The Vietnam War in American Memory

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Publisher : Culture, Politics, and the Col
ISBN 13 : 9781558499027
Total Pages : 553 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (99 download)

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Book Synopsis The Vietnam War in American Memory by : Patrick Hagopian

Download or read book The Vietnam War in American Memory written by Patrick Hagopian and published by Culture, Politics, and the Col. This book was released on 2011-08 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title presents a penetrating account of the cultural politics surrounding the memorialisation of the Vietnam War. It is a study of American attempts to come to terms with the legacy of the Vietnam War.

Nothing Ever Dies

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067466034X
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (746 download)

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Book Synopsis Nothing Ever Dies by : Viet Thanh Nguyen

Download or read book Nothing Ever Dies written by Viet Thanh Nguyen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction A New York Times Book Review “The Year in Reading” Selection All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War—a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations. “[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War...As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.” —Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times “In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war...[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.” —Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review “Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

Carried to the Wall

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520920708
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Carried to the Wall by : Kristin Ann Hass

Download or read book Carried to the Wall written by Kristin Ann Hass and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 9, 1990, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a ring with letter, a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, a baseball, a photo album, an ace of spades, and a pie were some of the objects left at the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial. For Kristin Hass, this eclectic sampling represents an attempt by ordinary Americans to come to terms with a multitude of unnamed losses as well as to take part in the ongoing debate of how this war should be remembered. Hass explores the restless memory of the Vietnam War and an American public still grappling with its commemoration. In doing so it considers the ways Americans have struggled to renegotiate the meanings of national identity, patriotism, community, and the place of the soldier, in the aftermath of a war that ruptured the ways in which all of these things have been traditionally defined. Hass contextualizes her study of this phenomenon within the history of American funerary traditions (in particular non-Anglo traditions in which material offerings are common), the history of war memorials, and the changing symbolic meaning of war. Her evocative analysis of the site itself illustrates and enriches her larger theses regarding the creation of public memory and the problem of remembering war and the resulting causalities—in this case not only 58,000 soldiers, but also conceptions of masculinity, patriotism, and working-class pride and idealism.

The "Good War" in American Memory

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Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421400022
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis The "Good War" in American Memory by : John Bodnar

Download or read book The "Good War" in American Memory written by John Bodnar and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “Good War” in American Memory dispels the long-held myth that Americans forged an agreement on why they had to fight in World War II. John Bodnar's sociocultural examination of the vast public debate that took place in the United States over the war's meaning reveals that the idea of the "good war" was highly contested. Bodnar's comprehensive study of the disagreements that marked the American remembrance of World War II in the six decades following its end draws on an array of sources: fiction and nonfiction, movies, theater, and public monuments. He identifies alternative strands of memory—tragic and brutal versus heroic and virtuous—and reconstructs controversies involving veterans, minorities, and memorials. In building this narrative, Bodnar shows how the idealism of President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms was lost in the public commemoration of World War II, how the war's memory became intertwined in the larger discussion over American national identity, and how it only came to be known as the "good war" many years after its conclusion.

The American War in Contemporary Vietnam

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253003318
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis The American War in Contemporary Vietnam by : Christina Schwenkel

Download or read book The American War in Contemporary Vietnam written by Christina Schwenkel and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-13 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christina Schwenkel's absorbing study explores how the "American War" is remembered and commemorated in Vietnam today -- in official and unofficial histories and in everyday life. Schwenkel analyzes visual representations found in monuments and martyrs' cemeteries, museums, photography and art exhibits, battlefield tours, and related sites of "trauma tourism." In these transnational spaces, American and Vietnamese memories of the war intersect in ways profoundly shaped by global economic liberalization and the return of American citizens as tourists, pilgrims, and philanthropists.

Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War

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Publisher : Ohio University Press
ISBN 13 : 0821445626
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War by : John A. Wood

Download or read book Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War written by John A. Wood and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades since the Vietnam War, veteran memoirs have influenced Americans’ understanding of the conflict. Yet few historians or literary scholars have scrutinized how the genre has shaped the nation’s collective memory of the war and its aftermath. Instead, veterans’ accounts are mined for colorful quotes and then dropped from public discourse; are accepted as factual sources with little attention to how memory, no matter how authentic, can diverge from events; or are not contextualized in terms of the race, gender, or class of the narrators. Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War is a landmark study of the cultural heritage of the war in Vietnam as presented through the experience of its American participants. Crossing disciplinary borders in ways rarely attempted by historians, John A. Wood unearths truths embedded in the memoirists’ treatments of combat, the Vietnamese people, race relations in the United States military, male-female relationships in the war zone, and veterans’ postwar troubles. He also examines the publishing industry’s influence on collective memory, discussing, for example, the tendency of publishers and reviewers to privilege memoirs critical of the war. Veteran Narratives is a significant and original addition to the literature on Vietnam veterans and the conflict as a whole.

Returns of War

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Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479817066
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis Returns of War by : Long T. Bui

Download or read book Returns of War written by Long T. Bui and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legacy and memory of wartime South Vietnam through the eyes of Vietnamese refugees In 1975, South Vietnam fell to communism, marking a stunning conclusion to the Vietnam War. Although this former ally of the United States has vanished from the world map, Long T. Bui maintains that its memory endures for refugees with a strong attachment to this ghost country. Blending ethnography with oral history, archival research, and cultural analysis, Returns of War considers Returns of War argues that Vietnamization--as Richard Nixon termed it in 1969--and the end of South Vietnam signals more than an example of flawed American military strategy, but a larger allegory of power, providing cover for U.S. imperial losses while denoting the inability of the (South) Vietnamese and other colonized nations to become independent, modern liberal subjects. Bui argues that the collapse of South Vietnam under Vietnamization complicates the already difficult memory of the Vietnam War, pushing for a critical understanding of South Vietnamese agency beyond their status as the war’s ultimate “losers.” Examining the lasting impact of Cold War military policy and culture upon the “Vietnamized” afterlife of war, this book weaves questions of national identity, sovereignty, and self-determination to consider the generative possibilities of theorizing South Vietnam as an incomplete, ongoing search for political and personal freedom.

The Vietnam War in American Memory

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781613761045
Total Pages : 577 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis The Vietnam War in American Memory by : Patrick Hagopian

Download or read book The Vietnam War in American Memory written by Patrick Hagopian and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A study of American attempts to come to terms with the legacy of the Vietnam War, this book highlights the central role played by Vietnam veterans in shaping public memory of the war. Tracing the evolution of the image of the Vietnam veteran from alienated dissenter to traumatized victim to noble warrior, Patrick Hagopian describes how efforts to commemorate the war increasingly downplayed the political divisions it spawned in favor of a more unifying emphasis on honoring veterans and promoting national 'healing.' Veterans themselves contributed to this process by mobilizing in the early 1980s to create a national memorial dedicated to all Americans who fought and died in Southeast Asia. At the same time, President Ronald Reagan, after failing to convince the public that the war was a 'noble cause, ' seized upon the idea of 'healing' as a way of reaffirming the value of military service and, by extension, countering the effects of the so-called Vietnam syndrome - the widespread fear that any assertive foreign policy initiative might result in 'another Vietnam.' It was with this aim in view, Hagopian reveals, that the Reagan administration worked quietly behind the scenes to ensure that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would be completed, despite strong conservative opposition to Maya Lin's bold design"--Jacket.

