Christian G. Appy

“Brilliant, beautiful, and painful, American Reckoning is an essential book, not just because it looks so incisively at the forces shaping our foreign policy in Vietnam and afterward, but because it so brightly illuminates the question we all need to ask ourselves: what is America’s place in the
world?” —Peter Davis, director of the Oscar-winning documentary Hearts and Minds

“In the vast literature on the Vietnam War it’s the question that has not received sustained and authoritative attention: How did the long and bitter struggle in Southeast Asia influence Americans’ sense of themselves? Christian Appy’s penetrating and lucid account helps us make sense as few books have of this difficult chapter in the nation’s history.” —Fredrik Logevall, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Embers of War

“A triumph of originality. Appy weaves together a rich tapestry of sources into a completely innovative, eye-opening, and compulsively readable account of the Vietnam War and its far-reaching consequences.  American Reckoning offers a fresh lens for understanding the United States in the context of its most controversial conflict as well as its twenty-first-century wars. It’s an impressive, valuable book.”—Nick Turse, author of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves