Edelman, Bernard, ed. Dear America; letters home from Vietnam - Book Review

Kliatt, Sept, 2002 by Rita M. Fontinha

Norton. 328p. c1985. 0-393-32304-8. $13.95. SA *

Originally published in 1985, this collection of over 200 letters still provides a moving account of the war in Vietnam. In 1988, an HBO film starring Tom Berenger, Kathleen Turner, and Robert DeNiro, among over two dozen other actors, featured readings of these real letters from soldiers as newsreels, home movies, and music from the era provided a backdrop. David Halberstam says, "An overwhelmingly eloquent book of the purest and most simple writing on Vietnam," and the Boston Globe review states, "Not a history book, not a war novel, Dear America is a book of truth." In the 2002 introduction to this edition, Senator John McCain writes:

   Dear America tells another story, at once uplifting
   and tragic: how young Americans, proud and
   scared, lived, suffered, and died for their country
   and their convictions in a war as distant from the
   United States as the Western front was near the
   homelands of the Allied troops in its trenches
   (during the Great War). The light that shines
   through the words in this volume, radiating from
   the fog of war, illuminates the conscience and
   character of America. A proud and triumphant
   nation, now engaged in a new struggle for freedom,
   we remember.

Powerful primary source material for history classes and students. Rita M. Fontinha, Lib. Media Spec., Norwood H.S., Norwood, MA