Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us - Hardcover

Harris, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812925769 ISBN 13: 9780812925760

Publisher: Crown, 1996

Synopsis

David Harris was the most famous draft resister of the Vietnam War. A former student body president of Stanford University, he refused to accept induction and be sent to Vietnam. He spent nearly two years in a federal prison as a consequence. With his marriage to Joan Baez, he emerged as the leading moral voice of his generation.

For the past two decades, he has largely remained silent as the anitwar movement he led stood accused by critics and pundits of everything from cowardice to frivolity. Now, in Our War, he speaks out in defense of a generation torn by the most divisive war in America's history.

Neither a history nor a memoir, though containing aspects of both, Our War is a compelling, even fevered account of stalking the war's moral shadow through the decades since its ignominious end. This is a one-of-a-kind look at who we were, what we did, why we did it, and what those actions made us, seen through the eyes of a unique and significant American figure and one of our most gifted writers.

About this title

Review:

David Harris, a draft resister who came to be a symbol of American opposition to the Vietnam War, writes a passionate--albeit brutal--memoir of what is known in Vietnam as "the American War." Through remembrance and political analysis Harris forces readers to confront what he considers the evils of the United States--particularly the massacre at My Lai and the Phoenix program of rural pacification run by the C.I.A, which he calls "an operation of rump legality, kidnapping, torture, and assassination." Harris fears that time has cushioned us from events that destroyed the lives of so many. By recounting the horrors of war, he hopes we can "clear our souls of this perpetual shadow."

About the Author:

David Harris has been working as a journalist since the 1970s. He has been a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Author of six previous books, including The Last Stand, he lives in Marin County, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0812925769
• ISBN 13: 9780812925760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 191