Christian G. Appy - Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides

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Table of Contents

Praise for Patriots

Christian Appys Patriots should do for the Vietnam War what Studs Terkels The Good War did for World War II: remove it from the realm of mythology and ground it in the vivid memories of people who lived and fought in it and against it, who ran it and suffered from it. This remarkable book is a genuine oral history of the Vietnam War, true to its title, from all sides of the conflict. Until now, no single book on the war has included so many different American perspectives and so varied a group of Vietnamese voices. That not only makes the book unique, it also means you can follow the war from its true beginnings... all the way to Patty and Earl Hopper Sr., still convinced that Vietnam holds American POWs. By bringing Vietnamese voices and experiences to the story of what is known in Vietnam as the American War, Appy challenges us in unexpected ways. No review can do justice to the riches in Patriots.

Chicago Tribune

Inspired... Patriots is a gem of a book. Appy gives his participants ample room to tell their stories, but his own contribution to the success of the volume is considerable. [The] chapter introductions, which are crucial in lending cohesion to the overall enterprise, are authoritative and elegantly written.

The Washington Post

As a Vietnam combat veteran who participated in most of the major historical battles of 1968, Im understandably ambivalent about reading Vietnam books, fiction and nonfiction. Christian G. Appys Patriots is a different and even-handed approach to a still controversial and divisive subject. The overall effect of listening to different voices on the same sore subject is eye-opening and revealing. Each voice sounds fresh, as if the storyteller had been waiting for decadesand most of them hadto tell their story, to relieve themselves of something that had been bothering them for a long time, or just to set the record straight in their own minds. At the end, I for one felt more than satisfied because I had reached a greater understanding of the event that changed my life and the life of the nation.

Nelson DeMille, author of The Generals Daughter, Word of Honor, and Plum Island

Extraordinarily compelling... fresh and insightful after all these years, indeed, it often sounds prescient. These voices, obscure and now often forgotten, constitute a national resource of enormous importance. If there are truths generated by war, they can usually only be found in the lives that partake of it. In the pages of Patriots , those lives haunt us still.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

No one has even attempted what Christian Appy has achieved in Patriots. The subtitle is accurate: not both sides, note, but all sides: south, north, military, civilian, protestor, soldier, commander, observer, journalist, photographer, poet, novelist, exile, refugee, survivoreven the dead, remembered by the living. Brilliant and painful, this is the most vivid account of the Vietnam War I have ever read. If I were asked to recommend a single book on the war it would be this one.

Marilyn Young, professor of history, New York University, and author of The Vietnam Wars

This superb volume is quite possibly the best in a crowded field. The book is distinguished by historian Appys skillfully conducted interviews and his excellent introductory essay on all periods of the war, beginning in 1945. His book is ideal for... anyone who wants readable personal accounts of how the war permeated all aspects of society, culture, and politics.

Library Journal

[It] may be an impossible task, but Christian G. Appys Patriots does better than anyone can expect in its attempt to cover the vast scope of the Vietnam War... offering vivid snapshots of not only the political and military aspects of the war, but also its social, cultural and psychological effects. Appys sources are as diverse and extensive as they are passionate and sincere. Together with the authors well-written and concise chapter introductionswhich give readers a detailed, chronological history of the war along with Appys own analysisthese interviews cover an amazing amount of ground. What is most impressive is that Patriots lives up to its subtitle and addresses all sides of the war. History has a tendency to repeat itself, and Patriots may be an important book now more than ever. Patriots presents the lessons of the Vietnam War through chilling recollections, inspiring stories of bravery and heart-wrenching tales of barbarism. The stories it tells range from the anecdotal to the profound, and this book will become an indispensable part of Vietnam War history.

Rocky Mountain News

Patriots author Christian G. Appy has put together a remarkable chronicle of the Vietnam War years. He dissects the era, lets the pieces speak for themselves and sews them together with a running narrative to give the whole bloody thing a historical context not achieved in one volume until now. You can open this book to any page and find an interesting story.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

There is an art to producing good oral history.... The best oral histories are carefully and conscientiously put together. The best oral historians take their raw material and shape it into one readable, seamless, enlightening story. That is certainly the case with Christian G. Appys massive Patriots, which also lives up to its subtitle by covering all sides of the Vietnam War. Mr. Appy gives the participants plenty of room to tell their stories. He also provides on-the-mark, often insightful introductions to each entry. This book provides a many faceted, informed perspective on what was at stake in Americas longest and most controversial overseas war.The Dallas Morning News

In the vast literature on Vietnam, Christian Appys Patriots is unique. Breathtaking in its scope, this is a fascinating and moving oral history. Its hard to believe one man did it all. The voices come from Vietnam and America, from men and women, from the Establishment and the protest movement, from soldiers and journalistsmoving personal stories which take us back to that tumultuous time, but also make us think hard about today.

Howard Zinn, author of A Peoples History of the United States

PENGUIN BOOKS

PATRIOTS

Christian G. Appy holds a Ph.D. in American civilization and has taught at both Harvard and MIT, where he was an associate professor of history. He is the author of Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam and the editor of a book series called Culture, Politics, and the Cold War. He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

For Shirley K. Appy

PREFACE

Five years ago I began traveling the United States and Vietnam to interview people from all sides of a war that pitted the two nations against each other, created bitter hostilities within both, aroused global alarm, and unleashed the most costly and ruinous destruction of any conflict since World War II. I wanted to explore the vast range of war-related memories that rarely appear together between the covers of a single book.

In the United States today, Vietnam is shorthand for our longest and most divisive foreign war, and it is often evoked as little more than a political or media clich, a glib reference to a controversial war that ended badly, a time of domestic turmoil, a history to be avoided in the future. For many Americans, the wars meaning has been winnowed down to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., where we stand in silence, filled with emotion, but unsure how to move beyond our private reflections to a broader engagement with this daunting subject. And now that two of every five Americans were born after the fighting ended, a growing number of our citizens draw most of their reflections from Hollywood movies about U.S. combat soldiers that tell us almost nothing of how the war began, why it bred so much dissent, or why it lasted so long.

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