A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath
Truong Nhu Tang - 1985
Later he fought in the Vietnamese jungle and emerged as one of the major figures in the "fight for liberation" -- and one of the most determined adversaries of the United States. He became the Vietcong's Minister of Justice, but at the end of the war he fled the country in disillusionment and despair. He now lives in exile in Paris, the highest level official to have defected from Vietnam to the West. This is his candid, revealing and unforgettable autobiography.
The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos
Primitivo Mijares - 1976
Drawing data from his work as Marcos's media adviser before his defection in 1975, Primitivo Mijares esposes the massive corruption and military abuses under the regime, which has left the nation in ruins. Forty years after its first publication, the book, in this revised and annotated edition, reminds Filipinos of their past that remains a present threat.
The Dead Drink First
Dale Maharidge - 2019
Steve Maharidge never talked about “the good war.” On the surface, the Maharidges were a normal working-class family in the suburbs of Cleveland. But behind closed doors, even the most mundane moments could trigger Steve’s violent, traumatic episodes, which left his son Dale searching for clues to his past. And yet, there was only one: a black-and-white photograph of Steve with another soldier that hung permanently on the wall in the basement. In The Dead Drink First, Dale Maharidge, now a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, recounts his 18-year quest to learn everything he could about the man in the photo with the hopes of discovering a side of his late father he never knew. The result was something Dale never expected: Not only would he learn the man’s name - Herman Walter Mulligan - but he would help locate his remains and ultimately bring him home 74 years after he was killed in action. In this deeply personal audio documentary, Dale retraces his journey through never-before-heard conversations with WWII veterans, their children, and the team of strangers that assembled to find Mulligan and bury him on American soil. In an epic search for a lost Marine, Dale finds forgiveness, lifelong friendships, and uncovers the rich, uniquely American truth about how and why we repatriate our fallen soldiers. Please note: This story features explicit language and references to domestic abuse, violence, and war that may be upsetting to some listeners. Discretion is advised.©2019 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2019 Audible Originals, LLC.
A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam
Lewis Sorley - 1999
The first to set the record straight concerning the outcome of that conflict” (H. Norman Schwarzkopf, General, US Army, Retired).Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years of conflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not only about how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawing from thousands of hours of previously unavailable (and still classified) tape-recorded meetings between the highest levels of the American military command in Vietnam, A Better War is an insightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these final years. Through his exclusive access to authoritative materials, Lewis Sorley highlights the dramatic differences in conception, conduct, and??—??at least for a time??—??results between the early and later years of the war. Among his most important findings is that while the war was being lost at the peace table and in the US Congress, the soldiers were winning on the ground. Meticulously researched and movingly told, A Better War sheds new light on the Vietnam War.
No-No Boy
John Okada - 1956
He attended the University of Washington and Columbia University. He served in the US Army in World War II, wrote one novel and died of a heart attack at the age of 47. John Okada died in obscurity believing that Asian America had rejected his work. In this work, Okada gives the perspective of a no-no boy, a Japanese-American man who would neither denounce his Japanese heritage nor fight for the U.S. Army during WWII. This novel takes place after the main character spent two years in a Japanese internment camp, and two years in prison after saying no when asked to join the U.S. Army. Okada's novel No-No Boy shows the internal and external struggles fought by Japanese-Americans in that time period, be they no-no boys or not.
The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas 1948-1960
Noel Barber - 1971
The Chinese-backed guerrillas called it the War of the Running Dogs—their contemptuous term for those in Malaya who remained loyal to the British. The British Government referred to this bloody and costly struggle as the "Malayan Emergency." Yet it was a war that lasted 12 years and cost thousands of lives. By the time it was over Malaya had obtained its independence—but on British, not on Chinese or Communist, terms. Here is the war as it was. Here are the planters and their wives on their remote rubber estates, the policemen, the generals and the soldiers, the Malays, Chinese and Indians of a polyglot country, all fighting an astute, ruthless, and well organized enemy.
Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood
Richard E. Kim - 1970
Taking its title from the grim fact that the occupiers forced the Koreans to renounce their own names and adopt Japanese names instead, the book follows one Korean family through the Japanese occupation to the surrender of the Japanese empire. Lost Names is at once a loving memory of family and a vivid portrayal of life in a time of anguish.
