Failing Our Veterans

Failing Our Veterans

Author: Mark Boulton

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2014-08

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0814724876

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Returning Vietnam veterans had every reason to expect that the government would take care of their readjustment needs in the same way it had done for veterans of both World War II and Korea. But the Vietnam generation soon discovered that their G.I. Bills fell well short of what many of them believed they had earned. Mark Boulton’s groundbreaking study provides the first analysis of the legislative debates surrounding the education benefits offered under the Vietnam-era G.I. Bills. Specifically, the book explores why legislators from both ends of the political spectrum failed to provide Vietnam veterans the same generous compensation offered to veterans of previous wars. Failing Our Veterans should be essential reading to scholars of the Vietnam War, political history, or of social policy. Contemporary lawmakers should heed its historical lessons on how we ought to treat our returning veterans. Indeed, veterans wishing to fully understand their own homecoming experience will find great interest in the book’s conclusions.


The Politics of Readjustment

The Politics of Readjustment

Author: Wilbur J. Scott

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published:

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9780202367972

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Veterans of all wars face a demanding task in readjusting to civilian life. Vietnam veterans have borne an additional burden, having returned from a controversial war that ended in defeat for the United States and South Vietnam. To address this situation, leaders among the Vietnam veterans and their allies formed organizations of their own to articulate their problems and extract concessions from a reluctant Congress, Federal agencies, and courts. Scott, a former infantry platoon leader in Vietnam, describes the major social movements among his fellow veterans during the period of 196 to 1990 in a lively narrative, combining personal interviews with documentary and press records. Included in the book are the “sociological stories” of protests against the war in Operations RAW and Dewey Canyon III: the successful effort to place post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Third Edition (DSM-III), of the American Psychiatric Association; the building of the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., despite fierce opposition; and the long-running controversy over the herbicide Agent Orange. In the last chapter the author details the sociological thinking that informs his stories, and develops the implications for understanding social movements in general and veterans' issues in particular.


Returning Home from Iraq and Afghanistan

Returning Home from Iraq and Afghanistan

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2010-03-31

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0309152852

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Nearly 1.9 million U.S. troops have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001. Many service members and veterans face serious challenges in readjusting to normal life after returning home. This initial book presents findings on the most critical challenges, and lays out the blueprint for the second phase of the study to determine how best to meet the needs of returning troops and their families.


Vietnam Veterans Since the War

Vietnam Veterans Since the War

Author: Wilbur J. Scott

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780806135977

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War is hell, and the return to civilian life afterwards can be a minefield as well, especially for veterans of a “bad war.” Soldiers coming home from Vietnam faced unique challenges as veterans of a controversial war whose divisiveness permeated every step of the re-entry and readjustment process. In his balanced and highly readable account, Vietnam Veterans since the War, sociologist Wilbur J. Scott tells the story of how the veterans and their allies organized to articulate their concerns and to win concessions from a reluctant Congress, federal agencies, and courts. Scott draws on published records, hours of personal interviews with veterans, and his experience as an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam to explore the major social movements among his fellow veterans in the crucial years from 1967 to 1990, including the antiwar movement, the successful effort to win recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by the American Psychiatric Association, the establishment of veterans’ outreach centers, the controversy over the defoliant Agent Orange and its long-term effects, and the struggle to create the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. His new afterword brings the story up to date and demonstrates that while the United States’ involvement in Vietnam continues to be controversial, many of the tensions engendered by the war have been overcome.


Shook Over Hell

Shook Over Hell

Author: Eric T. Dean

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780674806511

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Vietnam still haunts the American conscience. Not only did nearly 58,000 Americans die there, but--by some estimates--1.5 million veterans returned with war-induced Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This psychological syndrome, responsible for anxiety, depression, and a wide array of social pathologies, has never before been placed in historical context. Eric Dean does just that as he relates the psychological problems of veterans of the Vietnam War to the mental and readjustment problems experienced by veterans of the Civil War. Employing a multidisciplinary approach that merges military, medical, and social history, Dean draws on individual case analyses and quantitative methods to trace the reactions of Civil War veterans to combat and death. He seeks to determine whether exuberant parades in the North and sectional adulation in the South helped to wash away memories of violence for the Civil War veteran. His extensive study reveals that Civil War veterans experienced severe persistent psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, and flashbacks with resulting behaviors such as suicide, alcoholism, and domestic violence. By comparing Civil War and Vietnam veterans, Dean demonstrates that Vietnam vets did not suffer exceptionally in the number and degree of their psychiatric illnesses. The politics and culture of the times, Dean argues, were responsible for the claims of singularity for the suffering Vietnam veterans as well as for the development of the modern concept of PTSD. This remarkable and moving book uncovers a hidden chapter of Civil War history and gives new meaning to the Vietnam War.


Surviving Vietnam

Surviving Vietnam

Author: Bruce Philip Dohrenwend

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0190904445

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Uniquely using historical material and military records as well as personal interviews and clinical diagnoses, Surviving Vietnam focuses on veterans' war-zone experiences and the development in some of PTSD. It addresses controversies regarding reported rates of PTSD and the importance of exposure to traumatic events compared with pre-war personal vulnerability.


Matterhorn

Matterhorn

Author: Karl Marlantes

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 0802197167

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Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever. Written by a highly decorated Marine veteran over the course of thirty years, Matterhorn is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel that brings to life an entire world—both its horrors and its thrills—and seems destined to become a classic of combat literature.