Against the Vietnam War: Writings by Activists / Edition 1

by Mary Susannah Robbins, Arlene Ash, William Ayers educational theorist, author, and distinguished professor of education and, Daniel Berrigan S.J., Noam Chomsky

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742559141
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	05/22/2007
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.11(w) x 9.08(h) x 0.81(d)

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Vietnam and Iraq
Introduction
Part I: Beginnings
Chapter 1: The Need to Remember
Chapter 2: The Impossible Victory:Vietnam
Part II: The War at Home
Chapter 3: From Ha Ha McNamara
Chapter 4: My Vietnam
Chapter 5: Burning Illusions:The Napalm Campaign
Chapter 6: The Responsibility of Intellectuals
Chapter 7: Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Chapter 8: Why I Joined the Resistance
Chapter 9: A Time to Say No
Chapter 10: Poems
Chapter 11: Chicago 1968: Street-Fighten' Man
Chapter 12: From the Suburbs to Saigon
Chapter 13: Vietnam Comes to Lexington: Memorial Day 1971
Part III: Soldiers against the War
Chapter 14: What Did You Do In the Class War, Daddy?
Chapter 15: War Memorial: Staying Close to a Buddy Twenty-five Years after His Death
Chapter 16: American War Crimes and Vietnam Veterans
Chapter 17: The War against the War
Part IV: Consequences
Chapter 18: Consequences of the Vietnam War and Government Policies of the Seventies
Chapter 19: Passing It On: The Movement for Teaching the Vietnam War in Schools
Chapter 20: Visiting Vietnam
Chapter 21: Chicago 1996: Despite Corporate Media Silence Many Powerful Protests
Part V: Conclusions
Chapter 22: What I Got Out of the War
Chapter 23: Cherishing Vistas, Embracing Human Beings: Toward Peace and Freedom
Chapter 24: Deja Vu All Over Again

What People are Saying About This

William A. Joseph

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.

Gloria Emerson

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.

Editorial Reviews

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

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

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

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.

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

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

From the Publisher

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

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

Twenty-five essays, some contemporaneous with the war, some of more recent authorship, discuss the experience and legacy of the opposition to the Vietnam War. Contributors are such notables as Martin Luther King, Jr., Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Eugene McCarthy, Daniel Berrigan, Carl Ogelsby, and Joan Baez. Paper edition (unseen), $24.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

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