Achilles in Vietnam

Achilles in Vietnam PDF Author: Jonathan Shay
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439124922
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
An original and groundbreaking book that examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In this moving, dazzlingly creative book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. A classic of war literature that has as much relevance as ever in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a “transcendent literary adventure” (The New York Times) and “clearly one of the most original and most important scholarly works to have emerged from the Vietnam War” (Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried).

Achilles in Vietnam

Achilles in Vietnam PDF Author: Jonathan Shay
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439124922
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
An original and groundbreaking book that examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In this moving, dazzlingly creative book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. A classic of war literature that has as much relevance as ever in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a “transcendent literary adventure” (The New York Times) and “clearly one of the most original and most important scholarly works to have emerged from the Vietnam War” (Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried).

Odysseus in America

Odysseus in America PDF Author: Jonathan Shay
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439125015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In this ambitious follow-up to Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier's homecoming, to illuminate the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life. Seamlessly combining important psychological work and brilliant literary interpretation with an impassioned plea to renovate American military institutions, Shay deepens our understanding of both the combat veteran's experience and one of the world's greatest classics.

Combat Trauma

Combat Trauma PDF Author: James D. Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781442204355
Category : Post-traumatic stress disorder
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Provides information on the long-term effects of combat trauma through the experiences of fifteen Vietnam veterans, describing how their combat trauma symptoms effect their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

The War That Killed Achilles

The War That Killed Achilles PDF Author: Caroline Alexander
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101148853
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"Spectacular and constantly surprising." -Ken Burns Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of Western civilization. As she did in The Endurance and The Bounty, New York Times bestselling author Caroline Alexander has taken apart a narrative we think we know and put it back together in a way that lets us see its true power. In the process, she reveals the intended theme of Homer's masterwork-the tragic lessons of war and its enduring devastation.

War and the Soul

War and the Soul PDF Author: Edward Tick
Publisher: Quest Books
ISBN: 0835630056
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
War and PTSD are on the public's mind as news stories regularly describe insurgency attacks in Iraq and paint grim portraits of the lives of returning soldiers afflicted with PTSD. These vets have recurrent nightmares and problems with intimacy, can’t sustain jobs or relationships, and won’t leave home, imagining “the enemy” is everywhere. Dr. Edward Tick has spent decades developing healing techniques so effective that clinicians, clergy, spiritual leaders, and veterans’ organizations all over the country are studying them. This book, presented here in an audio version, shows that healing depends on our understanding of PTSD not as a mere stress disorder, but as a disorder of identity itself. In the terror of war, the very soul can flee, sometimes for life. Tick's methods draw on compelling case studies and ancient warrior traditions worldwide to restore the soul so that the veteran can truly come home to community, family, and self.

Choosing War

Choosing War PDF Author: Fredrik Logevall
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520927117
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
In one of the most detailed and powerfully argued books published on American intervention in Vietnam, Fredrik Logevall examines the last great unanswered question on the war: Could the tragedy have been averted? His answer: a resounding yes. Challenging the prevailing myth that the outbreak of large-scale fighting in 1965 was essentially unavoidable, Choosing War argues that the Vietnam War was unnecessary, not merely in hindsight but in the context of its time. Why, then, did major war break out? Logevall shows it was partly because of the timidity of the key opponents of U.S. involvement, and partly because of the staunch opposition of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to early negotiations. His superlative account shows that U.S. officials chose war over disengagement despite deep doubts about the war's prospects and about Vietnam's importance to U.S. security and over the opposition of important voices in the Congress, in the press, and in the world community. They did so because of concerns about credibility—not so much America's or the Democratic party's credibility, but their own personal credibility. Based on six years of painstaking research, this book is the first to place American policymaking on Vietnam in 1963-65 in its wider international context using multiarchival sources, many of them recently declassified. Here we see for the first time how the war played in the key world capitals—not merely in Washington, Saigon, and Hanoi, but also in Paris and London, in Tokyo and Ottawa, in Moscow and Beijing. Choosing War is a powerful and devastating account of fear, favor, and hypocrisy at the highest echelons of American government, a book that will change forever our understanding of the tragedy that was the Vietnam War.

American Warrior

American Warrior PDF Author: John C. Bahnsen
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 9780806528076
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
Brigadier General John C. |Doc| Bahnsen Jr served as one of America's most decorated soldiers in the Vietnam War. The ultimate warrior who engaged the enemy from nearly every type of aircraft and armored vehicle in the army's inventory, Doc was also an expert strategist who developed military tactics later adopted as doctrine. Accounts of Doc's brilliance in time of war became the stuff of legend. Here he offers a spellbinding recollection - completely uncensored - of his remarkable wartime experience.

The Invisible Front

The Invisible Front PDF Author: Yochi Dreazen
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0385347855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
The unforgettable story of a military family that lost two sons—one to suicide and one in combat—and channeled their grief into fighting the armed forces’ suicide epidemic. Major General Mark Graham was a decorated two-star officer whose integrity and patriotism inspired his sons, Jeff and Kevin, to pursue military careers of their own. His wife Carol was a teacher who held the family together while Mark's career took them to bases around the world. When Kevin and Jeff die within nine months of each other—Kevin commits suicide and Jeff is killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq—Mark and Carol are astonished by the drastically different responses their sons’ deaths receive from the Army. While Jeff is lauded as a hero, Kevin’s death is met with silence, evidence of the terrible stigma that surrounds suicide and mental illness in the military. Convinced that their sons died fighting different battles, Mark and Carol commit themselves to transforming the institution that is the cornerstone of their lives. The Invisible Front is the story of how one family tries to set aside their grief and find purpose in almost unimaginable loss. The Grahams work to change how the Army treats those with PTSD and to erase the stigma that prevents suicidal troops from getting the help they need before making the darkest of choices. Their fight offers a window into the military’s institutional shortcomings and its resistance to change – failures that have allowed more than 3,000 troops to take their own lives since 2001. Yochi Dreazen, an award-winning journalist who has covered the military since 2003, has been granted remarkable access to the Graham family and tells their story in the full context of two of America’s longest wars. Dreazen places Mark and Carol’s personal journey, which begins when they fall in love in college and continues through the end of Mark's thirty-four year career in the Army, against the backdrop of the military’s ongoing suicide spike, which shows no signs of slowing. With great sympathy and profound insight, The Invisible Front details America's problematic treatment of the troops who return from war far different than when they'd left and uses the Graham family’s work as a new way of understanding the human cost of war and its lingering effects off the battlefield.

Shook Over Hell

Shook Over Hell PDF Author: Eric T. Dean
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674806511
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Vietnam still haunts the American conscience. Not only did nearly 58,000 Americans die there, but--by some estimates--1.5 million veterans returned with war-induced Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This psychological syndrome, responsible for anxiety, depression, and a wide array of social pathologies, has never before been placed in historical context. Eric Dean does just that as he relates the psychological problems of veterans of the Vietnam War to the mental and readjustment problems experienced by veterans of the Civil War. Employing a multidisciplinary approach that merges military, medical, and social history, Dean draws on individual case analyses and quantitative methods to trace the reactions of Civil War veterans to combat and death. He seeks to determine whether exuberant parades in the North and sectional adulation in the South helped to wash away memories of violence for the Civil War veteran. His extensive study reveals that Civil War veterans experienced severe persistent psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, and flashbacks with resulting behaviors such as suicide, alcoholism, and domestic violence. By comparing Civil War and Vietnam veterans, Dean demonstrates that Vietnam vets did not suffer exceptionally in the number and degree of their psychiatric illnesses. The politics and culture of the times, Dean argues, were responsible for the claims of singularity for the suffering Vietnam veterans as well as for the development of the modern concept of PTSD. This remarkable and moving book uncovers a hidden chapter of Civil War history and gives new meaning to the Vietnam War.

Hue 1968

Hue 1968 PDF Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802189245
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
The author of Black Hawk Down vividly recounts a pivotal Vietnam War battle in this New York Times bestseller: “An extraordinary feat of journalism”. —Karl Marlantes, Wall Street Journal In Hue 1968, Mark Bowden presents a detailed, day-by-day reconstruction of the most critical battle of the Tet Offensive. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched attacks across South Vietnam. The lynchpin of this campaign was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital. 10,000 troops descended from hidden camps and surged across the city, taking everything but two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the siege, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city block by block, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the United States and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction