Full coloured book with over 20 pages of full page illustrations to bring the story to real life. Young adults and children especially will fall in love with this book!
The first book-length critical study of the black experience in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, this text interrogates the meaning of heroism based on models from African and African American expressive culture. It focuses on four novels: Captain Blackman (1972) by John A. Williams, Tragic Magic (1978) by Wesley Brown, Coming Home (1971) by George Davis, and De Mojo Blues (1985) by A. R. Flowers. Discussions of the novels are framed within the historical context of all wars prior to Vietnam in which Black Americans fought. The success or failure of the hero on his identity quest is predicated upon the extent to which he can reconnect with African or African American cultural memory. He is engaged therefore in “re-membering,” a term laden with the specificity of race that implies a cultural history comprised of African retentions and an interdependent relationship with the community for survival. The reader will find that a common history of racism and exploitation that African Americans and Vietnamese share sometimes results in the hero’s empathy with and compassion for the so-called enemy, a unique contribution of the black novelist to American war literature.
Shirley, a fourth-grader with dyslexia, struggles with her feelings of inferiority as she compares herself to her intellectually gifted older brother and newly adopted Vietnamese sister.
"During the Vietnam War, hundreds of American prisoners of war faced years of brutal conditions and horrific torture at the hands of Communist interrogators who ruthlessly plied them for military intelligence and propaganda. Determined to maintain their Code of Conduct, the inmates of the Hanoi Hilton and other POW camps developed a powerful underground resistance. To quash it, the North Vietnamese singled out its eleven leaders, Vietnam's own 'Dirty Dozen,' and banished them to an isolated jail that would become know as Alcatraz. None would leave its solitary cells and interrogation rooms unscathed ; one would never return. As these men suffered in Hanoi, their wives launched an extraordinary campaign that would ultimately spark the POW / MIA movement. " --Provided by publisher.
Henry Kissinger's role in the Vietnam War prolonged the American tragedy and doomed the government of South Vietnam The American war in Vietnam was concluded in 1973 after eight years of fighting, bloodshed, and loss. Yet the terms of the truce that ended the war were effectively identical to what had been offered to the Nixon administration four years earlier. Those four years cost America and Vietnam thousands of lives and billions of dollars, and they were the direct result of the supposed master plan of the most important voice in American foreign policy: Henry Kissinger. Using newly available archival material from the Nixon Presidential Library, Kissinger's personal papers, and material from the archives in Vietnam, Robert K. Brigham punctures the myth of Kissinger as an infallible mastermind. Instead, he constructs a portrait of a rash, opportunistic, and suggestible politician. It was personal political rivalries, the domestic political climate, and strategic confusion that drove Kissinger's actions. There was no great master plan or Bismarckian theory that supported how the US continued the war or conducted peace negotiations. Its length was doubled for nothing but the ego and poor judgment of a single figure. This distant tragedy, perpetuated by Kissinger's actions, forever changed both countries. Now, perhaps for the first time, we can see the full scale of that tragedy and the machinations that fed it.
On December 2, 1975, the Lao monarchy was abolished and replaced by the Lao People's Democratic Republic. This marked the end of a controversial U.S. policy in which the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the United States Agency for International Development supplied covert military aid to a nation that was technically neutral. At War in the Shadow of Vietnam is the first book to recount the full story of U.S. covert activity in Laos from 1955 to 1975. Based on newly declassifled materials as well as interviews with scores of key American and Laotian participants, it describes in detail the structure and execution of America's "secret war" and the long-term consequences. In an effort to defend the Lao kingdom - and to disrupt the flow of communist arms, material, and soldiers traversing Laos en route to South Vietnam - the U.S. created and clandestinely administered a covert military aid plan that fueled a unique and little-known conflict. Castle chronicles the close relationship between the CIA and the Lao army, the role of the CIA's proprietary airline, Air America, and the evolution of U.S.-Thailand cooperation and the impact of Thai support on the Lao military assistance program. Until now, the covert war in Laos has been documented only in fragmented and speculative fashion. By synthesizing an enormous amount of source material - much of it gathered in Laos - Castle not only deepens our understanding of American intervention in Southeast Asia but also provides a masterful reconstruction of a secretive and ultimately tragic episode in United States foreign policy.
The Saigon Sisters offers the narratives of a group of privileged women who were immersed in a French lycée and later rebelled and fought for independence, starting with France's occupation of Vietnam and continuing through US involvement and life after war ends in 1975. Tracing the lives of nine women, The Saigon Sisters reveals these women's stories as they forsook safety and comfort to struggle for independence, and describes how they adapted to life in the jungle, whether facing bombing raids, malaria, deadly snakes, or other trials. How did they juggle double lives working for the resistance in Saigon? How could they endure having to rely on family members to raise their own children? Why, after being sent to study abroad by anxious parents, did several women choose to return to serve their country? How could they bear open-ended separation from their husbands? How did they cope with sending their children to villages to escape the bombings of Hanoi? In spite of the maelstrom of war, how did they forge careers? And how, in spite of dislocation and distrust following the end of the war in 1975, did these women find each other and rekindle their friendships? Patricia D. Norland answers these questions and more in this powerful and personal approach to history.
“IN THIS THIRD ACT OF MY LIFE, MUCH HAS BECOME CLEARER. SO MUCH IS OVER, AND I AM OVER SO MUCH . . .” At a certain time in life, we all come to realize what is truly important to us and what just doesn’t matter. For Shirley MacLaine, that time is now. In this wise, witty, and fearless collection of small observations and big-picture questions, she shares with readers all those things that she is over dealing with in life, in love, at home, and in the larger world . . . as well as the things she will never get over, no matter how long she lives. Among the things that Shirley is over: people who repeat themselves (“when you didn’t care what they said the first time”); conservatives and liberals; ill-mannered young people; the poison of celebrity (“Why do so many people want to be famous when they see how it can destroy your life?”); being polite to boring people (“If they won’t stop talking, I go into a trance and meditate”); getting older in Hollywood (“How peaceful it is not to have to look particularly pretty anymore or to wear a size 6”). In the opposite camp, there are some things Shirley will never get over: good lighting (“Marlene Dietrich taught me how to light myself”); gorgeous costars (“The vanity of male actors is an impossible wall to scale”); performing live (“Yes, it is better than sex”); and above all, brave people with curious minds (“Fear is the most powerful weapon of mass destruction”). Along the way, she recalls stories of some of the true greats she has known—Alfred Hitchcock, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, the two Jacks (Lemmon and Nicholson)—and ruminates on the state of Hollywood past and present. She recollects her relationships and romances with politicians (including two prime ministers), scientists, journalists, and costars. An unabashed seeker of truth and unrepentant free spirit, Shirley looks squarely at a world that can irritate, confuse, and provoke her, but that can also delight her with its beauty, humor, and future promise. Reading I’m Over All That will make you feel you have been reunited with an old friend who tells it like it is but never takes herself too seriously. Shirley MacLaine may be over all that, but this irresistible book ensures that we will never get over her.