Against the Vietnam War: Writings by Activists - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0742559149 ISBN 13: 9780742559141

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007

Synopsis

For some, it was a movement for peace. For others, it was a war against the war. In the eyes of certain participants, the movement was cultural and social at its core, a matter of changing society. Still others defined their protests as political and sought out the economic root causes of the war. What many would agree upon was that it was a time when a remarkable generation came of age and a great nation was shaken to its very foundations.

The protest movement in opposition to the Vietnam War was a complex amalgam of political, social, economic, and cultural motivations, factors, and events. Against the Vietnam War brings together the different facets of that movement and its various shades of opinion. Here the participants themselves offer statements and reflections on their activism, the era, and the consequences of a war that spanned three decades and changed the United States of America. The keynote is on individual experience in a time when almost every event had national and international significance.

A foreword by Staughton Lynd considers the events of the Vietnam War in the context of the present war in Iraq.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Susannah Robbins, Ph.D., has taught English literature at Vassar College and runs her own editorial services company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poems, stories, and prints have appeared in various magazines including Ploughshares and Confrontation, and she is the editor of the forthcoming book Peace Not Terror: Leading Thinkers Show the Way Out of Perpetual War.

Review:

This is an outstanding collection of writings by anti-Vietnam war activists that gives a vivid sense of the range of principles and passions that motivated one of the largest and most influential social movements in American history. We hear from scholars and soldiers, senators and students, clergy, journalists, conscientious objectors, grassroots organizers and national mobilizers, some well-known and others from the rank-and-file of the movement. The result is a powerful compilation that should find a place on the reading lists for many courses on the Vietnam War, peace and justice, or the United States in the 1960s. (William A. Joseph, Wellesley College, editor of Introduction to Comparative Politics, 4th Ed.)

Invaluable for reminding readers of the complexity within the antiwar movement. Robbins has composed an anthology with remarkable diversity in points of view, with due attention to resistance to the Vietnam War within the military and by veterans, and with respect for the political capacities of everyday citizens. (H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online)

In its balance between famous and grassroots activists, Against the War offers a wealth of valuable insights into why Americans opposed the Vietnam War and how their opposition took form—and colored their lives forever. (Peace & Change)

There is no other book quite like this one and its importance has only grown over the years. We need to listen to these voices for they mirror a huge number of American lives. One is grateful for this sorrowful and wonderful record. (Gloria Emerson, foreign correspondent for The New York Times in Vietnam from 1969 to 1972 and the author of Winners)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0742559149
• ISBN 13: 9780742559141
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328
• Editor: Robbins Mary Susannah