The Long Reckoning
A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The moving story of how a small group of people—including two Vietnam veterans—forced the U.S. government to take responsibility for the ongoing horrors—agent orange and unexploded munitions—inflicted on the Vietnamese.
"Fifty years after the last U.S. service member left Vietnam, the scars of that war remain...This [is the] remarkable story of a group of individuals determined to heal those enduring wounds.”—Elliot Ackerman, author of The Fifth Act and 2034
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area bounded by the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos. That small region saw the most intense aerial bombing campaign in history, the massive use of toxic chemicals, and the heaviest casualties on both sides.
In The Long Reckoning, George Black recounts the inspirational story of the small cast of characters—veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners—who used their moral authority, scientific and political ingenuity, and sheer persistence to attempt to heal the horrors that were left in the wake of the military engagement in Southeast Asia. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.
The Long Reckoning is being published on the fiftieth anniversary of the day the last American combat soldier left Vietnam.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Black (Empire of Shadows) delivers a fascinating study of the ongoing repercussions of the American war in Vietnam. The focus is on a relatively small group of American, Canadian, and Vietnamese scientists, politicians, and military veterans who have worked with the Vietnamese and U.S. governments to ameliorate the "multiple horrors," including unexploded ordnance and the ill-health effects of exposure to Agent Orange and other defoliants, afflicting Vietnamese civilians. At the center of the narrative are two American veterans who have dedicated their lives to making amends for the war: Chuck Searcy, an Army intelligence analyst during his 1967–1968 tour of duty in Saigon, and Manus Campbell, a former Marine who faced "the horrors of combat in ‘the bush' " and endured a long struggle with PTSD. Black movingly recounts both men's war experiences and the paths that brought them back to Vietnam, where they now live, and details their efforts to raise funds for those orphaned or disabled by the war, deliver prosthetics to amputees, decontaminate and demine military bases, and search for missing American servicemen. Insightful recaps of diplomatic negotiations are interwoven with evocative descriptions of the Vietnamese landscape and brisk summaries of the long campaign for accountability from the American government. The result is a brilliant look at "the long, slow process of healing."
