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Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation
Based on more than 500 interviews, Long Time Passing is journalist Myra MacPherson's acclaimed exploration of the wounds, pride, and guilt of those who fought and those who refused to fight the war that continues to envelop the psyche of this nation.
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Myra MacPherson
5 books24 followersFifth book to be published March 4. The Scarlet Sisters: Six Suffrage and Scandal in the Gilded Age.The reads-like-fiction true story of VIctoria Woodhull and Tennie Claflin, Free Lovers who shocked the world and upset the white male power structure fighting for women's equality everywhere--from the board room to the bedroom--in the 1870's.
I was a long time reporter for the Washington Post and wrote for the New York Times. I covered sports when women were not allowed in the press box, let alone the locker room; and covered five national presidential elections. Love reading, theater, movies, sports, partying with family and friends.
All my books are non-fiction; I loved the research, if not the winnowing down and writing. Luckily they have been well received so far.
I was a long time reporter for the Washington Post and wrote for the New York Times. I covered sports when women were not allowed in the press box, let alone the locker room; and covered five national presidential elections. Love reading, theater, movies, sports, partying with family and friends.
All my books are non-fiction; I loved the research, if not the winnowing down and writing. Luckily they have been well received so far.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 2, 2016
I read this book in 1984. It was the first time that I understood that there had been a war in Vietnam.
I am not joking - my expensive Australian private school education in the 70s did not teach me anything about Vietnam, Korea or the Holocaust. They were deemed subjects not suitable for young ladies. We were told M.A.S.H. was fiction! There is a book in that alone.
I remember thinking that the things that were described were possibly a little over the top. That there were way too many perverted things done to dead bodies to be true. I have since read a number of books on the subject and Myra may not be exaggerating.
I have rated this book a 5 mostly as reading this book catapulted me into adulthood. I remember being so outraged that this had occurred and we were not told. That some adults, including my parents, had chosen to censor what I knew. It was only afterwards I understood what the few fleeting images from TV I remembered during this time meant - the priests setting fire to themselves and the protests.
Read this book. Be outraged. Be gob smacked that the US went into this at all and then dragged other nations with them. And then did exactly the same thing again 40 years later in Iraq. There are less emotive and more educational and technical books on the subject out there, but this was the baptism by fire I needed. It's on my list of books that changed my life.
I am not joking - my expensive Australian private school education in the 70s did not teach me anything about Vietnam, Korea or the Holocaust. They were deemed subjects not suitable for young ladies. We were told M.A.S.H. was fiction! There is a book in that alone.
I remember thinking that the things that were described were possibly a little over the top. That there were way too many perverted things done to dead bodies to be true. I have since read a number of books on the subject and Myra may not be exaggerating.
I have rated this book a 5 mostly as reading this book catapulted me into adulthood. I remember being so outraged that this had occurred and we were not told. That some adults, including my parents, had chosen to censor what I knew. It was only afterwards I understood what the few fleeting images from TV I remembered during this time meant - the priests setting fire to themselves and the protests.
Read this book. Be outraged. Be gob smacked that the US went into this at all and then dragged other nations with them. And then did exactly the same thing again 40 years later in Iraq. There are less emotive and more educational and technical books on the subject out there, but this was the baptism by fire I needed. It's on my list of books that changed my life.
June 18, 2012
An outstanding commentary on the Vietnam generation who could have been the greatest generation if it were not for turmoil cause by the division; the division between THE GREATEST GENERATION and their offsprings. The author interviews people with first hand accounts and eye witnesses to the chaos. As a member of this generation, I can truthfully say that I identified with the content this book. I plan on reading it again someday. Treat your self to a tragic but influential part of our nation history that we are still reaping; that is reaping what we sowed.
July 17, 2014
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. Get ready for a long review.
On one hand, many of the stories related by MacPherson are fascinating and important. The most interesting part of this book is definitely the stories of individual veterans, resistors, and dodgers. Those bits of the book were thoughtful, well-written and analyzed, and often heart-breaking. They were also painfully relevant--the statistics and details about suicides of veterans were frightfully familiar given a similar prevalence among Iraq vets. The book, written as it was in the 1980s, frequently alludes to the New Vietnam of American military involvement in Central America, but anyone reading this book in the new millennium will almost certainly draw more parallels between Vietnam and our ongoing campaigns in Iraq. I really wish this book weren't so relevant, but alas.
That said, I've got a lot of criticisms. For one thing, as relevant as the book is, it is also very dated. The rather frequent allusions to and fears of Central American conflicts do not seem particularly insightful to a modern reader. Additionally, MacPherson spends a lot of time explaining and arguing for PTSD as a clinical condition. This was undoubtedly a worthy cause for a political writer of the 1980s; in 2014, though, these sections are not terribly useful given the widespread acceptance of--or at least, familiarity with--PTSD diagnoses for combat veterans (and other victims of traumatic or violent events).
