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Robert Timberg weaves together the lives of five well-known naval Academy graduates to reveal how the Vietnam War continues to haunt America. "This is an amazing piece of work that could make you cry over descriptions of bravery so bold and so big that you wonder how our country deserves such men. . . . It is about the soul of a nation".--Mike Barnicle, The Boston Globe Books. photo insert.
List of contents
CONTENTSPrologue
Book I. IHTFPIntroduction
I. Halos and Horns
2. Imagination Is Funny
3. Showdown
Book II. Fields of Fire
Introduction
4. Fire at Sea
5. Music Bingo, Dummy Math, and Gamma Rays
6. Welcome to the Gallant Marines
7. The Crown Prince
8. The Bloody Filter
9. Do You Want to Go Home?
10. The Cherry Boy
11. The Natural
12. Trusting the System
13. 'Tis the Season to Be Jolly
14. Stranger in a Strange Land
15. The Reasonable and Honest War Criminal
16. Long Tall Sally
17. The Water Walker
18. Adult Education
19. A Tutorial with the Greats
20. Reentry
21. A Change of Heart
22. Pug Henry
23. Women Can't Fight
24. Guerrilla Warfare
25. Garlic in a Crowded Elevator
Book III. The Nightingale's Song
Introduction
26. Ollie, Bud, and John
27. The Candidate from Hanoi
28. Scorpions in a Jar
29. Noble Cause Redux
30. The Doubters
31. The Presbyterian Climax
32. Put 'Em Up, Put 'Em Up
33. Remember Yamamoto
34. An Alien Presence
35. I Don't Have Any Life
36. The White Tornado
37. The Biggest Hawk and the Biggest Dove
38. Where Was Al Krekich When We Needed Him?
39. Chinatown
Epilogue
A Note on Research Methods
Notes
Bibliography
Interviews
Acknowledgments
Index
About the author
Robert Timberg is the author of
The Nightingale's Song and
John McCain, An American Odyssey. He served with the First Marine Division in South Vietnam from March 1966 to February 1967. He has worked at
The Baltimore Sun for three decades as a reporter, editor and White House correspondent. Currently deputy chief of the
Sun's Washington bureau, he lives in Bethesda, Md.
Summary
Presents the story of five top graduates of Annapolis who served heroically in Vietnam and rose to national prominence during the Reagan years.
