Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement

by Melvin Small, William D. Hoover (Editor), George McGovern (Foreword by)

Overview

Written by veterans of the Vietnam War and participants in the organized opposition to it, this book examines how the activities of America's most important antiwar movement affected the lives of its citizens and its government.

Relying on oral histories and recently available archival material, the authors consider the movement's strategies and tactics, its leaders and its rank and file, and describe the difficulties encountered by peace activists in their efforts to build politically effective organizations. What emerges from this collection is that the millions of Americans who fought against the government's policies in Southeast Asia participated in one of the most potent--and complex--oppositional movements in modern history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815625582
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	07/28/1992
Series:	Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution Series
Edition description:	1st ed
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.01(w) x 8.94(h) x 0.86(d)
Lexile:	1490L (what's this?)

About the Author

Melvin Small is professor of history at Wayne State University and president of the Council on Peace Research in History. His other books include Resort to Arms, Was War Necessary?, and Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves.

William D. Hoover, professor of history and department chair of the University of Toledo, has published articles on Japanese diplomacy and entrepreneurship and served as the Asian editor for the Biographical Dictionary of Modem Peace Leaders.

Editorial Reviews

This collection of 14 essays, generated by a 1990 conference on the Vietnam antiwar movement, analyzes movement strategies, the role of the military and women in resistance, and the movement in the schools. While the essays contain much useful information, including some new material based on oral histories, they lack the narrative drive of less academic histories. A few of the contributions stand out: historian Maurice Isserman, analyzing the triumph of militance over pacifism in Students for a Democratic Society, says that its rank and file was more diverse and less radical than the leadership; peace activist David McReynolds reflects on how more radical social critics shook pacifists' ``unexamined'' view of America; David Cortwright, a former soldier-activist, traces the socioeconomic profiles of GIs who practiced dissent and disobedience, noting that volunteers opposed the war more than draftees. Particularly stimulating is historian Kenneth J. Heineman's portrait of Kent State University, which, contrary to myth, had been a hotbed of activism. Small wrote Resort to Arms ; Hoover is a professor of history at the University of Toledo. (July)

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