|
A School for Healing: Alternative Strategies for Teaching At-Risk Students by Rosa L. Kennedy
Publisher Comments A School for Healing: Alternative Strategies for Teaching At-Risk Students describes an alternative school that dealt with students who were expelled or suspended from public school and who perceived themselves as victims of injustice. It was assumed that they misinterpreted the facts of various situations or chose inappropriate strategies to correct real injustices. The task of the school was to help the students learn multiple perspectives for interpreting the actions of others and to teach them more appropriate ways of resolving injustices. Four students in the school relate their problems and describe, through a qualitative research interview process, how the school helps them. The book describes specific strategies the school used and concludes with suggestions to those who wish to establish a similar program. Hardcover
|
|
Disturbing the Peace The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois & the Movement to Close the School of the Americas by James Hodge
Synopsis Disturbing the Peace tells the story of a controversial Cajun priest, a former gung-ho Navy officer injured in a bomb blast in Vietnam, who has tirelessly championed human rights and aroused the conscience of a nation. The fast-paced historical biography also profiles the movement he founded to close a notorious U.S. Army school whose graduates have committed atrocities across Latin America. The journey of this "spiritual hobo" has more twists and turns than the Mississippi River: from love affairs that ended in heartbreak to patriotic impulses that ended in disillusionment. From dreams of wealth to missionary work among the poor. From protests and prison terms to a cloistered monastery. From confrontations with church hierarchy to political battles on Capitol Hill. Bourgeois' opposition to militarism began after a blind Vietnamese orphan opened his eyes to the realities of war. Since then, his human rights work has taken him to half a dozen war-torn countries: To Bolivia, where U.S.-backed security forces kidnapped him after he spoke out against torture. To El Salvador, where he disappeared and two of his friends were killed by U.S.-trained death squads. To Nicaragua and Honduras, where the CIA was helping contra commandos overthrow a government. To Colombia, where he witnessed the human toll of the drug war, escorted by an Army general linked to terrorist bombings. To Iraq, where he met with desperately poor Iraqis just before the country became a bloodbath. The assassinations of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989 spurred Bourgeois to investigate the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, then a little known training installation whose graduates were later linked not only to the Jesuit massacre, but to gross human rights abuses throughout Latin America. The latter half of the book profiles the movement he founded to close the school; the Congressional battles over its funding; the Pentagon's forced admission that the school used manuals advocating torture and assassination; and the courage of average Americans - including WWII and Vietnam veterans, students, union workers, professionals, clergy and elderly nuns - who have risked imprisonment each year at the annual November demonstration at Fort Benning, Ga., where the school is located. In documenting the sordid record of the school's graduates - from dictators and intelligence agents to death squad leaders and torturers, Disturbing the Peace shines a light on the dark side of U.S. foreign policy - not only in Latin America, but in Iraq, where Bush administration policies on torture led to the disgrace of Abu Ghraib. While the Pentagon closed and then re-opened the school under a new name -- the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the SOA Watch movement has remained one of the strongest voices of dissent since Sept.11, 2001, winning court battles that have helped safeguard First Amendment rights at a time civil liberties are eroding. Time and again throughout the struggle, Bourgeois, along with his fellow provocateurs for justice, lend credence to Margaret Mead's belief "that a small group of committed citizens can change the world." Trade Paperback
|
|
A World of Hurt by Powell, Mary Reynolds
Publisher Comments In 1970, twenty-three year-old Army nurse Mary Reynolds boarded a plane bound for Vietnam. Uncertain and alone, Mary had no idea what lay ahead. Almost thirty years later, Mary tells the story of that year in her life: a year of discomfort, fear and anger, as well as courage, hope and love. She includes the stories of seven of her friends a dustoff helicopter pilot, an infantry captain, a Vietnamese aide, a drug counselor, and an emergency room nurse who were with her in Vietnam. A World of Hurt: Between Innocence and Arrogance in Vietnam describes a war "winding down," while thousands still died. The survivors discovered that their perceptions about war, their country and themselves were forever changed. Trade Paperback
|
|
|
Hideous Dream A Soldiers Memoir Of The US Invasion Of Haiti by Stanley Goff
Synopsis After a distinguished career in the military -- most of it in elite Ranger, Special Forces, and counter-terrorist units -- Stan Goff refused to turn away from the implications of his own experience. In Haiti, unable to any longer support the contradictions between what the foreign policy establishment said and what the US military did, he took sides with Haitian democratic forces. This book is a look inside US foreign policy, inside the world of "Special Operations, " and inside the racist history of American imperial domination of Haiti. It is also a deeply personal account of a man trapped between his emerging political consciousness and the cynical mandates of his final days as a soldier. Anyone who has ever made suppositions about the military or about Haiti -- for or against -- needs to read this account. It's a real account, of real people, for real people. It makes the Haitians and the soldiers recognizable. This book withers the myths about both.
Trade Paperback
|
|
Home to War A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement by Gerald Nicosia
Publisher Comments An epic narrative history that chronicles, for the first time, the experience of America's Vietnam veterans who returned home to fight a different kind of war.
The courageous Americans who served in Vietnam fought two wars: one on the other side of the world and one when they returned home. The battle abroad took place in war-scarred Asian hamlets, rice paddies, and jungles where thousands of Americans risked life, limb, and spirit in a conflict few of them fully understood. The second war began when these same soldiers came home to face another fight, this one for the hearts and minds of their countrymen, and for their own health, sanity, and peace of mind.
Home to War presents a vivid portrait of a generation of American warriors who faced rejection by the nation in whose name they fought and virtual abandonment by the government that sent them to risk their young lives in Southeast Asia. In spite of formidable obstacles, including the still-fresh physical and mental traumas of the war, these young veterans joined together and committed themselves to heroic battles on the home front, from their unsung role in the antiwar movement to their unflagging campaign for medical help and compensation for Agent Orange exposure and post-traumatic stress wounds.
Home to War tells the gripping stories of these veterans and the social and political movements they inspired. In its pages you’ll meet Jan Barry, a disillusioned former West Point cadet who founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a volatile organization that would become a lightning rod for controversy and a beacon of hope for returning vets; Al Hubbard, a charismatic former Black Panther who led thousands of angry veterans to the steps of the nation’s capital to protest the war and the government’s shabby treatment of its veterans; Ron Kovic, whose outrageous — and courageous — stunts, uncensored comments, and provocative politics drew needed attention to the cause; Dr. Chaim Shatan, whose pioneering ‘rap groups’ speeded the psychological healing process for countless vets; Victor Yannacone Jr., who launched a precedent-shattering — and ultimately successful — legal case to gain compensation for veterans harmed by Agent Orange exposure; and many others whose inspiring struggles served themselves, their fellow soldiers, and their country.
Home to War is a passionate work of contemporary history and an essential addition to the literature of America’s Vietnam experience. Encompassing some thirty years of activism, readjustment, and healing, it is a fitting tribute to the unbreakable courage, idealism, and decades-long endurance of this generation of American soldiers.
Your price $8.50 Used Hardcover
|
|
Buffalo Boy & Geronimo by James Janko
Publisher Comments The unique vision in Janko's Buffalo Boy and Geronimois the depiction of the Vietnam War as seen through the lens of a wounded but resilient nature as a Confucian society still rooted in the earth and the unbroken fabric of ancestors is pitted against a desensitized military high-tech culture. As critic Paul Pines noted, "The forces here that seek to conquer the landscape are those, which by implication, shatter the harmonious fabric of the natural world to create a pathology that is far deeper than the political stakes indicate-one that indeed may determine the future of the entire ecosphere." The two heroes of the book, Nguyen Luu Mong, the Vietnamese buffalo boy, and Antonio Lucio, the US Chicano medic (Geronimo), both have a deep respect for the natural world, and it is through their eyes that we witness the devastation of the natural world of which they are a part. Geronimo's unit is engaged in search and destroy missions (one of the villages destroyed is Mong's), and he becomes so appalled by the pain and death inflicted on animals and humans that at one point he abandons his unit and rushes ahead to drive the animals away from an impending firebombing. Eventually he deserts and finds his way back into the jungle. The young adolescent Mong loses his beloved buffalo in an early firefight and eventually sees his entire village destroyed, the survivors relocating deeper into Viet Cong territory. His is also a love story, and his marriage to Thien at the end of the novel is symbolic of the need for life to continue despite the devastation. Trade Paperback
|
|
Constructing America's War Culture: Iraq, Media, and Images at Home by Thomas Conroy
Publisher Comments In 1927, political scientist Harold Lasswell wrote about the strategies employed by the American government to sell the benefits of participating in World War I to a reluctant public. In Propaganda Techniques in World War I, Lasswell discussed the 'manipulative symbols to manipulate opinions and attitudes' (p 9). Ever since then, all wars have involved specialists who attempt to control the way the media report about war and the way media contribute to shaping public opinion. This collection of essays discusses how media have 'packaged' the war in Iraq. The chapters in this collection explore the way the media have presented the war to us by telling us human interest stories, supporting public policies, and crafting a narrative that supports the war. Some chapters focus on the way the Bush administration has actively promoted and attempted to control information; others tell of how the media have either been complicit in supporting the dominant narrative, or how the public has used the images in the media to negotiate attitudes toward the war, terrorism, and international relations. All of the chapters discuss the relationships among conflict, political agendas, the power of media, and the way audiences use media to construct attitudes, beliefs, and ultimately a sense of history about the war. Coming from the perspective of communication studies, situates the multi-dimensional aspects of war, terrorism, public policy, media, and story-telling within the context of creating a consensually assembled image of what the war in Iraq is all about. This book will be of interest to undergraduate students as well as scholars of communication, history, sociology, political science, and American studies, and it will be an excellent resource both for classroom use as well as the general public. Your price $152.00 New Hardcover
|
|
A Temporary Sort of Peace: A Memoir of Vietnam by Jim McGarrah
Synopsis In his memoir Jim McGarrah, poet and writer from southern Indiana, examines in detail his peacetime life growing up in Princeton, Indiana; his indoctrination into the cult of the Marines as a fledgling warrior in basic training at Parris Island in South Carolina; and his introduction to the life of a combat soldier in Vietnam observing bulging body bags at an air base's morgue in Da Nang and going to his first assignment armed with a malfunctioning M-16 rifle. Many years later, the former private first class, serial number 2371586, realized that for him, home had become "the jungles of Vietnam, the one place where life was at its best and worst simultaneously every minute of every day." Hardcover
|
|