Product Description
This unique 50th anniversary collection recaptures the century's greatest cataclysm and the brilliant generation of American journalists who reported it--nearly 90 writers, the best of a remarkable generation whose talent, sense of purpose, and physical courage remain unsurpassed in the annals of war reporting. Includes a detailed chronology of the war, historical maps, a glossary of military terms, and photos and illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

not happy
I am seventy years old and can't see small print. This journal is in 6pt type and too small for me to read also in the ad it did not mention that this is part one of two. It was very slow getting to me and I am disappointed

Five - star journalism
There is little I can add to the fine reviews already posted on this site. Library of America has done a fine job collecting these works, and adding useful sections on maps, notes, author mini bios and an excellent yet brief Chronology of the main events of WWII.

Some of these articles verge on literature. Consider the following opening sentences of an article written by Mary Heaton Vorse on munition girl workers ("The girls of Elkton, Maryland", p. 471):

"It was pay day at the munitions plant. There seemed to be a run on the bank at Elkton."

Or, how about Ernye Plye reporting the London bombing of December 29, 1940 (p. 147):

"Half an hour after the firing started I gathered a couple of friends and went to a high, darkened balcony that gave us a view of one-third of the entire circle of London. As we stepped out onto the balcony, a vast inner excitement came over all of us --an excitement that had neither fear nor horror in it, because it was too full of awe. You have all seen big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the whole horizon of a city lined with great fires..."

You can skip articles back and forth if you wish, or read cover to cover, depending on your personal taste. And as another reviewer pointed out, these articles make great reading material for commuting, waiting at the doctor's office, etc. If you have any interest in World War II you will love this book.

World War II as it happened
If any book deserves more than a five star rating this (as well as its sequel, "Reporting World War IIPart Two: American Journalism 1944-1946") is it. Attractively bound, compact and very readable, this volume is Part One of a two-volume set which provides an incomparable overview of World War II, as it was experienced by our parents' and grandparents' generation.

This is not just another book about The War and the Big Names who create and control Events.It is above all a book about ordinary people and for ordinary people, who find themselves caught up in positions not of their choosing. Some are victims, some are heroes, some just watch and wait, but most are small pieces in a Big Picture they can barely comprehend.

Unlike the usual histories of World War II, which have been written long after the fact and with the benefit of hind-sight, this superb collection, arranged in chronological order and using newspapers, magazine articles, radio broadcasts, diaries and photographs from the great journalists of the day, allows us to follow the events - at home and abroad -- as they happened.We all know how events turned out, but this book takes us back to that time, with an immediacy, an uncertainty and an irony, to what it was like to be alive during this immense, all-consuming, mid-20th century, global conflict.

Beginning with William Shirer at the Munich Conference of 1938 which handed the Sudetenland over to Hitler, then in Berlin on September 1, 1939 reporting on the German Invasion ofPoland, and later, at Compiegne for the surrender of France in 1940, these are some of the high-lights:
Sigrid Schultz in Berlin on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938;
A J Leibling in Paris and Virginia Cowles fleeing Paris before the German advance;
Edward R Murrow broadcasting daily from London during the Blitz;
C L Sulzberger from Athens (also soon to fall) on the German invasion of Yugoslavia, April 1941; and
Margaret Bourke-Whiteon the Russian Front in 1941;

The New York Herald Tribune prints Roosevelt's war message on December 8, 1941 as "America declares War";
Husband and wife team -- Melville Jacoby describes the Japanese attack on the Philippines, December 1941, "War Hits Manila", and Annalee Jacoby records the heroism of "Bataan Nurses" under fire;
Raymond Clapper provides a "Pearl Harbor Post-mortem";
Ernie Pyle is on the spot in London, North Africa, Sicily & the Italian campaign;
On Christmas Night 1941 Cecil Brown sends a cable from Singapore on the "Malay Jungle War";
Jack Belden describes "Stilwell's Retreat Through Burma", May 1942;
Brendan Gill is on the US Home Front in 1942, "Rationing";
"A Vast Slaughterhouse", a report of the extermination of Jews, appears in the New York Times, June 1942 - a harbinger of the horrors to come;
E B White follows Dorothy Lamour to Bangor, Maine for a "Bond Rally";
Roi Ottley, George Schuyler & Deton Brooks report separate incidents of racial discrimination including the murder of black soldiers in the US;
John Hersey is at Guadalcanal, October 1942;
John Steinbeck joins a troop ship to Salerno, September 1943;
Edward Kennedy reports on the infamous "Patton Slapping Case", November 1943;
Martha Gelhorn visits the RAF Burn Centre, 1943 in "the Price of Fire";
War correspondent Richard Tregaskis with the troops in Italy reports on himself getting shot; and
Gertrude Stein writing from Occupied France in 1944 is "Tired of Winter Tired of War."

This volume concludes in the spring of 1944 as the tide is turning in Allied favour.
I highly recommend this book and its sequel. Most of the articles are less than six pages in length, which makes them ideal reading for those time-wasting intervals of life - check-out lines, doctor's offices and waiting for buses. I guarantee the time will whiz right by!

Another treasure from the wonderul Library of America
I am so glad the Library of America put together these volumes of reporting from the Second World War.Sadly, all those who were living during those years are leaving us all to rapidly.Certainly, the living knowledge of the events and times is fading fast.While we value the books great authors give us, we should treasure even more the writing given us at the time.In volume one we have reporting from great journalists starting in 1938 Shirer's article on the Munich conference that gave Germany the Sudetenland.

We get to follow the rise of Anti-Semitism in Germany with Kristallnacht, the fall of Poland and Paris.The London Blitz is covered by Edward R. Murrow and more and more.The United States doe not even enter the war until page 241 with the Herald Tribune's reporting of Roosevelt's "War Message".

The reporting also takes us into the Pacific and gets us down with those doing the actual work of the war including Annalee Jacoby's account of nurses under fire in Bataan.We get early reporting on the Japanese Internment camps and the Holocaust with the NY Times reporting in 1942 that one million Jews reported slain.

There is a section of fine photos of the reporters included and others in the text including some aerial shots from a bomber's point of view.This first volume ends with the Mountain Campaign in Italy in 1944.The volume also supplies a short, but full chronology of the war, some excellent maps, biographies of the journalists, acknowledgements, notes on the texts, and a glossary of military terms.

A superb job.

Remarkable First Hand Reporting
You can read history books and watch all of the redigitalized DVD's (movies) of World War II stories but the "best of the best" is right here in this wonderful compilation of first hand accounts from reporters who were on the scene and reported back to their readership when the events were actually occurring. It is fascinating to read what was reported at that time in history. This compliation is well worth reading. It also contains a great general biographical summary of all of the reporters who's work appears in the book. These were interesting people in their own right. I will use their biographies as a valuable resource for other additional readings. ... Read more

Product Description
From A. Philip Randolph's defiant call in 1941 for African Americans to march on Washington to Alice Walker in 1973, Reporting Civil Rights presents firsthand accounts of the revolutionary events that overthrew segregation in the United States. This two-volume anthology brings together for the first time nearly 200 newspaper and magazine reports and book excerpts, and features 151 writers, including James Baldwin, Robert Penn Warren, David Halberstam, Lillian Smith, Gordon Parks, Murray Kempton, Ted Poston, Claude Sitton, and Anne Moody. A newly researched chronology of the movement, a 32-page insert of rare journalist photographs, and original biographical profiles are included in each volume

Roi Ottley and Sterling Brown record African American anger during World War II; Carl Rowan examines school segregation; Dan Wakefield and William Bradford Huie describe Emmett Till's savage murder; and Ted Poston provides a fascinating early portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the early 1960s, John Steinbeck witnesses the intense hatred of anti-integration protesters in New Orleans; Charlayne Hunter recounts the hostility she faced at the University of Georgia; Raymond Coffey records the determination of jailed children in Birmingham; Russell Baker and Michael Thelwell cover the March on Washington; John Hersey and Alice Lake witness fear and bravery in Mississippi, while James Baldwin and Norman Podhoretz explore northern race relations.

Singly or together, Reporting Civil Rights captures firsthand the impassioned struggle for freedom and equality that transformed America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

America's Struggle for Civil Rights (II)
This book is the second volume of the Library of America's documentary, journalistic history of the Civil Rights Movement.The first volume covers the years 1941-1963 and takes the story up to the March on Washington in August, 1963. The second volume covers a shorter time span, 1963 - 1973, but an equally momentous series of events.Volume II is easily important enough for its own short notice and review here.

The centerpiece of the two volumes is the March on Washington which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.Indeed, the 1963 March, led by Dr. King, may be the watershed event of the Civil Rights Movement as a whole.There are three eyewitness accounts of the March presented in this book offering three different perspectives.The 1963 March, and the moment of idealism, justice and peace it has come to represent pervades and suggests worlds of commentary upon the rest of the volume.

The articles in this book have an emphasis on Congressional action. In 1964, following the 1963 events in Birmingham Alabama and the 1963 March, Congress passed the Civil Rights Law which, in time, would effectively end segregation in the South.In 1965, following events in Selma, Alabama and the March from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, Congress enacted voting rights legislation which at long last fulfilled the promise of the 15th Amendment to protect the voting rights of blacks.The events in Selma, and the manner in which they galvanized the nation are well documented in this book.

The story recounted in this volume is marked by assasination, violence and discord. There are two major assassinations highlighted here. The volume describes Malcom X's break from the Black Muslim movement and his assassination in February, 1965.A great deal of space is given to the assasination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1965 and to its tragic aftermath.

There is much space given to the violence that haunted the struggle for Civil Rights.In particular, many articles are given over to the murder of three young Civil Rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Cheney during June, 1964.Their murder involved the FBI in a massive manhunt which ultimately led to the conviction of Klansmen and of local law enforcement officials.

There is a great deal of material in the volume on the riots in Watts and Detroit and with the rise of Black Power and the Black Panther movement.

There are articles in this volume that draw excellent portraits of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, including Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, Bayard Rustin, Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, and, of course, Dr. King.

There are pictures of dusty roads and small towns in the South.Many articles are given to pictures of the South before and after the victories of the Civil Rights Movement.There is a suggestion in more than a few articles that the South may have, given its past, an ultimately easier time of moving towards a unified, racially egalitarian and united society than will the North.Time still needs to tell whether this is will in fact bethe case.

These are two indespensible volumes on the most important social movement of 20th Century America.The Civil Rights Movement is an essential component in the formation of the American dream and the American ideal.

A Priceless Documentary of America's Civil Rights Struggle
America's largest, most continuous, and most pressing domestic issue has been the treatment it has accorded black Americans. Similarly, the most important and valuable social movement in our country in the Twentieth Century was the Civil Rights movement which began, essentially, in the 1940's with WW II, received its focus with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and continued through the 1950s 60s, and 70s.

The Library of America has published a two-volume history of the American Civil Rights Movement which focuses on contemporaneous journalistic accounts. The LOA's collection centers around the March on Washington in August 1963 which opens the second volume. The publication of the volumes, indeed, was timed to coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the March on Washington. This March is best known for Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech.

The first volume of the series, which I am discussing here, begins in 1941 and ends in the middle of 1963. In consists of about 100 articles and essays documenting the Civil Rights struggle during these momentous years. Given the centrality of the March on Washington to the collection, the volume opens with a "Call to Negro America" dated July 1, 1941 calling for 10,000 Black Americans to march on Washington D.C. to secure integration and equal treatment in the Armed Forces. Philip Randolph, then the President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters" was primarily responsible for this attempt to organize the 1941 march, and he participated prominently 22 years later in the 1963 March on Washington.

The volume documents other ways in which Civil Rights activities in the 1940s foreshadowed subsequent events. For example, there is an article detailing how Howard University students used the "sit-in" technique to desegregate Washington D.C. restaurants beginning in 1942. (see Pauli Murray's article on p. 62 of this volume). The sit-in technique was widely used beginning in the early 1960s to desegregate lunch counters in Southern and border states. There are many articles in this volume documenting these later sit-ins and their impact, as well as the original sit-in organized by Pauli Murray.

Among the many subjects covered by this book are Thurgood Marshall's early legal career for the NAACP, the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown", the lynching of Emmett Till in 1954 and the acquittal of the guilty parties by an all-white Mississippi jury, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which Martin Luther King first gained prominence, of 1956, the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957, the lunch counter sit-ins that I have already mentioned, the "Freedom Rides" the admission of James Meridith to the University of Mississippi in 1962, the Birmingam riots, and the murder of Medgar Evars, Missippi Field Secretary for the NAACP. on June 12, 1962. There is a great deal more, and the articles given in the volume address Civil Rights in the North as well as in the South.

There is an immediacy and an eloquence to this collection that gives the reader the feel of being there and participating at the time. The cumulative effect of reading the book through is moving and powerful. By reading the book cover-to-cover and as the articles are presented the reader will get a better feel for the Civil Rights Movement and Era that can be gotten anywhere else. The book records a seminal Era in our Nation's history and an idealism and a sprit that is difficult to recreate or recapture.

I would like to point out some of the longer articles that the reader should notice in going through the book. I enjoyed James Poling's 1952 essay "Thurgood Marshall and the 14th Amendment" which chronicles Marshall's early career. Another important essay is William Bradford Huie's "Emmett Till's Killers Tell their Story: January, 1956." which recounts the confession to Till's murder of the individuals acquitted by the Mississippi jury. Robert Penn Warren's 1956 book-length essay "Segregation: the Inner Conflict in the South" is reprinted in the volume in full. There is a lengthy excerpt from James Baldwin's 1962 "The Fire Next Time" which recounts Baldwin's meeting with Elijah Muhammad and his thoughts about the Black Muslim Movement. Norman Podhoretz's 1963 essay "My Negro Problem and Ours" remains well worth reading. Probably the most significant single text in this volume is Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" written in 1963. In this famous letter, Dr. King responds eloquently to criticism of his movement and his techniques voiced by eight Birmingham clergymen. The letter is a classic, not the least for Dr. King's writing style.

The book contains a chronology which will help the reader place the articles in perspective, and biographical notes on each of the authors. I found myself turning to the biographies and the chronology repeatedly as I read the volume. The Library of America has also posted excellent study material for this book and its companion volume on its Website.

This is a book that documents American's history and our country's continuing struggle to meet and develop its ideals. ... Read more

Product Description
James Agee brought to bear all his moral energy, slashing wit, and boundless curiosity in the criticism and journalism that established him as one of the commanding literary voices of America at mid-century. In 1944 W. H. Auden called Agee's film reviews for The Nation "the most remarkable regular event in American journalism today." Those columns, along with much of the movie criticism that Agee wrote for Time through most of the 1940s, were collected posthumously in Agee on Film: Reviews and Comments, undoubtedly the most influential writings on film by an American.

Whether reviewing a Judy Garland musical or a wartime documentary, assessing the impact of Italian neorealism or railing against the compromises in a Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway, Agee always wrote of movies as a pervasive, profoundly significant part of modern life, a new art whose classics (Chaplin, Dovzhenko, Vigo) he revered and whose betrayal in the interests of commerce or propaganda he often deplored. If his frequent disappointments could be registered in acid tones, his enthusiasms were expressed with passionate eloquence. This Library of America volume supplements the classic pieces from Agee on Film with previously uncollected writings on Ingrid Bergman, the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine, and a wealth of other cinematic subjects.

Agee's own work as a screenwriter is represented by his script for Charles Laughton's unique and haunting masterpiece of Southern gothic, The Night of the Hunter, adapted from the novel by Davis Grubb.This collection also includes examples of Agee's masterfully probing reporting for Fortune-on subjects as diverse as the Tennessee Valley Authority, commercial orchids, and cockfighting-and a sampling of his literary reviews, among them appreciations of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, S. J. Perelman, and William Carlos Williams. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Insightful, Inspired, Kind
James Agee was the first film critic, that I know of, who percieved and prophesied the poetic power of images on film.After reading his addictive reviews and enjoying his rich and witty prose the reader will know a lot about Agee the man, his sensitivities, his ideals and his prejudices.Anyone interested in film from the 1940's or film criticism in general should really own this book.

An excerpt:
"During the long climax these clashings blend in such a way that the picture, faults and all, soars along one of the rarest heights possible to art-the height from which it is seen that the whole race, including the observer, is to be pitied, laughed at, and revered for its delusions of personal competence for good, evil, or mere survival, as it sleepwalks along ground which continuously opens bottomless chasms beneath the edges of its feet."

Obviously these are not simply movie reviews, they are personal essays on the topic of film revealing a sensitive humanist and visionary of the latent power of images.

Film Writing and Selected Journalism
Includes the classic Agee on Film as well as the screenplay for the classic, chilling Night of the Hunter, this is a must read for film fans of the WWII era.Never shy to express an opinion, Agee wrote with great passion and intellegence about the films of the period.I was esp. impressed with the features he wrote for the fledgling perodical - The Nation.When he discovered a film he liked, he would delve into great detail on what interested him in the work (sometimes pieces would continue from one issue into the next).I also appreciated his willingness to say that a film touched a particular interest in him and might not be to the taste of all readers (can you imagine a critic doing that today - actually putting him or herself out there as just another spectator as opposed to a critical god....)As with the theatrical writings of Ken Tynan - a treasure. ... Read more

Product Description
A unique collection captures a dramatic and controversial war and the brilliant generation of American journalists who reported it.

This one-volume selection, drawn from the original newspaper and magazine reports and contemporary books collected in the acclaimed two-volume hardcover edition, brings together the work of over fifty remarkable writers to create a powerful mosaic view of America's longest war. Reporting Vietnam follows events from the first American fatalities in 1959 through the Tet Offensive in 1968 to the fall of Saigon in 1975, recording the shifting course of the fighting, its impact on an increasingly fractured America, and the changing texture of American journalism.

Here are Homer Bigart, David Halberstam, Stanley Karnow, and Neil Sheehan on South Vietnam in the 1960s; Thomas Johnson and Wallace Terry examining the changing attitudes of black soldiers; Sydney Schanberg on the fall of Phnom Penh; Philip Caputo on the last days of South Vietnam. Included as well are Norman Mailer at the March on the Pentagon, Doris Kearns on Lyndon Johnson's anguished decision-making, and James Michener's meticulous reconstruction of the Kent State shooting.

The volume includes a detailed chronology of the war, historical maps, biographical profiles of the journalists, notes, a glossary of military terms, and an index.

