“You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple? ” ― Never Let Me Go
Vietnam War
Tonight, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s 10-episode, 18-hour, documentary series, “The Vietnam War” began airing on PBS stations nationwide. Ten years in the making, written by Geoffrey C. Ward and narrated by Peter Coyote, the series tells the epic story of one of the most controversial and divisive events in American history like never before and “explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides.” (PBS.com). The official companion book and audiobook to the series is now available along with some other excellent titles that broaden our understanding of this seminal event in our history, all highlighted below.
FEATURED TITLES:
THE VIETNAM WAR: AN INTIMATE HISTORY by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of The Civil War, Baseball, The War, The Roosevelts, and others: a vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart–the companion volume to the major, multipart PBS film to be aired in September 2017.
Created in association with the Smithsonian Institution, this authoritative guide chronicles America’s fight against Communism in southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s, and comprehensively explores the people, politics, events, and lasting effects of the Vietnam War.
DK EYEWITNESS BOOKS: VIETNAM WAR; Ages 8 to 12
A visual and informative guide to one of the longest and most controversial wars in American history, now revised and updated in the relaunched DK Eyewitness Books format.
EMBERS OF WAR: THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA’S VIETNAM by Fredrik Logevall
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
Written with the style of a great novelist and the intrigue of a Cold War thriller, Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to tragically lose their way in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
MARINE SNIPER by Charles Henderson
The explosive true story of Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, a legendary Marine sniper in the Vietnam War.
On June 8, 1972, nine-year-old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran from her blazing village in South Vietnam and into the eye of history. Her photograph-one of the most unforgettable images of the twentieth century-was seen around the world and helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War. This book is the story of how that photograph came to be-and the story of what happened to that girl after the camera shutter closed.
VIETNAM: A HISTORY by Stanley Karnow
“A landmark work.” -The Washington Post Book World
This monumental narrative clarifies, analyzes, and demystifies the tragic ordeal of the Vietnam war. Free of ideological bias, profound in its understanding, and compassionate in its human portrayals, it is filled with fresh revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews with participants.
A BRIGHT SHINING LIE: JOHN PAUL VANN AND AMERICA IN VIETNAM by Neil Sheehan
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
When he came to Vietnam in 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann was the one clear-sighted participant in an enterprise riddled with arrogance and self-deception, a charismatic soldier who put his life and career on the line in an attempt to convince his superiors that the war should be fought another way.
An extraordinary selection of the finest and best-known art from the American war in Vietnam, from Tim O’Brien to Marvin Gaye, from mainstream bestsellers to radical poetry.
For more on these and related titles, visit the collection: Vietnam War
There are so many places to wander, but the place that eases my soul & the very deepest recesses of my mind is the place where I can weave through the words, balance on each line and live between the pages forever.“ // cici . Hope you are having a beautiful day you beautiful humans! 💕
“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” - James Baldwin. 📚 Happy birthday to this brilliant man. •• #bookstagram #readstagram #book #jamesbaldwin #giovannisroom #thefirenexttime #gotellitonthemountain #anothercountry #notesofanativeson #author (at Strand Book Store)
Margaret Atwood sure knows how to write books that hook you from the start.
Source: deapoetsmusings
"Indifference can go fuck itself. This is your life, and it's going to be big and bright and beautiful." - Heather Havrilesky, How to Be a Person in the World
In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water.
from GROTESQUE by Natsuo Kirino
[I am] A fool who believes that death is waste and love is sweet and that the earth turns and men change every day and that rivers run and that people wanna be better than they are and that flowers smell good and that I hurt terribly today, and that hurt is desperation and desperation is—energy and energy can move things...
Lorraine Hansberry, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”
"But I'd divorced, the worst failure you could have in civilian life. I believed that. I thought maybe that's why the Husband and I were still close: we were still trying to be forgiven by the other." - from "Steps" by Mona Simpson The acclaimed author gives us a mesmerizing story of a family built, not by blood, but by second and third marriages and the relationships children have to “step” fathers, mothers and siblings long after their own parents have left them behind. When Julie, an actress in her forties, receives a phone call from her one-time stepfather’s newest family asking her to come to see him once more before he dies, she agrees to make the trip. http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564992/steps-by-mona-simpson/
Samantha Irby launching We Are Never Meeting in Real Life! (at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe)
To be liberated from the stigma of blackness by embracing it is to cease, forever, one's interior argument and collaboration with the authors of one's degradation.
James Baldwin, No Name in the Street
If animal history has been a history of evolution, then the history of mankind is one of retrogression. Hooray for monsters! Monsters are the great embodiments of the weak.
Kobo Abe, Secret Rendezvous
This. Is. The. Best. Book. (Not pictured: a bag of Doritos just out of frame.)