More importantly, this book seemed to me unfocused and too long. It goes from sociological studies of veterans to political critiques of the 1980s to journalistic descriptions of My Lai...it's all connected, but it's not tied together enough and instead made the whole book feel scattered. I think MacPherson was a bit too ambitious and the book unfortunately became shallow because it tried to do too much. It seemed to me like MacPherson was most interested in Vietnam veterans, dodgers, and resistors, but expanded her book to include the entire "Vietnam generation" despite a lack of real and thoughtful interest in anyone outside of the vet/resistor/dodger framework. One of the things I found most intriguing about this book when I first read the summary was the mention of the women of the Vietnam generation. But the "Significant Others" chapter, which I had hoped would be about the wives and families of the veterans, was 1) only 20 pages long, 2) spent a lot of time on the personalities and struggles of the male vet (a worthy subject, but not one that I think should be the focus of a "significant others" chapter), and 3) when MacPherson actually did address the women and their struggles, she seemed altogether more judgmental and lacked the nuance and compassion that she offered to the male vets. There was a lovely and much-appreciated (though short) chapter on women in combat zones as nurses and volunteers. But I found the Women and the War section largely underwhelming--it was only 77 pages (out of the 620-page book), and 13 of those pages were mostly wasted on a chapter about MacPherson's brief time getting arrested for a protest in the early '80s. This chapter was not altogether uninteresting but it did seem a bit self-important and tangential. Then there was another 24 pages about the families of soldiers/resistors/dodgers, which included both fathers and mothers (but no sisters or daughters), and this section too felt mostly superficial compared to the attention given to the vets/resistors/dodgers themselves.
There was also very little mention of the civil rights movement, which was quite a massive and often violent source of chaos in both the US and among US troops in Vietnam. This seemed to me to be a rather glaring omission given that MacPherson frequently referenced the counterculture and other social movements which defined the Vietnam generation. "The Blacks" (her phrasing) get a 17 page chapter (again, out of 620 pages) at the very end of the book. Again, underwhelming.
Finally, the book itself could have been shortened. The bits of editorializing by MacPherson were a bit useless--her interviews and analyses was far more interesting than her opinions and she gave enough depth to the various individual stories that she could have--and should have--let her readers draw their own conclusions. She went into quite a bit of detail about '80s politics regarding the funding of vet centers and programs, and these passages also seemed tangential as more of a reflection of '80s politics and the Reagan administration than the Vietnam generation themselves. I also didn't need to read MacPherson's position on the peacetime draft which was explicated in detail despite its irrelevance to the rest of the book.
So....did I like the book? Kinda. I think it's useful and, in many ways, prescient. But I also think it could have used some serious editing, and that it would have been a better book had it been edited down to focus on MacPherson's true passion--vets, dodgers, and resistors, and not as a study of the Vietnam generation as a whole. If you're interested in Vietnam, I would recommend giving this a read--it's readable, interesting, and often very moving. But it's not as good as it could have been.
On one hand, many of the stories related by MacPherson are fascinating and important. The most interesting part of this book is definitely the stories of individual veterans, resistors, and dodgers. Those bits of the book were thoughtful, well-written and analyzed, and often heart-breaking. They were also painfully relevant--the statistics and details about suicides of veterans were frightfully familiar given a similar prevalence among Iraq vets. The book, written as it was in the 1980s, frequently alludes to the New Vietnam of American military involvement in Central America, but anyone reading this book in the new millennium will almost certainly draw more parallels between Vietnam and our ongoing campaigns in Iraq. I really wish this book weren't so relevant, but alas.
That said, I've got a lot of criticisms. For one thing, as relevant as the book is, it is also very dated. The rather frequent allusions to and fears of Central American conflicts do not seem particularly insightful to a modern reader. Additionally, MacPherson spends a lot of time explaining and arguing for PTSD as a clinical condition. This was undoubtedly a worthy cause for a political writer of the 1980s; in 2014, though, these sections are not terribly useful given the widespread acceptance of--or at least, familiarity with--PTSD diagnoses for combat veterans (and other victims of traumatic or violent events).