"Not simply a riveting collection of first-rate writing about the war, Reporting Vietnam is also an epic retelling of an American tragedy." --The Oregonian

"This splendid collection testifies to the courage, endurance and swallowed anger of an extraordinarily brave group of writers who, by sharing the agony, earned their rights to report it." --John Le CarreAmazon.com Review
In the predawn morning of May 9, 1970, Richard Nixon left theWhite House and went to the Lincoln Memorial to speak with a handfulof antiwar protesters, most of them college students. The nervouspresident, who, an assistant later said, "wanted to know what theythought," and the awed students talked amiably for a time, and thenall concerned went about their business, Nixon conducting a war, thestudents trying to end it. So reported Dan Oberdorfer for theWashington Post in one of the dozens of stories, profiles,articles, and dispatches collected in this volume of Vietnam War-erajournalism, the second of two content-packed books in a Library ofAmerica set. Among the many highlights of the second volume arereports by New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg (ofThe KillingFields fame) on the deadly aftermath of the American invasionof Cambodia; Seymour Hersh's coverage of the My Lai massacre, in whichAmerican soldiers under the command of Lt. William Calley killed 109South Vietnamese civilians; U.S. Senator John McCain's account forU.S. News and World Report of his six years as a prisoner ofwar; and, for a weird home-front spin, Hunter S.Thompson'shallucinogen-fueled reportage from the 1972 Democratic NationalConvention. The complete text of Michael Herr's Dispatches, aninfluential and estimable book, is included, as well. Students ofVietnam War history will find this and its companion volume to beessential sources.--Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Memories of Vietnam
Growing up while this happened makes me now realize what was going on over there, and the losses that our troops suffered. Very well thought out and a must read for all.

Amazing Vietnam War Resource from Beginning to End
This is exactly the type of book you want to read about Vietnam - in the words of those who were there, whether soldier or reporter. It contains articles written by the media and excerpts from soldiers memoirs in chronological order from the start of the war until the fall of Saigon. (FYI - There is little here from a directly Vietnamese point of view, though there are some who write very sympathetically of their plight.)

This tome (it's over 800 pages of densely packed information and narration, but doled out in 5-10 page excerpts which make great reading) covers everything from the first days of aerial bombing (letters home from one of the first pilots over there) to the African-American experience in Vietnam, to the desolation of those involved when Saigon fell.

Because this is a compilation of actual stories from the Vietnam Conflict you could use it's wealth of information (and sources) to build a case for any position or point of view. It would be an excellent source for research on the Vietnam War, steeped with original quotes and overflowing with the genuine feelings and experiences of those who were there.

Highly Recommended.

The Best and The Brightest
THE VIETNAM WAR AND THE MEDIA


I am a Vietnam Veteran, a college graduate of the Vietnam Era, and a professional journalist.That should establish either some kind of credibility or culpability. The Vietnam War began when I was l7 years old, and ended when I was 30.That means mygeneration of draft-aged males... lived with the reality of War throughout their adolescence. I went to college in the '60s and, like most of my classmates, lived under the shadow of Vietnam for my entire college career..Flunk out...you get Drafted. (that happened to a friend of mine at Yale. He partied too heartily and ended up as a grunt in the Mekong Delta.) As the War escalated, so did the dissent and the polarization of the country.

In l968, the following events occurred:
* The Tet Offensive;
* the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with the arrest of theChicago Seven;
* The Mexico City Olympics black power protests;
* The assassinations of Martin Luther King and RFK;
* student demonstrations at Berkeley, Columbia, and Paris;
* And the increse in the Force Level in Vietnam approached 500,000.

Thatmakes 1968 the most significant year in my life. That was also the year after I graduated from College, and, lacking plans for graduate school, enlisted in the Army (not out of patriotism but pragmatism: I made a deal with the devil--- I'd volunteer for three years as a Broadcast Specialist, and the Army would keep me out of The Killing Zone.When I got to Saigon, I worked for Armed Forces Radio and TV: reading news they wanted me to read (like Robin Williams' character Adrian Kronauer in "Good Morning Vietnam."

During my year in Saigon, part of my job was to attend the daily press briefings cynically referred to by the press corpsas "The Five O'clock Follies." (Because they were timed to occur after the evening TV Newscasts in the States).This was long before CNN; Fox News; the Internet; and Pod-casts.The mainstream media then had a far greater role than today.When Walter Cronkite said the Vietnam War was un-winnable, it ended Lyndon Johnson's career. (Johnson later admitted he knew he was finished after watching the CBS Evening News).Vietnam was called the first Living Room War, because most Americans get their news at the dining room table.And that included escalating casualties, various atrocities like My Lai (which is kind of like the Marines in Iraq); and the rising chorus of dissent among the young.


Another disturbing parallel between Vietnam and Iraq is the arrogance, imperiousness, and hubris of the Secretaries of Defense in both Wars.Both Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld were arrogant and disdainful of the professional soldiers they commanded.
Each time they appeared before Congress and the Media, they said basically : this is the way it is. And don't confuse us with the facts. The Press, in the discordantly alliterative words of former Vice President and Convicted Felon Spiro Agnew (his real name) were "nattering nabobs of negativism"(How about: "Clueless Cheerleaders of Colonialism"?)

Had any of them taken the time to read the history of Indochina and the experience of the French ("Street Without Joy" or "Hell in a Very Small Place" by Bernard Fall; "The making of a Quagmire" by David Halberstam; "Fire in the Lake" by Francis Fitzgerald; or "The Best and the Brightest" by
David Halberstamthey would have predicted the inevitable outcome of American Adventurism in Other Places. Those who ignore (or, in George Bush's Case, never learned) the lessons of History are condemned to repeat them"

--By Philip Henry
[...]

