Thirty four years have passed since the end of the Vietnam War. An entire generation has grown up with no personal memories or recollection of the war. The greatest foreign policy disaster in United States history has receded into the ancient past for the majority of the American people. Reading about the origins of the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War may not be an appealing or interesting reading topic for many people, especially during the holiday season. 
    But now is the perfect time to read “American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War” by David Kaiser. For the past several months, President Obama has been studying the war in Afghanistan.  Last week in a televised speech; Obama laid out the country’s military plans for Afghanistan. In his speech, Obama was careful to list the differences between our involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan. However, there was one difference that he did not mention. During the Vietnam War, there was a military draft which exposed all American males to the possibility of being sent off to fight in Vietnam once they turned eighteen. Today, there is no draft, and our armed services are voluntary. It is only the members of our armed forces and their families who must bear the burden of fighting our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 
    Since our government has never asked its people to make any sacrifices on behalf of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the least the rest of us can do is to develop informed opinions on these wars and to learn from our past tragedies like the war in Vietnam. Not everyone will form the same opinions and draw the same lessons from our history, but we must all attempt to become knowledgeable on the topics of Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. If our society fails to do this, we will do a disservice to our armed services and deserve any future foreign policy tragedies that our government may commit.

After reading “The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War,” I was determined to learn more about the history between the United States and China from the early twentieth century until China’s fall to communism in 1949. The US- China policy during this time period is significant because its aftermath and effects influenced the United States in how it viewed the Korean War and its decision to escalate military involvement in Vietnam.

 
To learn more about this topic, I selected “Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945” by Barbara Tuchman. This Pulitzer Prize winning book combines the life of United States General, Joseph Stilwell with the United States’ China policy during this time period. From the early 1920s until his death in 1946, there was no American more knowledgeable about the politics and culture of China than Joseph Stilwell. Stilwell first went to China in 1920 as an army officer and was later appointed as the Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-shek. He was fluent in Mandarin Chinese and saw Chiang’s abilities and shortcomings as head of the Nationalist Government in China, better than any other American. From the early 1930s until the end of World War II, Stilwell saw the corruption of Chiang’s Nationalist government and Chiang’s unwillingness to use American military aid to fight the invading Japanese army. These fatal flaws of Chiang led to his inevitable military defeat by the communists led by Mao Zedong in 1949.
 

The communist victory in China over Chiang Kai-shek caused a political uproar in the United States and hardened its anti-communist policy. This fanatical anti-communist feeling grew during the early 1950s and was exploited by Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarthy. It also caused the United States to gradually see the French-Indochina war as a struggle against international communism instead of an attempt by France to regain her Southeast Asian colonies after losing them to Japan in World War II. This revised view of the French-Indochina War helped deepen the United States’ commitment to South Vietnam and began the long march to tragedy in Vietnam over the next twenty years.
 

“Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945” is not a short book that can be read quickly. It took me over two months to finish it but it is a classic and gave me a new found appreciation for a true American hero, General Joseph Stilwell.

“The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War” was the last book written by David Halberstam before his untimely death in an automobile accident on April 23, 2007.  He had intended to write a book about the Korean War since his days as a New York Times war correspondent during the Vietnam War.   When Halberstam was reporting from Vietnam in the 1960s, he was able to see how the Korean War had affected the US military advisors who had fought in both wars and the role in which the Korean War played on the men whose diplomatic decisions led the United States down the road into the Vietnam quagmire.

Halberstam interviewed many surviving soldiers who fought against the North Koreans and Chinese from June 1950 – March 1951.  These interviews succeed in giving the reader an eyewitness account of the war’s outbreak that summer and of China’s entry into the war in November 1950.  He balances these chapters with a history of Post-War America 1946-1950 and the events that shaped US post-war foreign policy decisions,  such as China’s fall to the communists in October 1949.  “The Coldest Winter” also enhances the historical background of the war with biographical chapters of the war’s major personalities – Harry S. Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Kim Il Sung, Mao Tse Tung and Joseph Stalin. 

The Korean War is sometimes referred to as the “Forgotten War.”  “The Coldest Winter” gives the reasons for this name in its introduction.   The war has no anniversaries or famous battles that are remembered or commemorated in the way that the public remembers December 7^th or the invasion of Normandy on D-Day.  The war also did not leave the type of national trauma that haunted the nation’s conscience after the war in Vietnam.   Many of its veterans have felt unappreciated and unrecognized by the public for their service in Korea.   

Having read “The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War,” I came away with an education of the Korean War and of the mindset of the United States government during the Post-World War II period.  I was also saddened because David Halberstam is my favorite writer and I will never be able to await the publication of his latest book again.