The Philippine War, 1899-1902
Brian McAllister Linn - 2000
The war thrust the U.S. into the center of Pacific and Asian politics, with important and sometimes tragic consequences. It kept the Filipinos under colonial overlordship for another five decades and subjected them to American political, cultural, and economic domination.In the first comprehensive study in over six decades, Linn provides a definitive treatment of military operations in the Philippines. From the pitched battles of the early war to the final campaigns against guerrillas, Linn traces the entire course of the conflict. More than an overview of Filipino resistance and American pacification, this is a detailed study of the fighting in the boondocks.In addition to presenting a detailed military history of the war, Linn challenges previous interpretations. Rather than being a clash of armies or societies, the war was a series of regional struggles that differed greatly from island to island. By shifting away from the narrow focus on one or two provinces to encompass the entire archipelago, Linn offers a more thorough understanding of the entire war.Linn also dispels many of the misunderstandings and historical inaccuracies surrounding the Philippine War. He repudiates the commonly held view of American soldiers civilizing with a Krag and clarifies such controversial incidents as the Balangiga Massacre and the Waller Affair.Exhaustively researched and engagingly written, The Philippine War will become the standard reference on America's forgotten conflict and a major contribution to the study of guerrilla warfare.
1001 Nights in Iraq: The Shocking Story of an American Forced to Fight for Saddam Against the Country He Loves
Shant Kenderian - 2005
But then Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and sealed off Iraq's borders to every man of military age -- including Shant. Suddenly forced onto the front lines, his two-week visit turned into a nightmare that lasted for ten years. 1001 Nights in Iraq presents a human story that provides unique insight into a country and culture that we only get a hint of in the headlines. After surviving the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War, Shant was then forced to fight on the front lines of Desert Storm without being given the proper equipment, including a gun, but miraculously survived to be captured by the Americans and become a POW. He underwent starvation, heavy interrogations, and solitary confinement, but what broke him in the end was his love affair with a female American soldier. Yet throughout this whole ordeal, Shant never lost his respect for people, his faith in God, or his sense of humor.
Why Marines Fight
James Brady - 2007
They have fought from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan and Iraq, in famous battles become bone and sinew of American lore. But why do Marines fight? Why fight so well? Why run toward the guns? Now comes a thrilling new book, pounding and magnificent in scope, by the author some Marines consider the unofficial “poet laureate” of their Corps.James Brady interviews combat Marines from wars ranging from World War II to Afghanistan, their replies in their own individual voices unique and powerful, an authentically American story of a country at war, as seen through the eyes of its warriors. Culling his own correspondence and comradeship with hundreds of fellow Marines, Brady compiles a story---lyrical and historical---of the motivations and emotions behind this compelling question. Included are the accounts of Senator James Webb and his lance corporal son, Jim; New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly; Yankee second baseman (and Marine fighter pilot) Jerry Coleman, and of teachers, firemen, authors, cops, Harvard football players, and just plain grunts, as well as the unforgettable story of Jack Rowe, who lost an eye and other parts and now grows avocados and chases rattlesnakes. Their stories poignantly and profoundly illustrate the lives and legacies of battlefront Marines. Why Marines Fight is a ruthlessly candid book about professional killers not ashamed to recall their doubts as well as exult in their savagely triumphant battle cries. A book of weight and heft that Marines, and Americans everywhere, will want to read, and may find impossible to forget. Praise for James Brady The Scariest Place in the World“[A] graceful, even elegant, and always eloquent tribute to men at arms in a war that, in a way, never ended.”---Kirkus Reviews“James Brady has done it again. A riveting and illuminating insight into a dark corner of the world.”---Tim Russert, NBC’s Meet the Press The Coldest War“His story reads like a novel, but it is war reporting at its best---a graphic depiction, in all its horrors, of the war we’ve almost forgotten.”---Walter Cronkite“A marvelous memoir. A sensitive and superbly written narrative that eventually explodes off the pages like a grenade in the gut . . .taut, tight, and telling.”---Dan Rather The Marine“In The Marine, James Brady again gives us a novel in which history is a leading character, sharing the stage in this case with a man as surely born to be a gallant warrior as any knight in sixth-century Camelot.”---Kurt Vonnegut The Marines of Autumn“Mr. Brady knows war, the smell and the feel of it.”---The New York Times
Letters to Memory
Karen Tei Yamashita - 2017
. . . Intriguing." —Library Journal"This powerful, deeply felt, and impeccably researched fiction is irresistibly evocative." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)Scintillations is an excursion through the Japanese internment using archival materials from the Yamashita family as well as a series of epistolary conversations with composite characters representing a range of academic specialties. Historians, anthropologists, classicists—their disciplines, and Yamashita's engagement with them, are a way for her explore various aspects of the internment and to expand its meaning beyond her family, and our borders, to ideas of debt, forgiveness, civil rights, Orientalism, and community.Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award.