A Good One!!
Althought this is a compilation of the two volumes previously released, this is a terrific title. All kinds of important people from the Vietnam era have essays in this book. Sixty-one of them. Can't wait to reread it....

Terrific Articles - but don't stop here!
This very valuable compilation of historically important news articles and its companion (Part One) should be on the shelf of every person who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the Vietnam War.I can't review the articles contained, but know that there are many important pieces.Some of them are the Doris Kearns article on LBJ, John McCain's article on his captivity, Michael Kinsley on Kissinger and Harvard, several on the various incursions in countries neighboring Vietnam, and several on the fall of South Vietnam.

Some of the other famous inclusions are Seymour Hersh on My Lai and James Michener on Kent State, and Stewart Alsop on how the draft was implemented expressed America's Class System.There are many more.

But as I said about Part One, you will also need to read other things.This collection really only represents one side of the debate.At the time it was not as one sided as everyone remembers now.There really was support for the war in the population.Yes, it declined as time passed, but even today many feel that we lost more because we mishandled things more than because the war was wrong.However, that is neither here nor there for this collection.It is a terrific collection.My point is that you can't know the war and how it affected America without reading these articles.But you also can't know its full effects without reading more than these articles. ... Read more

Product Description
Presents guidance, direction, and motivation for those considering a career in broadcast journalism, based on information from people actually involved in the field. ... Read more

Product Description
This reader is in four sections. The first identifies key issues in the debates over media and democracy; the second concerns standards of professional journalism; the third concerns the anatomy of news - the content and how it is formed; and the final section looks at challenges and developments. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
In the last few years, with the publication of such books asJacques Leslie's TheMark and William Prochnau's Once Upon a DistantWar, historians and former correspondents have been examiningclosely the role of journalism in the conduct of the Vietnam War. Thetwo volumes of Reporting Vietnam offer a trove of material forsuch studies. Part One contains combat-front writing by journalistswho are well known to students of Vietnam War history--Stanley Karnow,David Halberstam, Frances FitzGerald, Bernard Fall, Neil Sheehan, WardJust, and Zalin Grant among them. The hefty volume--which runs thegamut of journalistic genres, including hard news, analysis, profiles,think pieces, and interviews--covers the home front as well, fromwhich the likes of Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe have their say.

The collection opens with a fairly dispassionate account fromTime magazine reporting the deaths of the first U.S. militaryadvisors in 1959; it ends with the complete text of Daniel Lang's longNew Yorker piece, "Casualties of War," the basis for Brian DePalma's controversialmovie of the same name. In between are accounts of battles on thestreets of Chicago and the Central Highlands, studies of the rise ofblack-power militancy on the ever-changing front lines, and perceptiveportraits of ordinary soldiers on both sides of the war. Among thebook's many highlights is Neil Sheehan's memoir of his change fromhawk to dove as the war progressed. "I have sometimes thought," hewrites, "when a street urchin with sores covering his legs stopped meand begged for a few cents' worth of Vietnamese piastres, that hemight be better off growing up as a political commissar. He wouldthen, at least, have some self-respect." Such changing views, we cannow clearly see, helped shift public opinion in the United Statesagainst the war. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Reporting Vietnam - A Winner - Parts One & Two
Newspaper and magazine reports AND books make up this masterpiece. David Halberstam highlights the guerilla warfare of the early war times. Peter Arnett (recognize the two names yet) writes on close-range combat. These two, along with some others, give us a brilliant work on the Vietnam War. Plus, there's a chronology, a bunch of maps, profiles of the journalists and all kinds of other stuff. Well worth the price.

Great articles by great reporters - but not the whole story
This volume covers the period from 1959 - 1969.This runs from roughly the beginning of American involvement (first US advisors killed) to the time public opinion moved solidly against the war.The articles included here are all of Hall of Fame caliber.The names of the reporters included read like a who's who of reporting.Almost all of these went on to huge careers and shelves full of awards.Reading the reporting included here is often chilling and terrifying and brings back a bunch of memories.

However, it is not a balanced collection.This is a collection from the side that one the public debate - the anti-war side.And that is fine.I certainly am not disparaging this volume or what is included.Just don't expect to recapture the public debate that raged in the US about the Vietnam War.This is reporting from great reporters in the field and they were largely or later moved to become strong voices against the war.

And this is print reporting (although it does include one article by Walter Cronkite).It doesn't (and can't) capture the effect the evening news reporting had on the home front.There were also big picture magazines like Life and Look that are gone now.I particularly remember an issue of Life, I think it was.It may have been Look.I am not sure.This issue included the names and faces of EVERY soldier killed or wounded that WEEK.It was pages and pages and pages of faces of young men.I was a boy then so they were just men to me.From where I sit today, however, they were just boys.All dead or maimed.It was a very powerful and the impact is cannot be captured in a book such as this.That isn't to detract from this book.It is simply that as great as this reporting was it isn't the whole story about what happened to move the public against the war.

The book includes a block of pictures of the reporters included in the book and some helpful maps of Vietnam.If you are interested in reading some great reporters writing about Vietnam at the time it was happening, this is a very fine volume.Just don't think it is all there is to know about what was said about Vietnam at the time.

Nam
A test of good reporting is the feeling that you were there after you have read the last sentence. Good reporting often translates into great literature, i.e. Hemingway, Crane, Twain. Some of the writing here is near great literature.

Pick up volume one and read "Death In the Ia Drang Valley," by Specialist 4/C Smith. Smith's story is reporting at its finest. Go to Ward Just's Reconnaissance, about the Central Highlands. Then go read the one about Con Thien, and the one about Dak To. This is good reporting.

And read Michael Kerr. He is in volume two. If you have ever read his book, Dispatches, you read the short version of what is surely the best words in the best order about Vietnam. Volume two offers the extended version of that haunting book. There are chapters here found no where else. As you read you will find yourselfin Khe Sahn, Hue, Phu Bai, and DaNang. This is great writing.

These two volumes are required reading for those of us who were there and for those of us who were not there. The reporting is great. The writers are all Vietnam era writers. Halberstam, Alsop, Karnow Sheehan, Fall, Arnett, Fitzgerald. Some are easy to read. Some make demands on the reader.

Read these volumes for the quality of the writing. That should always be one of the reasons why you pick up a book. The journalism is solid.

And then read for the feeling of being there. I was "in country" from 1967 to 1968. When I am reading Kerr,I am back in Phu Bai walkimg through the wire out on patrol.

The only other book that puts you there is David Douglas Duncan's War Without Heroes. And that is a book of black and white combat photographs taken at Khe Sahn and Con Thien..

I own a lot of books by The Library of America. These two volumes are among the best by that publisher.

Spurious
You guessed it: It's the same leftist b.s. we were all taught in school. Please, I'm yawning already...

Contemporary accounts contains truth if you look for it
Reading this collection of Vietnam-era reportage from The Library of America is a stark reminder of the lasting power of the written word. Hasit really been nearly a quarter-century since the black and white images ofthe helicopters taking off from the roof of the American Embassy faded fromour television screens? Grenada, Panama, Iraq -- three wars and God knowshow many humanitarian efforts (Somalia, Yugoslavia, did I miss any?)

Yet, the power of memory is such that it doesn't take much to bring itall back. Dipping into these compilations of writings about Vietnam -- theoriginal reportage and memoirs in the Library of America volumes and thebest of everything else in "The Vietnam Reader" -- shards oflong-forgotten memories were struck just by reading the names of towns andvillages. Khe Sahn, Haiphong: The words sound so completely alien, as ifthey had been coined by H.P. Lovecraft. They trigger memories of tracingthe S-curve of the countries on maps in the newspapers, seeing thephotographs in Life magazine -- for me, the 1960s will always be rememberedas a series of black and white freeze-frames from the magazines, with colorreserved only for the more silly stories found in the back of the book --and hearing them recited on TV in the stentorian tones of WalterCronkitethewho would recite the weekly casualty figures, printedon screenbefore the national flags, like baseball scores,while the family ate ourmeat loaf and mashed potatoes and waited for Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdomto come on at 7.

Time has passed and in this media-drenched age, so muchhistory has been created, screened and absorbed over the pastquarter-century. Vietnam and Cambodia became a backwater in the Americanconsciousness, flaring up from time to time in response to specific, finiteevents such as the debate over Agent Orange, the construction of theVietnam Veterans Memorial, the screening of "Platoon" and"The Killing Fields," and the debate over draft evasion by BillClinton, Dan Quayle, Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich.

For those of us whowere not there, who can view the war almost dispassionately, it is thislack of intervening history that makes these books so powerful and painfulto read. This is a chronicle of a nation marching deeper and deeper into awar that the journalists there saw as early as 1965 -- about 150 pages intotwo volumes that total more than 1,600 pages -- could not be won the way itwas being run. Historians will probably argue eternally if it could havebeen won at all. The repressive and corrupt South Vietnamese governmentcould not win enough "hearts and minds" of the people to defeatthe Viet Cong, and an invasion of North Vietnam could have triggered aKorean War-style invasion from China. It took nearly a decade for theUnited States to find the way out of that bloody tunnel and another twodecades before full diplomatic relations were reestablished.

Thecasualty figures fly beyond the mind's grasp: 58,000 Americans killed,4,400 South Koreans, 500 Australians and New Zealanders, 180,000 Cambodians(with another million perishing under the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and1978), a half-million South Vietnamese and an estimated 1.1 million NorthVietnamese and Viet Cong.

