Robert D. Schulzinger is Professor of History and Director of the International Affairs Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The author of many books on the history of U.S. foreign relations and politics, including A Time For War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (OUP, 1997), he is a former President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Editor-In-Chief of Diplomatic History

• Preface


• Introduction: Memories of the Vietnam War


• Part I


• International Affairs


• 1: Bitterness Between the United States and Vietnam, 1975-1980


• 2: Wstrangement and D?tente, 1980-1988


• 3: Normalization, 1989-2000


• Part II


• Veterans and Vietnamese Americans


• 4: Vietnam Veterans Readjustment


• 5: Vietnam Veterans Memorials and Memories


• 6: The Vietnamese in America


• Part III


• Cultural Legacies


• 7: The Burden of Memory in Vietnam Literature


• 8: Vietnam Memories Through Film


• Part IV


• Conclusion: Political Echoes of a War


• 9: The Living Legacy of the Vietnam War


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index

In A Time for Peace, prominent American historian Robert D. Schulzinger sheds light on how deeply etched memories of this devastating conflict have altered America's political, social, and cultural landscape. Schulzinger examines the impact of the war from many angles. He traces the long, twisted, and painful path of reconciliation with Vietnam, the heated controversy over soldiers who were missing in action, the influx of over a million Vietnam refugees into the US, and the plight of Vietnam veterans, many of whom returned home alienated, unhappy, and unappreciated. Schulzinger looks at how the controversies of the war have continued to be fought in books and films and, perhaps most important, he explores the power of the Vietnam metaphor on foreign policy, particularly in Central America, Somalia, the Gulf War, and the war in Iraq.