"Hunt deliciously complicates the history of the 1960s by
introducing a protest element not bound to college campuses or the
counterculture. . . . It is a disturbing story, one that Hunt tells
well."
--"Choice"
"All students of the concluding years of America's longest war
should be grateful to Andrew Hunt for the clarity and grace with
which he has told V.V.A.W.'s story."
--"Canadian Journal of History"
"This extraordinary and deeply moving history explodes all the
encrusted stereotypes of GIs on one side of the barricades and
anti-war protestors on the other. At along last we can again hear
the voices of the thousands of courageous veterans who refused to
be silent about the immoral war in Indochina."
"--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz"
"A splendid addition to the growing literature on Vietnam
veterans and their experiences during and after the war. Hunt's
complex and moving history is a vital corrective to accounts which
equate the anti-war movement with student activists as well as to
those who persist in seeing veterans as passive victims."
"--Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars"
"Explodes one of the most persistent and pernicious myths
attached to the 1960s: that the anti-war movement was anti-GI and
anti-veteran. How could that be, when, as Hunt shows, many of the
most committed and eloquent opponents of the Vietnam war were
themselves veterans of the conflict in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam
Veterans Against the War were heroes then, and they deserve to be
remembered as heroes today."
"--Maurice Isserman, Hamilton College"
"For all kinds of veterans of the Sixties era, this book offers
powerful testimony on the meaning of patriotismand moral courage.
For younger people, whose images of the Sixties are often caught in
the caricatures of the mass media, Hunt's sophisticated account of
veterans' anti-war protest evokes new understanding, and I think,
hard questions about a difficult time."
"--David Farber, author of The Age of Great Dreams"
The anti-Vietnam War movement in the United States is perhaps
best remembered for its young, counterculture student protesters.
However, the Vietnam War was the first conflict in American history
in which a substantial number of military personnel actively
protested the war while it was in progress.
In The Turning, Andrew Hunt reclaims the history of the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an organization that transformed
the antiwar movement by placing Vietnam veterans in the forefront
of the nationwide struggle to end the war. Misunderstood by both
authorities and radicals alike, VVAW members were mostly young men
who had served in Vietnam and returned profoundly disillusioned
with the rationale for the war and with American conduct in
Southeast Asia. Angry, impassioned, and uncompromisingly militant,
the VVAW that Hunt chronicles in this first history of the
organization posed a formidable threat to America's Vietnam policy
and further contributed to the sense that the nation was under
siege from within.
Based on extensive interviews and in-depth primary research,
including recently declassified government files, The Turning is a
vivid history of the men who risked censures, stigma, even
imprisonment for a cause they believed to be "an extended tour of
duty."
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