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Summary: Another Scholary Effort from Author Maraniss
Review: Author David Maraniss has matched his earlier book on Vince Lombardi with a well-researched effort on a turbulent period in America's history as he focuses on a few days in October of 1967. The book's focus is what is going on in Washington, Vietnam, and the college campus on the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. The book has a cast of numerous characters, and the author alphabetizes the names of each according to those in Vietnam, Washington, and Madison for reference along with a short description of each person. Maraniss provides us with a description of the personality of each character as their role develops throughout the book. What the soldiers in Vietnam saw as an ambush they walked into was not perceived as such by the nabobs in Washington as Washington made it out to be a victory against the Viet Cong. General Hay being awarded a Silver Star for a battle he wasn't even a part of while denying a medal to someone who was makes him an embarrassment. A good portion of the book focuses on the campus at Madison as students protested the Dow Chemical Company conducting interviews on the campus since it was Dow that produced napalm and Agent Orange. The epilogue having Delta commander Clark Welsh, a daughter of commander Terry Allen who was killed in the ambush, author Maraniss, and Von Minh Triet of the Viet Cong, along with a few others making a pilgrimage to the site of the battlefield over thirty years later is an appropriate ending to the book. The book is over 500 pages, but it is certainly worth your time.
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Summary: Ambush of Innocence and Faith
Review: Author David Maraniss writes one of the best forewards I have ever read (others being "Devil in the White City" and "Happy Stories"), in which he says that on a battlefield in Vietnam, in the Oval Office in Washington, DC and on a college campus in Madison, WI, "they were all marching toward ambushes in those bright autumn days of (October) 1967."
One of the many lessons of Vietnam is that authority without control creates chaos which can lead to defeat. As demonstrated by an ambush.
General Westmoreland didn't control the battlefield, despite overwhelming troop and firepower superiority. President Johnson couldn't control mounting public disquiet about the Vietnam conflict: Even Ho Chi Minh understood that the "art of persuasion was as important as the art of war." And finally, administrators failed to channel the student unrest against Dow Company recruiters, the makers of napalm, on the University of Wisconsin campus.
The ensuing chaos resulted in sixty-one dead Black Lion soldiers of the renowned First Infantry Division (when the daily average was 15 killed), with an equal number wounded; a President removing himself from primary contention and students being pummeled by club-wielding police officers. Only the students came out of their ambush stronger and more energized than before.
Ultimately, neither the UW administration nor the students were defeated suggesting that vigorous - if bloody - dissent strengthens democratic societies. If Westmoreland and Johnson had taken note instead of offense, perhaps the outcome in Vietnam and Washington would have been different, too.
My patience was likewise ambushed which is why I gave this book 4 stars. The cast of characters was too big and interferred with the storytelling.
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Summary: Amazing alignment of events
Review: David Maraniss does an incredible job of describing events unfolding in parallel that show all three American perspectives (the war "in country", the war at home, and the war at the top of the military command, the White House) on the debacle of Viet Nam. He describes in detail the war on the ground in Southeast Asia involving a unit heading inextricably for ambush. This is interspersed with events at a university in the United States heading inextricably for an ambush of its own. The events developed in the fall of 1967 and came to a climax aligned well enough to have their stories mirrored on the front page of the newspaper the following day. Meanwhile, Maraniss takes us intermittently to the White House, where President Johnson and his advisors almost simultaneously mill the ill-fated strategy that ultimately led us even further into the quagmire.
The parallels of these events are an eerie look into the complexities of this crisis that still shapes much of our lives. Recognizing this alignment was brilliant, and making it come to life almost four decades later creates some of the best investigative writing ever penned.
The parallels of these events give an eerie look into the complexities of this crisis that still shapes much of our lives.
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Summary: Amazing Synchronicity, Three Days in America Oct. 1967
Review: David Maraniss has put together a powerful, well-researched and heartbreaking story of three days in the life of America, as reflected in protests over Dow recruiting on the University of Wisconsin campus in October 1967, and those same three days in Vietnam, where U.S. troops were ambushed and fought a valiant and bloody battle of survival. Maraniss is a master storyteller, and the book reads like great fiction, yet lives were lost, and made, in those three days. Stories of valor, death, and putting oneself on the line for something you believe in -- all are here in a breathtaking narrative.
For those who questioned the moral fortitude necessary to come back from that war and work to end it, as John Kerry and many others did, please read this book and try to understand better the journey that these brave men and women -- and their compatriots in the colleges nationwide -- took to make America a better place.
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Summary: Very Worthwhile--but did Maraniss miss a bet!
Review: David Maraniss skillfully tells the story of one of the many bloody and inconclusive engagements in Vietnam. He less skillfully attempts to link it to an anti-war demonstration against Dow Chemical that occurred at the same time in October 1967. What he doesn't do is examine the real connection between the soldiers who fought in the battle and the male demonstrators--almost of all of whom would have become subject to the draft when graduate deferments were abolished in 1968. Did they serve? If not, how did they avoid Vietnam?
