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The Vietnam War in American memory : Veterans, Memorials and the Politics of Healing

The discussion of sculptures on pp. 268–90, 309–21, 326–29, 334–37, and 340–47, revisits pp. 537–66 of a 2001 article but the additional material and interpretation in the surrounding pages solidifies a reconceived narrative arc. The description of the Vietnam memorial’s design controversy on pp. 97–106, 133–39, and 166–72 revisits sources used in a 2002 article, but the argument in the book is entirely transformed. The discussion of pathways around the memorial on pp. 348–57 of VWIAM builds on the same article, forming a coherent new whole with the surrounding material.

This 553-page book uncovers previously undisclosed debates in the Reagan administration about the approval of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial’s design. This research drew on materials in the Library of Congress and the Fine Arts Commission; research on local memorials gathered unarchived materials from eight American locations, and press clippings and the contents of local library vertical files from all fifty states. This unique collection of several thousand items, constituting some sixteen linear feet of documents, has subsequently been accepted into the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University. The work of gathering, collating, and interpreting these materials proceeded over 15 years.