Forever Vietnam

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Publisher : Culture and Politics in the Company
ISBN 13 : 9781625341006
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis Forever Vietnam by : David Kieran

Download or read book Forever Vietnam written by David Kieran and published by Culture and Politics in the Company. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four decades after its end, the American war in Vietnam still haunts the nation's collective memory. Its lessons, real and imagined, continue to shape government policies and military strategies, while the divisions it spawned infect domestic politics and fuel the so-called culture wars. In Forever Vietnam, David Kieran shows how the contested memory of the Vietnam War has affected the commemoration of other events, and how those acts of remembrance have influenced postwar debates over the conduct and consequences of American foreign policy. Kieran focuses his analysis on the recent remembrance of six events, three of which occurred before the Vietnam War and three after it ended. The first group includes the siege of the Alamo in 1836, the incarceration of Union troops at Andersonville during the Civil War, and the experience of American combat troops during World War II. The second comprises the 1993 U.S. intervention in Somalia, the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In each case a range of actors--military veterans, policymakers, memorial planners, and the general public--used memorial practices associated with the Vietnam War to reinterpret the contemporary significance of past events. A PBS program about Andersonville sought to cultivate a sense of national responsibility for the My Lai massacre. A group of Vietnam veterans occupied the Alamo in 1985, seeing themselves as patriotic heirs to another lost cause. A World War II veteran published a memoir in 1980 that reads like a narrative of combat in Vietnam. Through these and other examples, Forever Vietnam reveals not only the persistence of the past in public memory but also its malleability in the service of the political present.

The Vietnam War in Popular Culture

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 635 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis The Vietnam War in Popular Culture by : Ron Milam

Download or read book The Vietnam War in Popular Culture written by Ron Milam and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-11-07 with total page 635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering many aspects of the Vietnam War that have not been addressed before, this book supplies new perspectives from academics as well as Vietnam veterans that explore how this key conflict of the 20th century has influenced everyday life and popular culture during the war as well as for the past 50 years. How did the experience of the Vietnam War change the United States, not just in the 1950s through the 1970s, but through to today? What role do popular music and movies play in how we think of the Vietnam War? How similar are the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—and now Syria—to the Vietnam War in terms of duration, cost, success and failure rates, and veteran issues? This two-volume set addresses these questions and many more, examining how the Vietnam War has been represented in media, music, and film, and how American popular culture changed because of the war. Accessibly written and appropriate for students and general readers, this work documents how the war that occurred on the other side of the globe in the jungles of Vietnam impacted everyday life in the United States and influenced various entertainment modes. It not only covers the impact of the counterculture revolution, popular music about Vietnam recorded while the war was being fought (and after), and films made immediately following the end of the war in the 1970s, but also draws connections to more modern events and popular culture expressions, such as films made in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Attention is paid to the impact of social movements like the environmental movement and the civil rights movement and their relationships to the Vietnam War. The set will also highlight how the experiences and events of the Vietnam War are still impacting current generations through television shows such as Mad Men.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire

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Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700629343
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire by : Steven Trout

Download or read book The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire written by Steven Trout and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great white angel spreading her wings across the Moreno Valley: this is how one visitor described the memorial standing atop a windswept prominence in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos, New Mexico. A de-facto national Vietnam veterans memorial, built by one family more than a decade before the Wall in Washington, DC, and without aid or recognition from the US government, the chapel at Angel Fire is a testament to one young American’s sacrifice—but also to the profound determination of his family to find meaning in their loss. In The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire, Steven Trout tells the story of Marine Lieutenant David Westphall, who was killed near Con Thien on May 22, 1968, and of the Westphall family’s subsequent struggle to create and maintain a one-of-a-kind memorial chapel dedicated to the memory of all Americans lost in the Vietnam War and to the cause of world peace. Focused primarily on a life lost amid our nation’s most controversial conflict and on the Westphalls’ desperate battle to keep their chapel open between 1971 and 1982, the book’s brisk and moving narrative traces the memorial’s evolution from a personal act of family remembrance to its emergence as an iconic pilgrimage destination for thousands of Vietnam veterans. Documenting the chapel’s shifting messages over time, which include a momentary (and controversial) recognition of the dead on both sides of the war, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire spotlights one American soldier’s tragic story and the monument to hope and peace that it inspired.

