The Vietnam Era

The War in Vietnam was a pivotal event in the modern history of this nation and its citizens,  whether or not they served in the military.  I was an officer in the U.S. Army between 1966 and 1968, though I was not sent to Vietnam.  Thus, my view of that conflict was in some ways  like that of American civilians who watched scenes from the war on their TV sets each evening. Yet, because I was in the service, I did have access to information from soldiers on my post who had been to Nam, sometimes more than once.  This “inside info,” combined with what I saw on TV and read about in the newspapers, gave me plenty to ponder.

I went to graduate school after leaving the Army, where I studied American History for five years.  Upon completion of my graduate work, I signed on with a prep school in Atlanta, where I taught history for nearly forty years.  During those decades, I found myself returning again and again to “America’s Longest War” and its consequences, both short- and long-term, as the posts below will show.

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  1. “Growing Up With Vietnam”–December 2010-March 2011.  Researching and writing this lecture allowed me to arrive at my own conclusions about the origins of the War in Vietnam, its growth and development, and how it affected the nation in general and me in particular.  Part I; Part II; Part III; Part IV.
  2. “Springtime and Vietnam”–April 1, 2010.
  3. Editorial, “On Dixie Station”–May 2, 2010.
  4. Past Personal: Teaching the Vietnam War as History–May 1, 2012.
  5. My Vietnam War–and Welcome to It–February 16, 2015.
  6. Civil Rights–and Wrongs: Personal Reflections on Dr. King and His Legacy–January 1, 2012.
  7. “The Vietnam War and American Culture(s)”–September–November 2020. Comparing two books, written a generation apart (1985, 2015), on the impact of the Vietnam War on American culture(s), and vice versa.  Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.

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For  those interested in reading more of my reflections on history, here are links to several books on the subject:

REABP CoverRancorous Enmities and Blind Partialities:  Parties and Factions in Georgia, 1807-1845 (University Press of America, 2015)

Pursuit Cover

In Pursuit of Dead Georgians:  One Historian’s Excursions into the History of His Adopted State (iUniverse, 2015)

Politics on the Periphery:  Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (University of Delaware Press, 1986)