by Ward Just
First published 2009
Ward Just arrived in Vietnam in December 1965 as a Washington Post correspondent. Over eighteen months, he earned a Combat Infantryman's Badge and witnessed a war that hypnotized everyone who observed it. Just watched American soldiers and officials navigate a conflict whose characters and plot remained only dimly understood. He saw the moral ambiguity that defined the American experience there. The war presented daily dilemmas with no clear answers. Just captured the atmosphere and politics of a nation at the height of its involvement in Southeast Asia. His reporting became this book, which asked the radical question for its time: What are we doing here? The work offers neither polemic nor apology, instead presenting the complex reality of a war that defied simple explanations. Just reflects on his younger self and examines how the conflict shaped both him and America. The book remains a disturbing meditation on a war that changed everyone it touched.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, american, non-fiction, journalism
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Vietnam
Period: 1965, 1960s
179 pages · Kindle Edition · PublicAffairs
Content warnings: war