Author: William Thomas Allison Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 1421406446 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 182
Book Description
Allison tells the story of a terrible moment in American history and explores how to deal with the aftermath. On March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed as many as five hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in a village near the South China Sea. In My Lai William Thomas Allison explores and evaluates the significance of this horrific event. How could such a thing have happened? Who (or what) should be held accountable? How do we remember this atrocity and try to apply its lessons, if any? My Lai has fixed the attention of Americans of various political stripes for more than forty years. The breadth of writing on the massacre, from news reports to scholarly accounts, highlights the difficulty of establishing fact and motive in an incident during which confusion, prejudice, and self-preservation overwhelmed the troops. Son of a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War—and aware that the generation who lived through the incident is aging—Allison seeks to ensure that our collective memory of this shameful episode does not fade. Well written and accessible, Allison’s book provides a clear narrative of this historic moment and offers suggestions for how to come to terms with its aftermath.
Author: Howard Jones Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195393600 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 536
Book Description
During the summer of 1971, in the midst of protests and demonstrations in the United States against the Vietnam War, it became evident that something horrific had happened in the remote South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. Three years previously, in March 1968, a unit of American soldiersengaged in seemingly indiscriminate violence against unarmed civilians, killing over 500 people, including women and children. News filtered slowly through the system, but was initially suppressed, dismissed or downplayed by military authorities. By late 1969, however journalists had pursued therumors, when New York Times reporter Seymour Hirsch published an expose on the massacre, the story became a national outrage.Howard Jones places the events of My Lai and the aftermath in a wider historical context. As a result of the reporting of Hirsch and others, the U.S. army conducted a special inquiry, which charged Lieutenant William Calley and nearly 30 other officers with war crimes. A court martial followed, butafter four months Calley alone was found guilty of premeditated murder. He served four and a half months in prison before President Nixon pardoned him and ordered his release.Jones' compelling narrative details the events in Vietnam, as well as the mixed public response to Calley's sentence and to his defense that he had merely been following orders. Jones shows how pivotal the My Lai massacre was in galvanizing opposition to the Vietnam War, playing a part nearly assignificant as that of the Tet Offensive and the Cambodian bombing. For many, it undermined any pretense of American moral superiority, calling into question not only the conduct of the war but the justification for U.S. involvement.Jones also reveals how the effects of My Lai were felt within the American military itself, forcing authorities to focus on failures within the chain of command and to review training methods as well as to confront the issue of civilian casualties - what, in later years, came to be known as"collateral damage."A trenchant and sober reassessment, My Lai delves into questions raised by the massacre that have never been properly answered: questions about America's leaders in the field and in Washington; the seeming breakdown of the U.S. army in Vietnam; the cover-up and ultimate public exposure; and thetrial itself, which drew comparisons to Nuremberg. Based on extensive archival research, this is the best account to date of one of the defining moments of the Vietnam War.
Author: Michael Bilton Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0140177094 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 465
Book Description
Uncovering the secrets behind the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, this is "a brutal, cautionary tale that serves as a painful reminder of the worst that can happen in war."—Chicago Tribune.
Author: David L. Anderson Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 266
Book Description
Appendices contain Ron Ridenhour's letter of March 29, 1969 regarding the My Lai incident and an essay by Jerold Starr entitled: Why Study Vietnam?
Author: Nick Turse Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 0805086919 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
Based on classified documents and interviews, argues that American acts of violence against millions of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War were a pervasive and systematic part of the war.
Author: James S. Olson Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education ISBN: 1319242049 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 222
Book Description
The massacre at My Lai on March 16, 1968 continues to haunt students of the Vietnam War as a moment that challenges notions of American virtue. James Olson and Randy Roberts have combed unpublished testimony and gather a collection of eyewitness accounts from those who were at My Lai and reports from those who investigated the incident and its cover-up.
Author: Seymour M. Hersh Publisher: ISBN: Category : Massacres Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
An account of the My Lai incident based on interviews with the men of Charlie Company and on a limited number of transcripts from the Army's investigation.
Author: Tim O'Brien Publisher: HMH ISBN: 0547523726 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
A “perceptive, affectionate, and often very funny” novel about old college friends at a thirty-year reunion, by the author of The Things They Carried (Boston Herald). From a National Book Award winner who’s been called “the best American writer of his generation” (San Francisco Examiner), July, July tells the story of ten old friends who attended Darton Hall College together back in 1969, and now reunite for a summer weekend of dancing, drinking, flirting, reminiscing—and regretting. The three decades since graduation have brought marriage and divorce, children and careers, hopes deferred and replaced. This witty, heart-rending novel about men and women who came into adulthood at a moment when American ideals and innocence began to fade, a New York Times Notable Book, is “deeply satisfying” (O, the Oprah Magazine) and “almost impossible to put down” (Austin American-Statesman). “A symphony of American life.” —All Things Considered, NPR
Author: William Thomas Allison
Author: Howard Jones
Author: Michael Bilton
Author: David L. Anderson
Author: David L. Anderson
Author: Barak (director) Goodman
Author: Nick Turse
Author: James S. Olson
Author: Seymour M. Hersh
Author: Tim O'Brien