Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement

by Gerald Nicosia

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609809067
• ISBN13: 9780609809068
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA)
• Length: 704 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 6.6" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

First rate

Nicosia's book is an excellent piece of research, and provides insight into an historically importatnt time. Maybe in his next edition, he will include some of the findings from the extensive files the FBI kept on VVAW, and lay to rest some of the urban legends being spread even by at least one reviewer here. For instance, the VVAW "meeting" in Kansas City was actually a series of meetings over a four day period. Neither the participants nor the FBI files show Kerry present at any meeting where "assassinations" were discussed in any form. In fact, the FBI informants do not mention any such discussion at all, much less a vote. By all accounts of those there, one individual stood up and started riffing, and once people realized he wasn't joking, he was shouted down. As Nicosia points out time and again, nonviolence was an underlying principle of VVAW.Even the FBI concluded that Kerry was in no way associated with any sort of violent activity or discussion, ever.Nicosia is a myth-buster. He has his hands full in this election year.

My Lais, My Lais, My Lais!

Just finished all 626 pages of Gerald Nicosia's scrupulously-researched tome, Home to War. While I at first thought that it might be dense and difficult to read, I found that I couldn't put it down. And while I was reasonably certain that I was already familiar with the Big Picture, I discovered in Home to War a wealth of illuminating detail about how our government operates to suppress unpleasant and uncomfortable truths, as well as the people who put their very lives on the line to try to tell those truths... I certainly can't swear that every statement on every page of Nicosia's book is true down to the minutest detail. Given human fallability, I would be extremely surprised if it was. At the same time, one does not need a PhD in American History, but only a modicum of life experience, to know how often and how predictably the American government and its "free-market" culture exploits its citizens' youth and strength in its service - sucking the very marrow from their bones in the process - and then hangs them out to dry, casting them on the scrapheap of discarded humanity when they become an inconvenience, a "burden" on society. We are not, of course, the only country in the world to do this, but the hypocrisy of it in light of our professed national ideals makes it doubly shameful.My own experience in this regard arose not as a Viet Nam or "Operation Desert Storm" vet but as a disabled firefighter, yet it's exactly the same phenomenon. The importance of Nicosia's book is to make us aware of the recurring patterns of official government denial, mendacity, hypocrisy, and abandonment of its own citizens, not to "prove" whether or not certain dikes were bombed in a specified location in Viet Nam. Sure, Nicosia has a point of view - in this case an empathy with the disabled veterans - but what author doesn't? And would the book be a fraction as good if it had been written without passion?In his essential purpose of writing Home to War as a chronicle of the Viet Nam vets' struggle with the very government to which they gave their unstinting service and their very lives, Nicosia succeeds exquisitely. My recommendation: Read Home to War, hug a veteran (even the ones who didn't like Nicosia's book), and inform yourself in as many ways as possible about the true nature of the society in which you live.

Home to War

I have recently finished reading Home to War and found it very compelling and disturbing! I personaly know many of the people mentioned in the book. I was a founding memeber of the SF VVAW Chapter along with Michael Oliver, Lee Thorn, the late Jack Mc Closky and other Viet Nam Veterans who opposed the war and were willing to put thier bodies on the line again to try to stop it. The only fault I can find with this book is that it didn't say more. No indictment of the war or the Nixon administration's policies toward us can be damning enough, slander is impossable. Gerry has done his very best to tell it like it was.

A Must Read for Vietnam Veterans

As a Vietnam Veteran (U.S. ARMY)I suffered the neglect, indifference and prejudice that all Veteran's did. I heard of other Vets who were making noise about it, and was curious enough to go see for myself what was going on at the Westwood VA, but I didn't participate. I was sprayed with Agent Orange when I was in Phan Thiet in 1969, and I got the wrong answers from the VA when (in 1979) I complained about symptoms of Agent Orange. I also had been told that my Medical Records were lost. Many of my experiences, I must confess I didn't understand, this book explains what was happening and Why! If you want to find the truth about your experiences, or are the family of a Vet who wants to understand, you need!!! to read this book. It's long and hard reading, but it will give you the truth, it will make you angry, nervous, and disgusted, but it will make you cry too for the Veterans who died after the War, At Home, Fighting the VA, Government and Chemical Companies.

We Came Home and the War Never Stopped!

As one of the participants in many of the demonstrations so eloquently described in Home to War, Gerry Nicosia has accurately portrayed historic events in a powerful movement that continues today. People of all ages and backgrounds will benefit from reading this book that recounts the Vietnam Veteran's "battles" at home, battles often worse than those they encountered on the field of war. Home to War describes the struggle that Vietnam Veterans went through on their own to obtain help in healing with herbicide exposure (Agent Orange)and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Gerry's description of some key players in this movement, such as Jack McCloskey, Ron Kovic and Ron Bitzer is right on target and helps the reader to better understand the struggle and the motivations behind the Vietnam Veteran's movement.Senator Bob Kerry's recent disclosure of his participation in atrocities in Vietnam underscores the anguish and scars that Vietnam Veterans still live with more than 30 years after the end of the war.While much has been written and portrayed in films about this unpopular war, this book is the most comprehensive in detailing the positive actions taken by returning veterans in what seemed to be an unending struggle to heal, in what can be called the greatest "self-help" movement of all time.