Half a memory : the Vietnam War in the American mind, 1975-1985

This study attempts to show how Americans in general remembered the Vietnam War from 1975 to 1985, the decade after it ended. A kind of social history, the study concentrates on the war as remembered in the popular realm, examining novels as well as nonfiction, poetry, plays, movies, articles in political journals, songs, memorials, public opinion polls and more. Most everything but academic history is discussed. The study notes how the war\u27s political history was not much remembered; the warrior, not the war, became the focus of national memory. The study argues that personal memory predominated over political memory for a number of reasons, the most important being the relative unimportance of the nation of Vietnam to most Americans. America remembered the war in terms of how it touched individual Americans