A review by thisgrrlreads
Boots on the Ground: America's War in Vietnam by Elizabeth Partridge

4.0

Partridge does a beautiful job of telling the story of the Vietnam using the stories of specific people, from soldiers and medics to LBJ and civilians in Vietnam and protesters and even Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam War Memorial in DC. It is a shockingly compelling read, despite the intensity of the subject matter. She follows each of the soldiers during their time "in-country" and beyond, including a lot of suicidal thoughts and near suicidal actions. She manages to cover a fairly diverse set of people, specifically some Asian-American service men and women who really struggled both in Vietnam and after. Plus, she contrasts the experience with those of black servicemen, and how they were received coming back to the United States. A really worthwhile read, especially for those of us who were too young to know all the intricacies of people's emotions abotu this, despite the many textbooks and even my parents' recollections of that time (neither served so it was missing a large chunk from that side of the story which is filled in here). This is neither pro -war nor anti-war but about what happened in our country. Really manages to put politics in there without having to go too far in-depth to get to what was relevant for this conflict.