A Rift in the Earth

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1628728582
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (287 download)

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Book Synopsis A Rift in the Earth by : James Reston

Download or read book A Rift in the Earth written by James Reston and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Distinguished and Bestselling Historian and Army Veteran Revisits the Culture War that Raged around the Selection of Maya Lin's Design for the Vietnam Memorial A Rift in the Earth tells the remarkable story of the ferocious “art war” that raged between 1979 and 1984 over what kind of memorial should be built to honor the men and women who died in the Vietnam War. The story intertwines art, politics, historical memory, patriotism, racism, and a fascinating set of characters, from those who fought in the conflict and those who resisted it to politicians at the highest level. At its center are two enduring figures: Maya Lin, a young, Asian-American architecture student at Yale whose abstract design won the international competition but triggered a fierce backlash among powerful figures; and Frederick Hart, an innovative sculptor of humble origins on the cusp of stardom. James Reston, Jr., a veteran who lost a close friend in the war and has written incisively about the conflict's bitter aftermath, explores how the debate reignited passions around Vietnam long after the war’s end and raised questions about how best to honor those who fought and sacrificed in an ill-advised war. Richly illustrated with photographs from the era and design entries from the memorial competition, A Rift in the Earth is timed to appear alongside Ken Burns's eagerly anticipated PBS documentary, The Vietnam War. “The memorial appears as a rift in the earth, a long polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth."—Maya Lin "I see the wall as a kind of ocean, a sea of sacrifice. . . . I place these figures upon the shore of that sea." —Frederick Hart

The My Lai Massacre in American History and Memory

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Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780719068911
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (689 download)

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Book Synopsis The My Lai Massacre in American History and Memory by : Kendrick Oliver

Download or read book The My Lai Massacre in American History and Memory written by Kendrick Oliver and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the response of American society to the My Lai massacre and its ambiguous place in American national memory. The author argues that the massacre revelations left many Americans untroubled. It was only when the soldiers most immediately responsible came to be tried that opposition to the conflict grew, for these prosecutions were regarded by supporters of the war as evidence that the national leaders no longer had the will to do what was necessary to win.

Echoes of Combat

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Publisher : Doubleday
ISBN 13 : 9780385475631
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (756 download)

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Book Synopsis Echoes of Combat by : Fred Turner

Download or read book Echoes of Combat written by Fred Turner and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1959 and 1975, more than a million Americans saw combat in Vietnam, a third of whom developed post-traumatic stress disorder. By examining movies, memoirs, political speeches, and even the backwoods rituals of the contemporary men's movement in light of the psychological experiences of veterans, Turner explores the ongoing legacy of the war in popular culture, politics, and national ideals.

War, Genocide, and Justice

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780816670963
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (79 download)

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Book Synopsis War, Genocide, and Justice by : Cathy J. Schlund-Vials

Download or read book War, Genocide, and Justice written by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the three years, eight months, and twenty days of the Khmer Rouge's deadly reign over Cambodia, an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished as a result of forced labor, execution, starvation, and disease. Despite the passage of more than thirty years, two regime shifts, and a contested U.N. intervention, only one former Khmer Rouge official has been successfully tried and sentenced for crimes against humanity in an international court of law to date. It is against this background of war, genocide, and denied justice that Cathy J. Schlund-Vials explores the work of 1.5-generation Cambodian American artists and writers. Drawing on what James Young labels "memory work"--the collected articulation of large-scale human loss--War, Genocide, and Justice investigates the remembrance work of Cambodian American cultural producers through film, memoir, and music. Schlund-Vials includes interviews with artists such as Anida Yoeu Ali, praCh Ly, Sambath Hy, and Socheata Poeuv. Alongside the enduring legacy of the Killing Fields and post-9/11 deportations of Cambodian American youth, artists potently reimagine alternative sites for memorialization, reclamation, and justice. Traversing borders, these artists generate forms of genocidal remembrance that combat amnesic politics and revise citizenship practices in the United States and Cambodia. Engaged in politicized acts of resistance, individually produced and communally consumed, Cambodian American memory work represents a significant and previously unexamined site of Asian American critique.

