From Hanoi to Hollywood


Book Description

Probing the large body of emotion-laden, controversial films, From Hanoi to Hollywood is concerned with the retelling of history and the retrospection that such a process involves. In this anthology, an awareness of film as a cultural artifact that molds beliefs and guides action is emphasized, an awareness that the contributors bring to a variety of films.




Dissenting POWs


Book Description

A fresh look at the how US troops played a part in the resistance of US troops to the American war in Vietnam Even if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW coming-home stories. What had gone on behind these prison walls? Along with legends of lionized heroes who endured torture rather than reveal sensitive military information, there were news leaks suggesting that others had denounced the war in return for favorable treatment. What wasn't acknowledged, however, is that U.S. troop opposition to the war was vast and reached well into Hoa Loa Prison. Half a century after the fact, Dissenting POWs emerges to recover this history, and to discover what drove the factionalism in Hoa Lo. Looking into the underlying factional divide between pro-war “hardliners” and anti-war “dissidents” among the POWs, authors Wilber and Lembcke delve into the postwar American culture that created the myths of the Hero-POW and the dissidents blamed for the loss of the war. What they found was surprising: It wasn’t simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officers-versus-enlisted-men standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their pre-captive experience that drew the lines. After the war, the hardcore hero-holdouts—like John McCain—moved on to careers in politics and business, while the dissidents faded from view as the antiwar movement, that might otherwise have championed them, disbanded. Today, Dissenting POWs is a necessary myth-buster, disabusing us of the revisionism that has replaced actual GI resistance with images of suffering POWs—ennobled victims that serve to suppress the fundamental questions of America’s drift to endless war.




How the War Was Remembered


Book Description

One way to analyze the intensely conflicting feelings Americans hold toward the Vietnam War is to see how the war has been portrayed through film. How the War Was Remembered is the first book to analyze Vietnam War films. Auster and Quart create a typology of these films based on their connection to sociohistorical currents such as the Wounded Hero, Superman, Hunter/Hero, and the Survivor. They also combine aesthetic analysis with a social, historical, and cultural critique. How the War Was Remembered by Albert Auster and Leonard Quart is a full-length treatment of filmic portrayals of the Vietnam War. From Samuel Fuller's China Gate to Francis Coppala's Apocalypse Now they examine the major works of an ever growing genre. The book is divided into four parts. The first deals with the genre, and the other three specific types within the genre. Notes, a bibliography, and an index complete the volume. Communication Booknotes One way to analyze the intensely conflicting feelings Americans hold toward the Vietnam War is to see how the war has been portrayed through film. How the War Was Remembered is the first book to analyze Vietnam War films, beginning with China Gate, and ending with Hamburger Hill. Included are analyses of all the major films about the Vietnam War, including Green Berets, The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now, The Killing Fields, Rambo, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket, and others. Auster and Quart create a typology of these films based on their connection to socio-historical currents such as the Wounded Hero, Superman, Hunter/Hero, and the Survivor. They also combine aesthetic analysis with a social, historical, and cultural critique.




From Hell to Hollywood


Book Description

An Illustrated biography about AP photographer Nick Ut, best-known for his iconic "Napalm Girl" image, whose career at The Associated Press spanned more than 51 years. Written by a former head of AP's photography department who was present when Ut's riveting photograph was first transmitted from Vietnam to New York City and recalls that historic moment in great detail. Featuring more than 100 photos from the AP archives and Ut's personal collection, "From Hell to Hollywood" covers Ut's incredible life from his humble beginnings until his celebrated retirement. Included is a Foreword by CBS' Bob Schieffer and an Afterword by former AP War Correspondent Peter Arnett.




Fabricating the Absolute Fake


Book Description

A fascinating exploration of how global cultures struggle to create their own "America" within a post-9/11 media culture, Fabricating the Absolute Fake reflects on what it might mean to truly take part in American pop culture.




Hanoi's War


Book Description

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of U.S. involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the reader from the marshy swamps of the Mekong Delta to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow, all to reveal that peace never had a chance in Vietnam. Hanoi's War renders transparent the internal workings of America's most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and much more wide ranging than it had been previously. Using never-before-seen archival materials from the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as materials from other archives around the world, Nguyen explores the politics of war-making and peace-making not only from the North Vietnamese perspective but also from that of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States, presenting a uniquely international portrait.