The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War
H.W. Brands - 2016
W. Brands, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world. When asked by a reporter about the possible use of atomic weapons in response to China's entry into the war, Truman replied testily, "The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has." This suggested that General Douglas MacArthur, the willful, fearless, and highly decorated commander of the American and U.N. forces, had his finger on the nuclear trigger. A correction quickly followed, but the damage was done; two visions for America's path forward were clearly in opposition, and one man would have to make way.Truman was one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Heir to a struggling economy, a ruined Europe, and increasing tension with the Soviet Union, on no issue was the path ahead clear and easy. General MacArthur, by contrast, was incredibly popular, as untouchable as any officer has ever been in America. The lessons he drew from World War II were absolute: appeasement leads to disaster and a showdown with the communists was inevitable--the sooner the better. In the nuclear era, when the Soviets, too, had the bomb, the specter of a catastrophic third World War lurked menacingly close on the horizon.The contest of wills between these two titanic characters unfolds against the turbulent backdrop of a faraway war and terrors conjured at home by Joseph McCarthy. From the drama of Stalin's blockade of West Berlin to the daring landing of MacArthur's forces at Inchon to the shocking entrance of China into the war, " The General and the President vividly evokes the making of a new American era."
The Loneliest Americans
Jay Caspian Kang - 2021
Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country's demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang's parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of "Asian America" that was supposed to define them.The Loneliest Americans is the unforgettable story of Kang and his family as they move from a housing project in Cambridge to an idyllic college town in the South and eventually to the West Coast. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Asian America, as millions more immigrants, many of them working-class or undocumented, stream into the country. At the same time, upwardly mobile urban professionals have struggled to reconcile their parents' assimilationist goals with membership in a multicultural elite--all while trying to carve out a new kind of belonging for their own children, who are neither white nor truly "people of color."Kang recognizes this existential loneliness in himself and in other Asian Americans who try to locate themselves in the country's racial binary. There are the businessmen turning Flushing into a center of immigrant wealth; the casualties of the Los Angeles riots; the impoverished parents in New York City who believe that admission to the city's exam schools is the only way out; the men's right's activists on Reddit ranting about intermarriage; and the handful of protesters who show up at Black Lives Matter rallies holding "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power" signs. Kang's exquisitely crafted book brings these lonely parallel climbers together amid a wave of anti-Asian violence. In response, he calls for a new form of immigrant solidarity--one rooted not in bubble tea and elite college admissions but in the struggles of refugees and the working class.
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
Chalmers Johnson - 2000
In this incisive and controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From a case of rape by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa to our role in Asia's financial crisis, from our early support for Saddam Hussein to our conduct in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the ways in which our misguided policies are planting the seeds of future disaster.In a new edition that addresses recent international events from September 11 to the war in Iraq, this now classic book remains as prescient and powerful as ever.
Alternative Alamat: Stories Inspired by Philippine Mythology
Paolo ChikiamcoEliza Victoria - 2011
. . Yet too few of these tales are known and read today. Alternative Alamat gathers stories, by contemporary authors of Philippine fantasy, which make innovative use of elements of Philippine mythology. None of these stories are straight re-tellings of the old tales: they build on those stories, or question underlying assumptions; use ancient names as catalysts, or play within the spaces where the myths are silent. What you will find in common in these eleven stories is a love for the myths, epics, and legends which reflect us, contain us, call to us-and it is our hope that, in reading our stories, you may catch a glimpse of, and develop a hunger for, those venerable tales.Alternative Alamat also features a cover and interior illustrations by Mervin Malonzo, a short list of notable Philippine deities, tips for online and offline research, and in-depth interviews with two people who have devoted much of their careers to the study of Philippine folklore and anthropology, Professors Herminia Meñez Coben ("Explorations in Philippine Folklore" and "Verbal Arts in Philippine Indigenous Communities: Poetics, Society, and History") and Fernando N. Zialcita ("The Soul Book" and "Authentic but Not Exotic").