Over the past several weeks, I have been reading “Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-1965.”  This is the second volume of Taylor Branch’s trilogy of the Civil Rights movement.   Volume one, “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for nonfiction.   “Pillar of Fire” begins with the events that lead to the 1963 spring demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama.  The showdown that spring in Birmingham made civil rights the leading story and issue in the United States.   Branch also intertwines the journeys of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  Both men wanted racial justice but had extremely different views in how to achieve this goal. "Pillar of Fire" also gives an excellent account of the relationships between J. Edgar Hoover, President Johnson and Bobby Kennedy.   These three men mainly despised each other but were forced to work together due to the positions they held in government.    This is another book worth reading if for no other reason than to remember and honor all the men and women who risked safety and their lives to give African-Americans the rights guaranteed to them in the United States constitution.  It is both amazing and appalling that the events covered in “Pillar of Fire” happened in the lifetime of President Barack Obama.

                                                                                                                               

This is another lengthy book but one that deserves the time it takes to read it from cover to cover.  Like “The Children” by David Halberstam, the young men in “The Long Gray Line” made tremendous sacrifices for their country.

                The 1966 graduating class of West Point was the first class that faced the certainty of going off to war in Vietnam.  From the 1966 graduating class of 579, thirty cadets were killed and over one hundred were wounded in Vietnam.  Atkinson chronicles the life experiences of these cadets through their years at West Point and the Vietnam War.   These men entered West Point in July, 1962 as idealistic eighteen year olds ready to serve their country and answer the call of their young charismatic president.   Over the next 25 years, these men had to cope with their experiences from the war and adjust to a civilian society that wanted to mainly forget the war and the men who fought it.   It is said in this book that any great leader in any society probably gives more than he gets.   “The Long Gray Line” is a tribute to West Point’s 1966 class who gave and sacrificed more for their country than they could ever receive in return. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After finally finishing “Anna Karenina” three weeks ago and surviving another horrific Browns season, I was looking to read something less academic which could make me forget about the current state of the Browns and all the thousands of dollars that I have spent on Browns tickets since their return to Cleveland in 1999.   With these goals in mind I decided that this was the perfect time to read “The Best Show In Football: The 1946-1955 Cleveland Browns” by Andy Piascik.  In these ten seasons, the Browns played in ten championship games and won seven titles.   No professional football team has ever had a ten year period of success that comes close to what the Browns achieved in those seasons from 1946-1955.

 Unfortunately, Browns fans under the age of sixty do not have any memories of these great seasons.   All Browns fans would like to recall their team’s championship seasons from their own personal memories but reading Piascik’s book may be the next best way for post-1955 Browns fans to relive this golden age of Browns football. 

Since the Steelers now have to make room in their trophy case for their sixth Lombardi Trophy,  reading “The Best Show in Football: The 1946-1955 Cleveland Browns” will also be good preparation for all Browns fans when they are approached by those cocky Steelers fans who love to ask any Clevelander their favorite question.   “So, how many super bowls have the Browns won?” 

James Bevel. Diane Nash. Bernard Lafayette. John Lewis. James Lawson. If you don’t know more than one of these names, and consider yourself a student of the Civil Rights Movement, then you need to read “The Children” by David Halberstam. It has been eleven years since this book was written and sadly, I have never had a student approach the reference desk and ask for information on any of these individuals. These people began their fight against segregation in the state of Tennessee in 1960. As students, they successfully fought to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville department stores. After this victory, they played major roles in desegregating interstate buses in the South and helped Southern Blacks gain the right to vote.

 

This is not a short book but that should not discourage you from requesting it at the library. I have never read anything that portrays more vividly the courage and sacrifice that members of the Civil Rights Movement had to possess if they were to successfully remove legal segregation from our society. So if you’re looking for a challenging and fulfilling book, make my day and ask me for “The Children” the next time you see me at the reference desk.

Hello.  My name is Robert Dooner and I have been a reference librarian at the Euclid Public Library for the past sixteen years.  For the past fourteen years, I have been responsible for our adult a/v collection.  It is my job to make sure that we have the latest movie releases available to our patrons on the dates on which they are released.  Everybody loves to check out that blockbuster movie title when it has just been released.  Our feature film collection is probably the most popular area of our entire collection.  However, as we are stocking up on our movies for the week or weekend, hopefully we are still carrying a few books down to the circulation desk to check out as well.

 

In my blog, I will talk about books that I think are interesting to our patrons and enjoyable to read.  Not everyone finds the same books to be interesting so I will try to include a wide range of books that will encompass the tastes of our patrons.