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Product Description
On 16 March 1968, two US infantry companies entered a Vietnamese village and in the course of a single morning killed over 400 of its unarmed, unresisting inhabitants ...This is the first book to examine the response of American society to the My Lai massacre and its ambiguous place in American national memory. Kendrick Oliver argues that the massacre revelations left many Americans untroubled. It was only when the soldiers most immediately responsible came to be tried that opposition to the conflict grew, for these prosecutions were regarded by supporters of the war as evidence that the national leaders no longer had the will to do what was necessary to win. Oliver goes on to show that, contrary to interpretations of the Vietnam conflict as an unhealed national trauma or wound, many Americans have assimilated the war and its violence rather too well, and they were able to do so even when that violence was most conspicuous and current. US soldiers have been presented as the conflict's principal victims, and this was true even in the case of My Lai. It was the American perpetrators of the massacre and not the Vietnamese they brutalized who became the central object of popular concern. Both the massacre and its reception reveal the problem of human empathy in conditions of a counter-revolutionary war - a war, moreover, that had always been fought for geopolitical credibility, not for the sake of the Vietnamese. This incisive enquiry into the moral history of the Vietnam war should be essential reading for all students of the conflict, as well as others interested in the war and its cultural legacies.
About the Author
Kendrick Oliver is Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Southampton
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1.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
for college professors only, 6 Dec 2008
By Kurt Markus - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The My Lai Massacre in American History and Memory (Paperback)
I am reluctant to write this review, knowing a person's response to literature is subjective, and personal. But I feel compelled to warn prospective buyers of this title that I found it almost impossible to read. The author seems to feel that simple, declarative sentences are as ugly as the massacre at Mai Lai. If you want to be lectured, with footnotes, this is your book. I don't know how you siphon off emotion when it comes to this subject, but the author has managed to drain the sink dry of any heartbeat. I really wanted to read this book, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried. But in the end the author whipped me into submission. I guess I'll have to wait for the Cliff Notes before I can absorb his message. Too bad, because underneath all the "moreovers" and "therefores" he had an idea, a worthy idea. In my opinion, he let his scholarship trump all.
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