More importantly, this book seemed to me unfocused and too long. It goes from sociological studies of veterans to political critiques of the 1980s to journalistic descriptions of My Lai...it's all connected, but it's not tied together enough and instead made the whole book feel scattered. I think MacPherson was a bit too ambitious and the book unfortunately became shallow because it tried to do too much. It seemed to me like MacPherson was most interested in Vietnam veterans, dodgers, and resistors, but expanded her book to include the entire "Vietnam generation" despite a lack of real and thoughtful interest in anyone outside of the vet/resistor/dodger framework. One of the things I found most intriguing about this book when I first read the summary was the mention of the women of the Vietnam generation. But the "Significant Others" chapter, which I had hoped would be about the wives and families of the veterans, was 1) only 20 pages long, 2) spent a lot of time on the personalities and struggles of the male vet (a worthy subject, but not one that I think should be the focus of a "significant others" chapter), and 3) when MacPherson actually did address the women and their struggles, she seemed altogether more judgmental and lacked the nuance and compassion that she offered to the male vets. There was a lovely and much-appreciated (though short) chapter on women in combat zones as nurses and volunteers. But I found the Women and the War section largely underwhelming--it was only 77 pages (out of the 620-page book), and 13 of those pages were mostly wasted on a chapter about MacPherson's brief time getting arrested for a protest in the early '80s. This chapter was not altogether uninteresting but it did seem a bit self-important and tangential. Then there was another 24 pages about the families of soldiers/resistors/dodgers, which included both fathers and mothers (but no sisters or daughters), and this section too felt mostly superficial compared to the attention given to the vets/resistors/dodgers themselves.
There was also very little mention of the civil rights movement, which was quite a massive and often violent source of chaos in both the US and among US troops in Vietnam. This seemed to me to be a rather glaring omission given that MacPherson frequently referenced the counterculture and other social movements which defined the Vietnam generation. "The Blacks" (her phrasing) get a 17 page chapter (again, out of 620 pages) at the very end of the book. Again, underwhelming.
Finally, the book itself could have been shortened. The bits of editorializing by MacPherson were a bit useless--her interviews and analyses was far more interesting than her opinions and she gave enough depth to the various individual stories that she could have--and should have--let her readers draw their own conclusions. She went into quite a bit of detail about '80s politics regarding the funding of vet centers and programs, and these passages also seemed tangential as more of a reflection of '80s politics and the Reagan administration than the Vietnam generation themselves. I also didn't need to read MacPherson's position on the peacetime draft which was explicated in detail despite its irrelevance to the rest of the book.
So....did I like the book? Kinda. I think it's useful and, in many ways, prescient. But I also think it could have used some serious editing, and that it would have been a better book had it been edited down to focus on MacPherson's true passion--vets, dodgers, and resistors, and not as a study of the Vietnam generation as a whole. If you're interested in Vietnam, I would recommend giving this a read--it's readable, interesting, and often very moving. But it's not as good as it could have been.
February 21, 2023
Excellent account of people who either chose not to wage war further after having already fought in the VietNam war, popularly called deserters and those who chose not to serve in the military at all during the war known as C.O.s conscientious objectors). Both groups were interviewed extensively, in depth & with compassion. Not all C.O.s avoided the war , some served in non combat billets such as corpsmen.
It was an eye opening book for me as I served for over 31 years in the US Navy, in both the VietNam & Desert Shield/Desert Storm theaters. So I came from quite a different place than the subjects of this book. Quite a few of them paid a large price for their actions. The book allowed me to more understand them and feel compassion for them.
It was an eye opening book for me as I served for over 31 years in the US Navy, in both the VietNam & Desert Shield/Desert Storm theaters. So I came from quite a different place than the subjects of this book. Quite a few of them paid a large price for their actions. The book allowed me to more understand them and feel compassion for them.
April 11, 2020
Although this book is dated and perhaps too long, its strengths far outweigh these “negatives.” It is a comprehensive telling of the Vietnam generation, from the willing soldiers to the people who fled to Canada to avoid the draft, from the veterans with grievous physical injuries to those with severe PTSD. The writing is clear and the research awesome. It is definitely not a read for the beach or for an airplane flight, but if you make time for it, you will be rewarded with a better appreciation for the wide array of players who make up the Vietnam generation.
May 19, 2013
Excellent compilation of interviews with 500 "veterans" of the Vietnam era -- some soldiers on the frontlines, some war resisters, some antiwar activists -- but all were deeply affected. MacPherson's book -- published two decades after the war -- holds up powerfully today, reminding us how deeply etched the Vietnam War was in an entire generation. Personal stories that add up to a valuable record of a history that too many in power have tried to erase.
March 8, 2023
Not for reading at the breakfast table--not for reading while you're eating, period--but a very lengthy collection of voices of America's Vietnam situation, probably as close to examining "all sides" as is possible to get.
July 29, 2020
Haunting ... a very thorough analysis of the many conflicting views, opinions, politics, agendas.
May 24, 2015
A lot of BS but then again if you believe half of the book then its not a bad read. Its to bad that she didn't check some of the veteran's stories because some of they tales are pure BS. A lot of want to be's
August 2, 2019
Insightful and illuminating attempt to assess the lasting damage of the dirty little war.
October 19, 2012
Excellent and powerful book
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews