American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity

The critically acclaimed author of Patriots offers profound insight into Vietnam’s place in America’s self-image
 
How did the Vietnam War change the way we think of ourselves as a people and a nation? In American Reckoning, Christian G. Appy—author of Patriots, the widely praised oral history of the Vietnam War—examines the war’s realities and myths and its lasting impact on our national self-perception. Drawing on a vast variety of sources that range from movies, songs, and novels to official documents, media coverage, and contemporary commentary, Appy offers an original interpretation of the war and its far-reaching consequences for both our popular culture and our foreign policy. Authoritative, insightful, and controversial, urgently speaking to our role in the world today, American Reckoning invites us to grapple honestly with the conflicting lessons and legacies of the Vietnam War.

• When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (Tie-In Edition)
• America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975
• Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides
• Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy
• People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Walgreen Foundation Lectures)
• American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare
• Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South
• The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Revised and Enlarged Edition)
• When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
• The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl