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

W.D. Ehrhart

Jul 2010 · McFarland

About this ebook

"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, 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.

About the author

Memoirist, poet, editor, and Marine veteran, W.D. Ehrhart taught English and history at the Haverford School in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The author of twenty books, his prose and poetry have appeared in hundreds of publications including the Los Angeles Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Utne Reader, Reader’s Digest, American Poetry Review and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He was a major presence in the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary The Vietnam War.