"Reporting Vietnam" starts with TimeMagazine's report on the first U.S. advisers killed in South Vietnam, thencontinues chronologically with the inevitability of the Zapruder film ofJohn Kennedy's murder ride. It moves with reports from the field -- areport on a Viet Cong massacre in the Ca Mau Peninsula, Neil Sheehan'saccount on South Vietnamese troops refusing to fight in the battle of ApBac, to Joseph Alsop's profile of South Vietnam's president Ngo Diem, fromthe scenes in Washington of President Johnson and his advisers defendingtheir policies to Tom Wolfe's account of Ken Kesey disrupting an anti-warrally in Berkeley and Norman Mailer's self-important essay about the Marchon the Pentagon.

Then there are the incidents, as bizarre as anyrecounted in "Apocalypse Now." The American-run televisionchannel presenting the German opera "Hansel and Gretel" backed bythe American Chamber of Commerce; Gloria Emerson reporting the idea by thehead of the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support, challenging hisfellow CORDS members to participate in the 1971 decathlon comprising"bridge, tennis, gin rummy, volleyball, nautical sports, Chinesechess, winetasting, close harmony, etc." (Emerson, who had spent twoyears in the field as a correspondent, quoted and commented on RichardFunkhouser's memo: "`It is always open house here at Bienhoa forcompetitors,' Funkhouser wrote, in that playful spirit so many of us inVietnam really lacked.")

With respect to the Vietnam veteran whoreviewed this collection, it should be pointed out that this is not ahistory book. It is a collection of contemporary articles, and as suchthere's nothing an editor can do to juice them up. The books are not meantto be read from front to back either. It is by dipping in and out that youcan find rewarding reading. ... Read more

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This comprehensive reference offers nearly 500 biographical sketches, with bibliography, of significant journalists in American history, past and present, living and dead. Its subjects are drawn from the major mass media, including newspapers, radio, television, magazines, and film, and it provides a thorough representation of the various subfields of American journalism, such as reporters, editors, columnists, humorists, editorial cartoonists, illustrators, photographers, commentators, all types of correspondents, and sports journalists. Unlike similar volumes, this dictionary goes beyond the mainstream media to draw upon significant figures from the feminist and suffragist press, and the black press, and traces the development of American journalism from its beginning in Boston in 1690 to present global broadcast networks. The biographical sketches present perspectives on the lives of the people who help develop the big city and small city newspaper press, the regional press, the frontier press, the early radio and television news, and the radical and dissident press. Arranged alphabetically, each sketch includes a useful bibliography for further reference, and there is a general index as well as an appendix that lists the subjects according to media, professional fields and other categories. The broad scope of this valuable sourcebook will make it an indispensable aid in the fields of journalism and communications, and a useful addition to university and college libraries, metropolitan newspapers, national and local magazines, and broadcast networks and local stations in large cities. ... Read more

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This updated edition contains over 7000 entries - 1000 more than the third edition. The handbook provides a quick reference listing of the acronyms and abbreviations encountered in the general English language literature of librarianship and information work. Selection has been firmly based on usage in the literature. The fields of archives, museums, the commercial book trade, education, translation, management and computer and micrographic technology are included selectively. The coverage is of projects, organizations, associations, information resources and services, and technical terms; abstracting, indexing and professional services and journals. Some unofficial abbreviations are included if found in the literature. Coined computer program names which are not strictly acronyms are excluded. Where an acronym or abbreviation was originally used in a specific context but has since become a more generally used term, no reference is made to the original more specific usage. ... Read more

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Marking the centennial of the founding of Columbia University's school of journalism, this candid history of the school's evolution is set against the backdrop of the ongoing debate over whether journalism can -- or should -- be taught in America's universities.

Customer Reviews (2)

Completely skewers the American press
This lighthearted book looks at the history of the American news media, showing its long-term addiction to scandal, sensationalism and gossip. Looking at the people who built the modern media and the stories they produced (and sometimes created), author Daniel Cohen punctures any pretence of "journalistic integrity." If you want to read a very funny book that completely skewers the American press, then this is the book for you!

The book..
This book is good for those who want a brief outline of what "Yellow Journalism" is.. ... Read more

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This study provides a meticulous account of the reception and regulation of cinema in the United States during a decade of upheaval, transition, and industrial consolidation that affected all aspects of film culture. Written in close dialogue with contemporary journalism, the volume focuses on Los Angeles film culture from 1905 to 1915. The study discusses exhibition practices, regulatory efforts and reforms, the critical role of women in all areas of film culture, and the burgeoning movement of film journalism that pivoted around the feature format and serial films. Jan Olsson makes an important contribution to both film history and urban studies on the Progressive Era as it took place within a multiethnic city predicated on Midwestern sensibilities.

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Presents an overview of the news industry and discusses how to prepare for and get a job in journalism. ... Read more

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Discusses various careers in journalism, highlighting the duties, lifestyle, educational needs, and interests required. ... Read more