Maraniss also fails to weigh in on the ethical and moral implications of the demonstration and the battle. If the war was critical to the national interest, were not the demonstrators traitors? If it wasn't, didn't the brave soldiers fight and die for nothing? A great book would have confronted these questions and asked some of the individuals involved what they think about these issues now.
The reviewer, Arthur Amchan, was drafted in 1969 and served in Saigon in 1970-71. He is the author of "Killed In Action: The Life and Times of SP4 Stephen H. Warner, draftee, journalist and anti-war activist," the story of a Yale Law student who was drafted in 1969 and killed in Vietnam in 1971.
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Summary: October 1967 -- a pivotal month in American history
Review: Focusing on October 1967, David Maraniss, an esteemed Washington Post journalist, has woven together a unique history of the Vietnam era. He concentrates on one infantry battalion in Vietnam, a student protest at the University of Wisconsin and President Johnson's decisions in Washington. It's a stirring narrative, woven together from hundreds of archival documents and interviews. Add to this the writer's skill in bringing to life each of the many real people in this unfolding drama and weaving it all together in an interconnected story that held me spellbound throughout its 528 pages.We get to meet the soldiers and read excerpts from letters they sent home. There's Terry Allen Jr., the commander, whose father was a WW2 hero and who's struggling with marital problems. There's Lt. Clark Welch who feels self confident and invincible. There's Michael Arias, who carries the heavy radio through the jungle. There's Daniel Sikorski whose sister back home is having nightmares. And then there is Vo Minh Triet, the Viet Cong commander who engaged the Americans in conflict. They eet in battle and we share the terror as well as the excruciating details of carnage and death. Fifty eight Americans died that day and more than 60 were wounded. And yet the truth was only known to the men in combat as the media accounts were based on deceptive spins of military and Washington politics. We also get to meet the students, faculty and police officers in Madison Wisconsin. We're there at a student protest against the Dow Chemical company recruiters on campus which led to nightsticks and head wounds and tear gas and a brick that severely injured a police officer. We hear accounts of the meetings of university officials and understand the hard choices that have to be made in a "no-win" situation. We meet young people who never had a political thought in their head who were radicalized that day. And we also learn about the realities of napalm as well as "agent orange". Then we jump into the present, visit with the survivors of that incredible time and take a visit to modern Vietnam with the author, visit the battlefield and meet some of the Viet Cong who lived through the battle. We again meet the student protestors, and talk with Paul Solgin, who tried to protect himself with his sheepskin coat from a beating with police nightsticks in 1967. Later, he became Mayor of Madison and is now considered too conservative. Some of the other protestors became radicals. Many them became teachers and professors. But everyone the author spoke to could look back at that month in 1967 as a turning point in their lives. I loved this book and hold the deepest respect for the author and his depth of research. It shed a new light on an important era of America history and I thank him for writing it. I give "They Marched Into Sunlight" my highest recommendation.
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Summary: Excellent for anyone trying to understand the era of NAM
Review: Having grown up in Wisconsin, with both a brother in Nam and a brother protesting in Madison, this is the best I have read that covers the 'whole' picture of the 'Viet Nam' conflict.
Excellent research and an honest rendition of the times and people involved.
Maraniss does an examplerary job of telling the 'story' from the view of all sides involved.
ABSOLUTELY a must read for anyone trying to understand not only the 'Anti-War' movement of the 60's... but also the politics of war and war protesting today.
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Summary: Excellent history.
Review: I have not read his other books, but after reading this one, I know that the author deserved his Pulitzer Prize. The lies have been written about before but never in such dramatic detail. The author shows different perspectives on the war, shows how differently perceived were the same events in the letters written home by gung ho officers and the conscripted men serving under them. Based not only on contemporary newspapers and documents, but on the letters home and interviews with participants and spouses of those killed. A brilliant book.
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Summary: A Vietnam literary masterpiece!
Review: I just finished David Maraniss' book, and I must admit my eyes moistened and my gut wrenched after reading his epilogue. This is a 500+-page book that gets more riveting the farther you get in. I have read several Vietnam War era books, and this might be the best. The only other one I've read that's in its league is Philip Caputo's "A Rumor of War." Take the time to read this!
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Summary: Fascinating book!
Review: I think that one of the most interesting parts of this book was its exploration of the anti-war movement in Wisconsin. Narratively, the account of the tragic deaths of soldiers in Vietnam moved faster and was more engrossing, but in terms of history and intellectually speaking, the account of the anti-war protests were more enlightening. Moving past the absolutist rhetoric that one often hears concerning anti-war movements, Maraniss depicts the students in all their ambiguous complexity. He shows the varied ways in which students were drawn into the anti-Dow protests, and the ways in which a supposedly univocal message is conflated with other ideas amidst the cacophany of sounds and hysteria. I read a NY Times review of this book which seemed to suggest that Maraniss was dismissive of the motives behind the anti-war protest, but I read this book as simply a more complex account of the ways in which individual motives and ideologies get caught up in the chaos of mass movements. The utter tragedy of the mayhem and violence that young Americans suffered in Vietnam is aptly described here, and Maraniss has a real skill in drawing the reader into his historical account.
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