Long Shadows: Veterans' Paths to Peace

Winner of the 2008 Montaigne Medal, an award designated by the Hoffer Awards for thought-provoking titles. These are veterans with a point of view whose trajectories of belief had many different starting points, took many different paths, but in every case led to an abhorrence of war.; anti-war feeling among veterans has not been given the attention it deserves, and this volume is an attempt to correct that imbalance, writes Howard Zinn in the Foreword. Veterans speak of war and peace with a certain creditability that others lack. Having experienced war and peace more intimately than many others, their responses and thoughts reflect the life-defining or life-changing capacity of war. Long Shadows is a collection of 19 interviews with veterans who candidly discuss their paths from military involvement to peace activism. Beginning with a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War and ending with a veteran of the Iraq war, each tells a unique story with an individual perspective, and yet, each echos the message of the futility and destruction of war. The long shadows of war are evident in each of the interviews, with each participant hoping that his or her experience will inform others and contribute to the public discussion.

About the editor and contributors: David Giffey, the editor, is a photographer, editor, and writer. He served as a combat journalist in Vietnam. Other contributors are: Clarence Kailin, Sidney Podell, Robert Kimbrough, Will Williams, Mike Boehm, Joseph Cammarano, Frances Wiedenhoeft, and Patrick Wilcox.