Reporting Vietnam Part Two: American Journalism 1969-1975 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1883011590 ISBN 13: 9781883011598

Publisher: Library of America, 1998

Synopsis

First published for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, this unique two-volume anthology from the Library of America evokes a turbulent and controversial period in American history and journalism. 

Reporting Vietnam Part Two: American Journalism 1969–1975, along with its companion volume, captures the bravery, fear, cruelty, suffering, anger, and sorrow of a tragic conflict. This second volume traces events from the revelation of the My Lai massacre in 1969 through the fall of Saigon in 1975. Here are Peter Kann on the ambiguities of pacification; Gloria Emerson on the South Vietnamese debacle in Laos; Donald Kirk on declining American morale; Sydney Schanberg on the fall of Phnom Penh and the victory of the Khmer Rouge; Philip Caputo, Keyes Beech, Peter Arnett, and Malcolm Browne on the last days of South Vietnam.

Writers who observed the turmoil in the United States are included as well: Francine du Plessis Gray on factions within the protest movement; Michael Kinsley recounting a confrontation between Henry Kissinger and his Harvard colleagues; James Michener meticulously reconstructing the Kent State shootings; Doris Kearns listening to Lyndon Johnson’s anguished recollections; Hunter S. Thompson watching veterans protest Richard Nixon’s renomination.

Included in full is Dispatches, journalist Michael Herr’s acclaimed impressionistic memoir of his immersion in the exhilaration, dread, and sorrow of the Vietnam War.

This volume contains a detailed chronology of the war, historical maps, biographical profiles of the journalists, explanatory notes, a glossary of military terms, an index, and a 32-page insert of photographs of the correspondents, many from private collections and never before seen.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

About this title

Review:

In the predawn morning of May 9, 1970, Richard Nixon left the White House and went to the Lincoln Memorial to speak with a handful of antiwar protesters, most of them college students. The nervous president, who, an assistant later said, "wanted to know what they thought," and the awed students talked amiably for a time, and then all concerned went about their business, Nixon conducting a war, the students trying to end it. So reported Dan Oberdorfer for the Washington Post in one of the dozens of stories, profiles, articles, and dispatches collected in this volume of Vietnam War-era journalism, the second of two content-packed books in a Library of America set. Among the many highlights of the second volume are reports by New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg (of The Killing Fields fame) on the deadly aftermath of the American invasion of Cambodia; Seymour Hersh's coverage of the My Lai massacre, in which American soldiers under the command of Lt. William Calley killed 109 South Vietnamese civilians; U.S. Senator John McCain's account for U.S. News and World Report of his six years as a prisoner of war; and, for a weird home-front spin, Hunter S. Thompson's hallucinogen-fueled reportage from the 1972 Democratic National Convention. The complete text of Michael Herr's Dispatches, an influential and estimable book, is included, as well. Students of Vietnam War history will find this and its companion volume to be essential sources. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

The editorial advisory board for Reporting Vietnam includes Milton J. Bates, professor of English at Marquette University; Lawrence Lichty, professor of radio, television, and film at Northwestern University; Paul L. Miles, professor of history at Princeton University; Ronald H. Spector, professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University; and Marilyn B. Young (1937–2017), professor of history at New York University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Library of America
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1883011590
• ISBN 13: 9781883011598
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 857