Some of the facts he presents, in fact, do not check out. So this is not the book to go to for a fact-checked history of the Vietnam War or the Vietnam War era. Why? Because, Ketwig says, “most readers ignore them and they impede the joys of reading.” He does include a very long bibliography-nine pages of books, some of which he recommends, but none of which are annotated. The long history part, however, which includes many statistics, is presented with little attribution and without footnotes or end notes. Ketwig-who joined the Army in December 1966 with the draft breathing down his nineteen-year-old neck-deserves credit for some compelling writing and some well-executed parts of the book.
“military adventures.” Ketwig also includes first-person accounts of his life before, during, and after serving in the Vietnam War, an experience, he says that “devastated my heart and soul.” Ketwig’s sprawling, ambitious new book, Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter (Trine Day, 480 pp., $24.95, paper $9.99, Kindle), is his attempt, as he puts it, “to say more about the war and modern-day militarism in America.” And say more Ketwig does in this lengthy book that contains what he calls “a mosaic of historic fragments,” along with his analysis of that history and the lessons he takes from the American war in Vietnam and other U.S. And that’s saying something as that conflict’s literary canon contains dozens of memoirs that are among best writing on war-any war. John Ketwig’s 1985 book and a hard rain fell…: a GI’s True Story of the War in Vietnam stands among the top American Vietnam War memoirs.
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