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Johnny Cash was an American icon, known for his level bass-baritone voice and sombre demeanour, for huge hits like "Ring of Fire" and "I Walk the Line." He's one of the best-selling musicians of all time, and his crossover appeal earned him inductions into the Country Music, Gospel Music, and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame. But he was also the most prominent political artist in the United States, even if he wasn't recognized for it in his own lifetime, or since his death in 2003. Then and now, people have misread Cash's politics, usually accepting the idea of him as a "walking contradiction." Cash didn't fit into easy political categories-liberal or conservative, Red state or Blue state, hawk or dove. Like most people, Cash's politics were remarkably consistent in that they were based not on ideology or scripts-but on emotion, instinct, and identification. He supported Richard Nixon in his Vietnam War policies, while also seeming to stand up both for those asked to fight the war and for those who protested against it. Instead of choosing sides, Cash channelled an emotional discontent that bridged America's youth and the "silent majority." Foley traces the political evolution of the Man in Black as a prominent public citizen. Drawing on untapped archives and new research on social movements and grassroots activism, Citizen Cash offers a major reassessment of a legendary figure.
View the Table of Contents aThe letters collected contain an array of opinions about the
war, of both the hawk and dove variety. The scores of letters in
this collection both praise and vilify Dr. Spock for his antiwar
activism.a "From thousands of letters written to Dr. Benjamin Spock during
the Vietnam War, Foley has carefully culled 218 missives from
America's silent majority. . . . Many may find the frustration,
fear and grief expressed here newly relevant." "These letters--with Michael S. Foley's astute and informed
commentary--make clear why and how so many Americans trusted
Benjamin Spock. The body politic sorely needs a Doctor Spock
today." "Foley has discovered a unique source on the American home front
during the Vietnam War, a perspective that moves us past the usual
images of angry polarization. These powerful letters help us to
consider how war-times induce people to look with new eyes at their
nation and their government." "Few documentary collections offer such an immediate connection
to the years in which the Vietnam War was fought. Reading these
letters now, when the U.S. is once again at war, is a profoundly
moving experience." At the height of the Vietnam War, thousands of Americans wrote moving letters to Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's pediatrician and a high-profile opponent of the war. Personal and heartfelt, thoughtful and volatile, these missives from Middle Americaprovide an intriguing glimpse into the conflicts that took place over the dinner table as people wrestled with this divisive war and with their consciences. Providing one of the first clear views of the home front during the war, Dear Dr. Spock collects the best of these letters and offers a window into the minds of ordinary Americans. They wrote to Spock because he was familiar, trustworthy, and controversial. His book "Baby and Child Care" was on the shelves of most homes, second only to the Bible in the number of copies sold. Starting in the 1960s, his activism in the antinuclear and antiwar movements drew mixed reactions from Americans-some puzzled, some supportive, some angry, and some desperate. Most of the letters come from what Richard Nixon called the "silent majority"--white, middle class, law-abiding citizens who the president thought supported the war to contain Communism. In fact, the letters reveal a complexity of reasoning and feeling that moves far beyond the opinion polls at the time. One mother of young children struggles to imagine how Vietnamese women could endure after their village was napalmed, while another chastises Spock for the "dark shadow" he had cast on the country and pledges to instill love of country in her sons. What emerges is a portrait of articulate Americans struggling mightily to understand government policies in Vietnam and how those policies did or did not reflect their own sense of themselves and their country.
View the Table of Contents aThe letters collected contain an array of opinions about the
war, of both the hawk and dove variety. The scores of letters in
this collection both praise and vilify Dr. Spock for his antiwar
activism.a "From thousands of letters written to Dr. Benjamin Spock during
the Vietnam War, Foley has carefully culled 218 missives from
America's silent majority. . . . Many may find the frustration,
fear and grief expressed here newly relevant." "These letters--with Michael S. Foley's astute and informed
commentary--make clear why and how so many Americans trusted
Benjamin Spock. The body politic sorely needs a Doctor Spock
today." "Foley has discovered a unique source on the American home front
during the Vietnam War, a perspective that moves us past the usual
images of angry polarization. These powerful letters help us to
consider how war-times induce people to look with new eyes at their
nation and their government." "Few documentary collections offer such an immediate connection
to the years in which the Vietnam War was fought. Reading these
letters now, when the U.S. is once again at war, is a profoundly
moving experience." At the height of the Vietnam War, thousands of Americans wrote moving letters to Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's pediatrician and a high-profile opponent of the war. Personal and heartfelt, thoughtful and volatile, these missives from Middle Americaprovide an intriguing glimpse into the conflicts that took place over the dinner table as people wrestled with this divisive war and with their consciences. Providing one of the first clear views of the home front during the war, Dear Dr. Spock collects the best of these letters and offers a window into the minds of ordinary Americans. They wrote to Spock because he was familiar, trustworthy, and controversial. His book "Baby and Child Care" was on the shelves of most homes, second only to the Bible in the number of copies sold. Starting in the 1960s, his activism in the antinuclear and antiwar movements drew mixed reactions from Americans-some puzzled, some supportive, some angry, and some desperate. Most of the letters come from what Richard Nixon called the "silent majority"--white, middle class, law-abiding citizens who the president thought supported the war to contain Communism. In fact, the letters reveal a complexity of reasoning and feeling that moves far beyond the opinion polls at the time. One mother of young children struggles to imagine how Vietnamese women could endure after their village was napalmed, while another chastises Spock for the "dark shadow" he had cast on the country and pledges to instill love of country in her sons. What emerges is a portrait of articulate Americans struggling mightily to understand government policies in Vietnam and how those policies did or did not reflect their own sense of themselves and their country.
An illuminating documentary history that reveals the effects of
U.S. military ventures overseas on more than a century of American
life at home.
Shedding light on an understudied form of opposition to the Vietnam War, Michael Foley tells the story of draft resistance, the cutting edge of the antiwar movement at the height of the war's escalation. Unlike so-called draft dodgers, who evaded the draft by leaving the country or by securing a draft deferment by fraudulent means, draft resisters openly defied draft laws by burning or turning in their draft cards. Like civil rights activists before them, draft resisters invited prosecution and imprisonment. Focusing on Boston, one of the movement's most prominent centers, Foley reveals the crucial role of draft resisters in shifting antiwar sentiment from the margins of society to the center of American politics. Their actions inspired other draft-age men opposed to the war--especially college students--to reconsider their place of privilege in a draft system that offered them protections and sent disproportionate numbers of working-class and minority men to Vietnam. This recognition sparked the change of tactics from legal protest to mass civil disobedience, drawing the Johnson administration into a confrontation with activists who were largely suburban, liberal, young, and middle class--the core of Johnson's Democratic constituency. Examining the day-to-day struggle of antiwar organizing carried out by ordinary Americans at the local level, Foley argues for a more complex view of citizenship and patriotism during a time of war.
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