wrote over five hundred letters, many to a girl with whom relations ended upon his return from Vietnam. She gave all the letters back, and they stayed on a shelf, waiting to fulfill the promise to someday write a book about the things that happened. His father also returned the letters that were written to him, which described the language used, the abuse suffered, and the status of race and homosexual relations, as well as the horrors of war, in no uncertain terms. The letters remained untouched for nearly fifty years, but he would sometimes recount an incident to friends or family, receiving in return an urging to write the stories for them. His older daughter chronologically organized the letters, while his other daughter edited the manuscript as it was being written. The idea to write this book, as well as its title, struck while joking with fellow GI’s in the barracks about someday telling the world that no one would believe the things they were doing in the name of serving their country. They would develop audacious pranks to outdo one another or minimalize a situation and just be glad to live another day. They often remarked about spending parents’ and grandparents’ tax money on atrocious wastes of effort and material. The military personnel during the late ’60s fit three distinct categories: juicers, heads, and straights. The first included men from every state, since almost everyone drank now and then. The second referred to the use of acid by some, while smokers and dopers fit right in. Lastly, there were some individuals who preferred not to get wasted by any means. Homosexuals and blacks could occupy any of the groups. The story details army life for a middle-class Midwest man who is introduced to conditions and concepts he had never imagined in Europe, then in the States, and finally in Vietnam. The intended audience is adult, mostly because of the language and the portrayal of man’s cruelty to man, while on the other hand, the book is both nostalgic as well as informative.
A superb new graphic memoir in which an inspired artist/storyteller reveals the road that brought his family to where they are today: Vietnamerica GB Tran is a young Vietnamese American artist who grew up distant from (and largely indifferent to) his family’s history. Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past—and to focus on their children’s future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father’s remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America—a foreign land they couldn’t even imagine—where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation. In telling his family’s story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention—and of the gift of the American immigrants’ dream, passed on to their children. Vietnamerica is an unforgettable story of family revelation and reconnection—and a new graphic-memoir classic.
From his vantage point as a chief official with the CIA and army intelligence, Mr. Allen reveals specifically how American leaders, unwilling to face up to bad news from intelligence sources, largely excluded intelligence from important policy deliberations until it was too late.
The long-awaited memoir from John Fogerty, the legendary singer-songwriter and creative force behind Creedence Clearwater Revival. Creedence Clearwater Revival is one of the most important and beloved bands in the history of rock, and John Fogerty wrote, sang, and produced their instantly recognizable classics: "Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising," "Born on the Bayou," and more. Now he reveals how he brought CCR to number one in the world, eclipsing even the Beatles in 1969. By the next year, though, Creedence was falling apart; their amazing, enduring success exploded and faded in just a few short years. Fortunate Son takes readers from Fogerty's Northern California roots, through Creedence's success and the retreat from music and public life, to his hard-won revival as a solo artist who finally found love.
From the moment his first novel was published, Larry Heinemann joined the ranks of the great chroniclers of the Vietnam conflict--Philip Caputo, Tim O’Brien, and Gustav Hasford.In the stripped-down, unsullied patois of an ordinary soldier, draftee Philip Dosier tells the story of his war. Straight from high school, too young to vote or buy himself a drink, he enters a world of mud and heat, blood and body counts, ambushes and firefights. It is here that he embarks on the brutal downward path to wisdom that awaits every soldier. In the tradition of Naked and the Dead and The Thin Red Line, Close Quarters is the harrowing story of how a decent kid from Chicago endures an extraordinary trial-- and returns profoundly altered to a world on the threshold of change.
