The kindly and indulgent boyfriend, GuvBoy, left for the local library book sale with instructions to purchase anything that looked good about the Vietnam war and several other blog-related topics. As a former journalist and all-around smart person, he knows how to figure that out, so I knew I was in good hands. As it turns out, he returned with some good ones, that seem to have been lost to history. So I thought I would point them out here, in case they help anyone else who's interested in digging deeper into what went on and what the combatants experienced.
(In case it's never been clear what orientation the categories of books in the various columns flanking this blog have, here's the breakdown:
The column to the right here on this blog lists various books of poetry about war, any war; followed by a section of all sorts of excellent first-person narratives about various wars, the better to give us an understanding of what veterans went through. Those first-person narratives are organized by war, to make it more self-explanatory. The column to the left here lists therapeutic resources for dealing with combat trauma up on top; and various miscellaneous things that get mentioned on the blog further down).
For Vietnam-era veterans who want their families (i.e., children and grandchildren) to better understand what the war was like, I'm still recommending "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement," by Gerald Nicosia, because while he's talking about the veterans movement, in 700 pages, he's capturing all sorts of history of the era and feelings for and against. The book is actually pretty neutrally, historically written, and it's a very good resource. I've blogged about it earlier, here. Except for its oversight of the extremely impressive (to me, anyway) Lawrence Kolb, M.D., I can't say enough good things about Nicosia's book. There's a fascinating wealth of information about the legitimization of the PTSD diagnosis in the book as well.
Here are a few others:
Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History, is also good. The cover calls it "The first complete account of Vietnam at war" -- maybe it should actually say, the first complete account of Americans at war in Vietnam -- so it has its place. It was written as the companion to the long-ago PBS series of the same name.
Plus three new finds, though, thanks to the pleasantly-disposed boyfriend and his handful of small bills:
"Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation," by Myra McPherson; "Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam," by Arthur Egendorf; and "Vietnam: the Valor and the Sorrow" (from the home front to the front lines in words and pictures), by Thomas D. Boettcher.
Each of these books has a particular reason why it's good and worth perusing. McPherson was a Washington Post and New York Times reporter who carried on 500 interviews with veterans and others to get her material; Egendorf, who Nicosia writes about in his history, was a Harvard graduate, Vietnam vet and psychologist who became one of the founders of the first rap groups to help veterans deal with the personal fallout from the war; and Boettcher was a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy who served in Vietnam in the press corps. His book has more than 500 photographers, many never before published, which adds greatly to its interest (it's also very well-written and well-paced, not deadly.)
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Additionally, we've already blogged about Lori Sekala's great bibliography on PTSD and war in the blog post entitled, "A Good Librarian is a Wonderful Resource," linked here. (Sekala is the collection management librarian at the U.S. Army War College library). But here's something we haven't talked about yet -- possibly THE definitive bibliography on books about the Vietnam war, to better understand the experience. It's linked here. Enjoy :-)
