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Senator John Kerry enlisted in the Navy in February of 1966. He won the Purple Heart three times for wounds suffered in action, and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Navy''s Silver Star for gallantry in action. When Kerry returned home, he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), becoming a prominent anti-war spokesperson. He would return to Vietnam many times with his friend Senator John McCain, looking for MIAs and POWs. Kerry was also the leading proponent of ''normalization'' of relations with Vietnam, a goal that was achieved in 1995. In the first full-scale account of John Kerry''s Navy career, acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley draws on exclusive access to Kerry''s personal diaries and letters home from Vietnam to explore his odyssey from highly-decorated war veteran to outspoken antiwar activist. The result is an insightful look at a time in our nation''s history that radically changed the way we look at war and government, and the compelling story of a man who was at the center of that era. Douglas Brinkley is director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and professor of history at the University of New Orleans. Brinkley''s recent publications include Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company and a Century of Progress, and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation with Stephen E. Ambrose. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, Anne, and daughter, Benton. ''Vietnam still haunts the corridors of power where war policy is forged, and its lessons never seemed to fall from fashion. Tour of Duty is a fresh and welcome retelling of these lessons, and how acutely Kerry once wrestled with them.'' - Boston Globe
About the author
Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, presidential historian for the New-York Historical Society, trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. The Chicago Tribune dubbed him “America’s New Past Master.” He is the recipient of such distinguished environmental leadership prizes as the Frances K. Hutchison Medal (Garden Club of America), the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks (National Parks Conservation Association), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Lifetime Heritage Award. His book The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He was awarded a Grammy for Presidential Suite and is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates in American studies. His two-volume, annotated Nixon Tapes won the Arthur S. Link–Warren F. Kuehl Prize. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and three children.
