The War Behind Me

The War Behind Me
Author: Deborah Nelson
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2008-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786726784

In 2005, Deborah Nelson joined forces with military historian Nick Turse to investigate an extraordinary archive: the largest compilation of records on Vietnam-era war crimes ever to surface. The declassified Army papers were erroneously released and have since been pulled from public circulation. Few civilians have seen the documents. The files contain reports of more than 300 confirmed atrocities, and 500 other cases the Army either couldn't't prove or didn't't investigate. The archive has letters of complaint to generals and congressmen, as well as reports of Army interviews with hundreds of men who served. Far from being limited to a few bad actors or rogue units, atrocities occurred in every Army division that saw combat in Vietnam. Torture of detainees was routine; so was the random killing of farmers in fields and women and children in villages. Punishment for these acts was either nonexistent or absurdly light. In most cases, no one was prosecuted at all. In The War Behind Me Deborah Nelson goes beyond the documents and talks with many of those who were involved, both accusers and accused, to uncover their stories and learn how they deal with one of the most awful secrets of the Vietnam War.

The War Behind Me

The War Behind Me
Author: Deborah Nelson
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2008-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465005276

Examines declassified Army papers that discuss the numerous atrocities that took place in nearly every Army division that went into combat in Vietnam and the lack of prosecution or punishment that resulted when they were reported.

Leave No Man Behind

Leave No Man Behind
Author: Garnett Bell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780964766341

Leave No Man Behind is the powerful story of Garnett "Bill" Bell's quest, at great personal cost, to find and bring home the POWs and MIAs of the Vietnam War. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the Vietnamese Communists and his fluency in various regional dialects, he penetrated the system the Communists had created to exploit American POWs for diplomatic concessions, or their remains and personal effects for financial rewards. From his days as a young infantryman on covert missions, to receiving American POWs as part of "Operation Homecoming," being one of the last Americans to get on a helicopter as Saigon fell, slogging his way through forlorn, malaria-ridden camps to interview refugees, returning to Vietnam as the first US government POW/MIA office Chief, and testifying in front of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA affairs, Bell shares his perspective as a witness to history as it unfolded.

Most Dangerous

Most Dangerous
Author: Steve Sheinkin
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2015-09-22
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 159643953X

Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War is New York Times bestselling author Steve Sheinkin's award-winning nonfiction account of an ordinary man who wielded the most dangerous weapon: the truth. “Easily the best study of the Vietnam War available for teen readers.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award winner A National Book Award finalist A Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon book A Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature finalist Selected for the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People List In 1964, Daniel Ellsberg was a U.S. government analyst, helping to plan a war in Vietnam. It was the height of the Cold War, and the government would do anything to stop the spread of communism—with or without the consent of the American people. As the fighting in Vietnam escalated, Ellsberg turned against the war. He had access a top-secret government report known as the Pentagon Papers, and he knew it could blow the lid off of years of government lies. But did he have the right to expose decades of presidential secrets? And what would happen to him if he did it? A lively book that interrogates the meanings of patriotism, freedom, and integrity, the National Book Award finalist Most Dangerous further establishes Steve Sheinkin—author of Newbery Honor book Bomb as a leader in children's nonfiction. This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum. “Gripping.”—New York Times Book Review “A master of fast-paced histories...[this] is Sheinkin’s most compelling one yet. ”—Washington Post Also by Steve Sheinkin: Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights Which Way to the Wild West?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About Westward Expansion King George: What Was His Problem?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War Born to Fly: The First Women's Air Race Across America

War without Mercy

War without Mercy
Author: John Dower
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2012-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307816141

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.” In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.” Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers “a lesson that the postwar generations need most ... with eloquence, crushing detail, and power.”

Thirty Days with My Father

Thirty Days with My Father
Author: Christal Presley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2012-11-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0757316476

When Christal Presley's father was eighteen, he was drafted to Vietnam. Like many men of that era who returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he was never the same. Christal's father spent much of her childhood locked in his room, gravitating between the deepest depression and unspeakable rage, unable to participate in holidays or birthdays. At a very young age, Christal learned to walk on eggshells, doing anything and everything not to provoke him, but this dance caused her to become a profoundly disturbed little girl. She acted out at school, engaged in self-mutilation, and couldn't make friends. At the age of eighteen, Christal left home and didn't look back. She barely spoke to her father for the next thirteen years. To any outsider, Christal appeared to be doing well: she earned a BA and a master's, got married, and traveled to India. But despite all these accomplishments, Christal still hadn't faced her biggest challenge—her relationship with her father. In 2009, something changed. Christal decided it was time to begin the healing process, and she extended an olive branch. She came up with what she called "The Thirty Day Project," a month's worth of conversations during which she would finally ask her father difficult questions about Vietnam. Thirty Days with My Father is a gritty yet heartwarming story of those thirty days of a daughter and father reconnecting in a way that will inspire us all to seek the truth, even from life's most difficult relationships. This beautifully realized memoir shares how one woman and her father discovered profound lessons about their own strength and will to survive, shedding an inspiring light on generational PTSD.

Bait

Bait
Author: James D. McLeroy
Publisher: Casemate
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612008135

A history of one of the least known and most misunderstood battles in the Vietnam War. The strategic potential of the three-day attack of two North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regiments on Kham Duc, a remote and isolated Army Special Forces camp, on the eve of the first Paris peace talks in May 1968, was so significant that former President Lyndon Johnson included it in his memoirs. This gripping, original, eyewitness narrative and thoroughly researched analysis of a widely misinterpreted battle at the height of the Vietnam War radically contradicts all the other published accounts of it. In addition to the tactical details of the combat narrative, the authors consider the grand strategies and political contexts of the U.S. and North Vietnamese leaders. Praise for Bait: The Battle of Kham Duc “This book is a must read for any Vietnam historian or veteran.” —Patrick Brady, Major General, USA (ret.), Medal of Honor Recipient “For an authentic, detailed view of how large battles between U.S. combined-arms forces and regular North Vietnamese Army forces were fought in Vietnam in 1968, Bait: The Battle of Kham Duc is required reading.” —General H. Hugh Shelton, 14th Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff “This first-hand, exhaustively documented account of a large battle in the Vietnam War shows the decisive role of air power in all its forms.” —Carl Schneider, Major General, USAF (ret.) “One of those rare historical narratives that explains in rich detail a battle that was little understood or reported on at the time it was fought but was of strategic importance and heroic dimension.” —Marine Corps Gazette “The account of the battle is both detailed and exceptionally well-written; McLeroy’s participation in the battle adds authenticity to the narrative.... Highly recommended for anyone interested in how large-scale battles were fought in Vietnam at the height of U.S. commitment on the ground there.” —Journal of Military History

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried
Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547420293

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Lurps

Lurps
Author: Robert C. Ankony
Publisher: Hamilton Books
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2008-10-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0761843736

Lurps is the revised edition of the memoir of a juvenile delinquent who drops out of ninth grade to chase his dream of military service. After volunteering for Vietnam, he joins the elite U.S. Army LRRP/Rangers—small, heavily armed long-range reconnaissance teams that patrol deep in enemy-held territory. It is 1968, and the Lurps find themselves in some of the war's hairiest campaigns and battles, including Tet, Khe Sanh, and A Shau. Readers witness all the horrors, humor, adrenaline, and unexpected beauty through the eyes of a green young warrior. Gone are the heroic clichZs and bravado as compelling narrative and realistic dialogue sweep the reader along with a powerful sense that this is actually happening. This poignant coming-of-age story explores the social background that shaped the protagonist's thinking, his uncertain quest for redemption through increased responsibility, the brotherhood of comrades in arms, women and sexual awakening, and the baffling randomness of who lives and who dies.

Our War

Our War
Author: David Harris
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1996
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

David Harris was the most famous draft resister of the Vietnam War. A former student body president of Stanford University, he refused to accept induction and be sent to Vietnam. As a consequence, he spent nearly two years in a federal prison. With his marriage to Joan Baez, he emerged as the leading moral voice of his generation. For the past two decades, he has largely remained silent as the antiwar movement he led stood accused by critics and politicians of everything from cowardice to stab-in-the-back betrayal to frivolity. Now, in Our War, he speaks out in defense of a generation torn by one of the more divisive wars in America's history. Neither a history nor an autobiography, though containing aspects of both. Our War is a compelling, even fevered account of stalking the war's moral shadow through the decades since its ignominious end. It is a powerful rumination on the war, the protest movement, and America's need, even now, so many years later, for a reckoning. Our War is a one-of-a-kind look at who we were, what we did, why we did it, and what those actions made of us, seen through the eyes of a unique and significant American figure and one of our most gifted writers. Part memoir, part polemic, all passion. Our War is a disturbing book, a cry from the heart of an anguished American.