A decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam recalls the nightmarish horror of Vietnam and his experiences with the antiwar protests that he faced on his return home, in a portrait of a generation and an era of turmoil

Marking Time

EHRHART, W.D.

Avon/Books

"I cannot begin to count the number of times over the past 37 years that I have wished I had never heard of Vietnam, let alone fought in the Vietnam War. That experience has haunted my days. It has troubled my nights. It has shaped my identity and colored the way I see the world and everything in it"--from the Preface. W.D. Ehrhart, called "one of the great poets and writers of nonfiction produced by the Vietnam War" by The Nation, here presents 43 essays, whose topics include not only the Gulf, Vietnam, and Korean wars, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, war and journalism, and American war poetry, but also junk mail, the Internet, the IRS, tugboats, drawbridges, race relations, the justice system, health care, and small town life in America, nicotine addiction, the bravado of youth, honesty and American culture, the rhetoric of national mythology, and presidential isolation, among others.

The Madness of It All: Essays on War, Literature and American Life

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

McFarland Company

Twenty-three powerful, moving, angry and wise essays published over a period of 15 years. Subjects range from South Africa to Central America, the United States to the Soviet Union, all bound together by the lingering physical, psychological, political and intellectual sensibilities the author first developed as a young enlisted Marine during the Vietnam war. Four of the essays deal with Ehrhart's second return to Vietnam in 1990.  The book consists of a bibliography of where these essays first appeared, an introduction by the author, the essays, a military history of the author and a brief biographical sketch.

In the Shadow of Vietnam: Essays, 1977-1991

History

Asia

McFarland

A new collection of Bill Ehrhart's essays--25 of them, written between 2002 and 2012 on subjects ranging from the Vietnam War failures of American policy-makers to life in 21st century Vietnam; the trenches of the Western Front, the mountains of Korea, the sands of Iraq; from the value of one's name to the cowardice of Congress; mountain gorillas in Rwanda, the journalist Gloria Emerson, teaching poetry to teenagers; on the famous (Wilfred Owen) and the obscure (Robert James Elliott)… These essays explore the fallacies of history, the madness of war, the craft of poetry, the profession of teaching, and the art of living.

Dead on a High Hill: Essays on War, Literature and Living, 2002-2012

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

The Korean War was a major event in American history. It marked an abrupt end to the euphoria Americans felt in the wake of victory in World War II and turned out to be the harbinger of disaster in Vietnam a decade later.Though three years of brutal fighting resulted in millions of casualties, the final truce line of 1953 corresponded almost exactly to the positions the opponents held when the fighting began. Back home, the returning veterans met with little interest in or appreciation of what they had endured. Consequently, literary responses to the Korean War did not find an eager readership. Few people, it seemed, wanted to read about what they perceived as a backwater war that possessed neither grand scale nor apparent nobility, a war that ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Yet an important literature has come out of the Korean War. As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the war, these writings are well worth our attention. Many of the twelve stories and fifty poems assembled in Retrieving Bones have long been out of print and are almost impossible to find in any other source. The editors have enhanced this collection by providing maps, a chronology of the Korean War, and annotated lists of novels, works of nonfiction, and films. In a detailed introduction, Ehrhart and Jason discuss the milestones of the Korean War and place each fiction writer and poet represented into historical and literary contexts. Among the writers and poets are· James Lee Burke· Eugene Burdick· William Chamberlain· Rolando Hinojosa· Reg Saner· Vern Sneider· Stanford Whitmore· Keith Wilson

Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War

History & Criticism

Rutgers University Press

The Korean War was a major event in American history. It marked an abrupt end to the euphoria Americans felt in the wake of victory in World War II and turned out to be the harbinger of disaster in Vietnam a decade later.
Though three years of brutal fighting resulted in millions of casualties, the final truce line of 1953 corresponded almost exactly to the positions the opponents held when the fighting began. Back home, the returning veterans met with little interest in or appreciation of what they had endured. Consequently, literary responses to the Korean War did not find an eager readership. Few people, it seemed, wanted to read about what they perceived as a backwater war that possessed neither grand scale nor apparent nobility, a war that ended not with a bang, but a whimper.
 Yet an important literature has come out of the Korean War. As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the war, these writings are well worth our attention. Many of the twelve stories and fifty poems assembled in Retrieving Bones have long been out of print and are almost impossible to find in any other source. The editors have enhanced this collection by providing maps, a chronology of the Korean War, and annotated lists of novels, works of nonfiction, and films. In a detailed introduction, Ehrhart and Jason discuss the milestones of the Korean War and place each fiction writer and poet represented into historical and literary contexts. 
Among the writers and poets are
· James Lee Burke
· Eugene Burdick
· William Chamberlain
· Rolando Hinojosa
· Reg Saner
· Vern Sneider
· Stanford Whitmore
· Keith Wilson

Jason, Philip K.

United States

Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine's Memoir

Kensington Pub. Corp

In 1982, John Newman, curator of the Vietnam War Literature Collection at Colorado State University, said of W.D. Ehrhart: "As a poet and editor, Bill Ehrhart is clearly one of the major figures in Vietnam War literature." This autobiographical account of the war, the authors first extended prose work, demonstrates Ehrharts abilities as a writer of prose as well. Vietnam-Perkasie is grim, comical, disturbing, and accurate. The presentation is novelistic--truly, a "page-turner"--but the events are all real, the atmosphere intensely evocative.

Vietnam - Perkasie

Zebra

Ehrhart, as an 18-year-old Marine Corps volunteer, spent 13 months in-country in 1966-67, taking part in the siege of Con Thien and the battle for Hue during the Tet offensive, and earning numerous decorations.

VIETNAM PERKASIE

Between March and September of 1974, as Richard Nixon's presidency unraveled on national television, Bill Ehrhart, a decorated Marine Corps sergeant and antiwar Vietnam veteran, fought to retain his merchant seaman's card after being busted for possession of marijuana. He was also arrested on suspicion of armed robbery in New York City, detained on the Garden State Parkway for looking like a Puerto Rican revolutionary, and thrown out of New Jersey by the Maple Shade police. All of this occurred while the House Judiciary Committee conducted hearings on Nixon's impeachment. Busted shows an acute awareness of the ironies of these juxtapositions, as Ehrhart recounts a surreal cross-country journey in search of justice in a nation that has lost its way, betrayed by its leaders. Picking up the narrative of Vietnam-Perkasie and Passing Time, this third book in Ehrhart's Vietnam War trilogy is an exploration of the contradiction between law and justice in Nixon's America and an examination of why the wounds inflicted on the United States by the war are so slow to heal.

Busted: A Vietnam Veteran in Nixon's America

Historical

University of Massachusetts Press

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Books by EHRHART, W.D.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by EHRHART, W.D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Marking Time

The Madness of It All: Essays on War, Literature and American Life

In the Shadow of Vietnam: Essays, 1977-1991

Dead on a High Hill: Essays on War, Literature and Living, 2002-2012

Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War

Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War

Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine's Memoir

Vietnam - Perkasie

VIETNAM PERKASIE

Busted: A Vietnam Veteran in Nixon's America