George F. Kennan


Book Description

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Biography Widely and enthusiastically acclaimed, this is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most fascinating but troubled figures of the twentieth century by the nation's leading Cold War historian. In the late 1940s, George F. Kennan—then a bright but, relatively obscure American diplomat—wrote the "long telegram" and the "X" article. These two documents laid out United States' strategy for "containing" the Soviet Union—a strategy which Kennan himself questioned in later years. Based on exclusive access to Kennan and his archives, this landmark history illuminates a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.




Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton


Book Description

Why were the American POWs imprisoned at the “Hanoi Hilton” so resilient in captivity and so successful in their subsequent careers? This book presents six principles practiced within the POW organizational culture that can be used to develop high-performance teams everywhere. The authors offer examples from both the POWs’ time in captivity and their later professional lives that identify, in real-life situations, the characteristics necessary for sustainable, high-performance teamwork. The book takes readers inside the mind of James Stockdale, a fighter pilot with a degree in philosophy, who was the senior ranking officer at the Hanoi prison. The theories Stockdale practiced become readily understandable in this book. Drawing parallels between Stockdale’s guiding philosophies from the Stoic Epictetus and the principles of modern sports psychology, Peter Fretwell and Taylor Baldwin Kiland show readers how to apply these principles to their own organizations and create a culture with staying power. Originally intending their book to focus on Stockdale’s leadership style, the authors found that his approach toward completing a mission was to assure that it could be accomplished without him. Stockdale, they explain, had created a mission-centric organization, not a leader-centric organization. He had understood that a truly sustainable culture must not be dependent on a single individual. At one level, this book is a business school case study. It is also an examination of how leadership and organizational principles employed in the crucible of a Hanoi prison align with today’s sports psychology and modern psychological theories and therapies, as well as the training principles used by Olympic athletes and Navy SEALs. Any group willing to apply these principles can move their mission forward and create a culture with staying power—one that outlives individual members.




Disabled Veterans in History


Book Description

Disabled Veterans in History explores the long-neglected history of those who have sustained lasting injuries or chronic illnesses while serving in uniform. The contributors to this volume cover an impressive range of countries in Europe and North America as well as a wide sweep of chronology from the Ancient World to the present. The essays address the emergence of "veteran" as a political category with unique privileges and entitlements and of disabled veterans as a special project--and indeed one of the original projects--of the modern welfare state. The introductory essay, "Finding Disabled Veterans in History," offers perhaps the first attempt at synthesizing knowledge about disabled veterans in Western societies. The other essays examine the representation of disabled veterans from Sophocles' Philoctetes to American feature films; the relations of disabled veterans to the state and society in such public policy issues as pensions, medical care, physical rehabilitation, and job retraining; and the disabled veteran's agency and experience in reentering the peacetime world. Other topics include the place of disabled veterans in societies defeated in war; the fate of disabled veterans in societies experiencing frequent changes of political regimes; the emergence of pensions and vocational rehabilitation for disabled veterans; and the abiding problem of alcohol abuse among disabled veterans. The contributors come from a variety of disciplines, including history, physical rehabilitation, Slavic studies, sociology, communication and media, and museum studies. The book will be of interest especially to researchers in the fields of war and society, the welfare state, and disability studies, as well as those in the medical, rehabilitation, and counseling fields. David A. Gerber is Professor of History, State University at Buffalo. He is the author or editor of five previous books.




Masculinity in Vietnam War Narratives


Book Description

Occurring alongside the Women's Rights, Gay Rights, Civil Rights, and other identity movements of the 1960s, the Vietnam War was part of an era that rescripted gender and other social identity roles for many, if not most, Americans. This book examines the ways in which the war and its accompanying movements greatly altered traditional American conceptions of masculinity, as reflected in discourses ranging from fictional narratives to memoirs, films, and military recruiting advertisements. Analysis of two canonical fiction texts--John Del Vecchio's The 13th Valley and Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country--illustrates the interrelatedness of race, sexuality, disability and masculinity, an approach appearing in no other book-length study. The text illustrates how, decades later, the masculine anxieties of the Vietnam era persist.