Tours of Vietnam

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822392356
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Tours of Vietnam by : Scott Laderman

Download or read book Tours of Vietnam written by Scott Laderman and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-16 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tours of Vietnam, Scott Laderman demonstrates how tourist literature has shaped Americans’ understanding of Vietnam and projections of United States power since the mid-twentieth century. Laderman analyzes portrayals of Vietnam’s land, history, culture, economy, and people in travel narratives, U.S. military guides, and tourist guidebooks, pamphlets, and brochures. Whether implying that Vietnamese women were in need of saving by “manly” American military power or celebrating the neoliberal reforms Vietnam implemented in the 1980s, ostensibly neutral guides have repeatedly represented events, particularly those related to the Vietnam War, in ways that favor the global ambitions of the United States. Tracing a history of ideological assertions embedded in travel discourse, Laderman analyzes the use of tourism in the Republic of Vietnam as a form of Cold War cultural diplomacy by a fledgling state that, according to one pamphlet published by the Vietnamese tourism authorities, was joining the “family of free nations.” He chronicles the evolution of the Defense Department pocket guides to Vietnam, the first of which, published in 1963, promoted military service in Southeast Asia by touting the exciting opportunities offered by Vietnam to sightsee, swim, hunt, and water-ski. Laderman points out that, despite historians’ ongoing and well-documented uncertainty about the facts of the 1968 “Hue Massacre” during the National Liberation Front’s occupation of the former imperial capital, the incident often appears in English-language guidebooks as a settled narrative of revolutionary Vietnamese atrocity. And turning to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, he notes that, while most contemporary accounts concede that the United States perpetrated gruesome acts of violence in Vietnam, many tourists and travel writers still dismiss the museum’s display of that record as little more than “propaganda.”

Beyond the Quagmire

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Publisher : University of North Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1574417584
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond the Quagmire by : Geoffrey W. Jensen

Download or read book Beyond the Quagmire written by Geoffrey W. Jensen and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Beyond the Quagmire, thirteen scholars from across disciplines provide a series of provocative, important, and timely essays on the politics, combatants, and memory of the Vietnam War. Americans believed that they were supposed to win in Vietnam. As veteran and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Caputo observed in A Rumor of War, “we carried, along with our packs and rifles, the implicit convictions that the Viet Cong would be quickly beaten and that we were doing something altogether noble and good.” By 1968, though, Vietnam looked less like World War II’s triumphant march and more like the brutal and costly stalemate in Korea. During that year, the United States paid dearly as nearly 17,000 perished fighting in a foreign land against an enemy that continued to frustrate them. Indeed, as Caputo noted, “We kept the packs and rifles; the convictions, we lost.” It was a time of deep introspection as questions over the legality of American involvement, political dishonesty, civil rights, counter-cultural ideas, and American overreach during the Cold War congealed in one place: Vietnam. Just as Americans fifty years ago struggled to understand the nation’s connection to Vietnam, scholars today, across disciplines, are working to come to terms with the long and bloody war—its politics, combatants, and how we remember it. The essays in Beyond the Quagmire pose new questions, offer new answers, and establish important lines of debate regarding social, political, military, and memory studies. The book is organized in three parts. Part 1 contains four chapters by scholars who explore the politics of war in the Vietnam era. In Part 2, five contributors offer chapters on Vietnam combatants with analyses of race, gender, environment, and Chinese intervention. Part 3 provides four innovative and timely essays on Vietnam in history and memory. In sum, Beyond the Quagmire pushes the interpretive boundaries of America’s involvement in Vietnam on the battlefield and off, and it will play a significant role in reshaping and reinvigorating Vietnam War historiography.