Shrapnel in the Heart

Shrapnel in the Heart PDF

Author: Laura Palmer

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-09-29

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0307765636

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For the first time, one book gives voice to the haunting, painful, tender, and healing tales of those who lost so much in America's least popular war.

Letters on the Wall

Letters on the Wall PDF

Author: Michael Sofarelli

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-11-30

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0062043374

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“I was very moved by LETTERS ON THE WALL, it brought back a lot of memories...a great book.” — -Nelson DeMille, author of WILD FIRE

Shrapnel in the Heart

Shrapnel in the Heart PDF

Author: Laura Palmer

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1988-11-05

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0394759885

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For the first time, one book gives voice to the haunting, painful, tender, and healing tales of those who lost so much in America's least popular war.

Tangled Memories

Tangled Memories PDF

Author: Marita Sturken

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1997-02-28

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9780520918122

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Analyzing the ways U.S. culture has been formed and transformed in the 80s and 90s by its response to the Vietnam War and the AIDS epidemic, Marita Sturken argues that each has disrupted our conventional notions of community, nation, consensus, and "American culture." She examines the relationship of camera images to the production of cultural memory, the mixing of fantasy and reenactment in memory, the role of trauma and survivors in creating cultural comfort, and how discourses of healing can smooth over the tensions of political events. Sturken's discussion encompasses a brilliant comparison of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the AIDS Quilt; her profound reading of the Memorial as a national wailing wall—one whose emphasis on the veterans and war dead has allowed the discourse of heroes, sacrifice, and honor to resurface at the same time that it is an implicit condemnation of war—is particularly compelling. The book also includes discussions of the Kennedy assassination, the Persian Gulf War, the Challenger explosion, and the Rodney King beating. While debunking the image of the United States as a culture of amnesia, Sturken also shows how remembering itself is a form of forgetting, and how exclusion is a vital part of memory formation.

War Stories

War Stories PDF

Author: Gary Kulik

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2009-10-31

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 1597976377

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War stories are mostly innocent fables and understood as such by both the teller and the hearer. However, they have long been used for political and national purposes, and those about the war in Vietnam were no exception, as painfully evidenced in the 2004 presidential campaign. John Kerry campaigned as a war hero. His opponents cast him as a liar and a traitor and their war story prevailed. ""War Stories"" delves into the myths associated with the Vietnam veteran s experience and looks at them through the war stories they told and continue to tell. Kulik conducts an extremely thorough review of the Vietnam literature and interviews participants wherever possible, poking holes in the war myths of people throughout the political spectrum. War Stories discusses how returning Vietnam vets were treated and delves into the myths that atrocities were commonplace, that all veterans of that war suffer from PTSD, and that all are guilt ridden. Kulik s research and analysis of such stories lies at the heart of this book s originality and provides a new perspective on the Vietnam War for scholars, students, and general readers. His purpose in exposing such stories is not to deny or minimize American war crimes in Vietnam but to cut through the cant of false stories so that we retain our outrage at those that are true. As we are faced with future war stories from Iraq and Afghanistan and their likely exploitation, the moral stance and the lessons learned in this book will be especially important."

Perspectives on Civil Religion

Perspectives on Civil Religion PDF

Author: Gerald Parsons

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1351750801

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This title was first published in 2002: Perspectives on Civil Religion introduces the concept of civil religion, examines the use of the concept in recent scholarship and investigates examples of civil religion in the contemporary world. The book sets out to explore tensions and complexities in the relationship between the 'sacred' and the 'secular', and draws on two major case studies for in-depth illustration of key issues. It looks first at the development of rituals of remembrance from the American civil war, British and American responses to the two world wars and the controversial Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. It then considers civil religion in the Italian city of Siena, especially in relation to the Palio of Siena and Sienese devotion to the Virgin. The five textbooks and Reader that make up the Religion Today Open University/Ashgate series are: From Sacred Text to Internet; Religion and Social Transformations; Perspectives on Civil Religion; Global Religious Movements in Regional Context; Belief Beyond Boundaries; Religion Today: A Reader

Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land

Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land PDF

Author: Andrew Wiest

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-05-20

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1782003258

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Fifteen renowned authors from widely varied backgrounds examine the Vietnam War, providing a fresh insight into this controversial conflict, even for those who have 'read it all before'. “This is a superb and compelling reexamination of the major historical, political, and ethical issues that continue to smoulder many decades after the conclusion of the Vietnam War, I highly recommend Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land. It is among the best books of its kind that I've encountered over the last dozen years.” - Tom O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried First-hand accounts, maps and contemporary photographs, analysis from the soldiers involved and new perspectives from combatants on both sides provide an incisive investigation into a fascinating and terrible war.

The Unfinished War

The Unfinished War PDF

Author: Walter H. Capps

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 1990-08-31

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780807004111

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Vietnam and the American Conscience Revised Edition "A provocative and noteworthy contribution to the dialogue on the meaning of Vietnam." -San Francisco Review of Books Walter Capps is professor of religious studies the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Carried to the Wall

Carried to the Wall PDF

Author: Kristin Ann Hass

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 0520920708

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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.