Inconvenient Stories: Vietnam War Veterans

Jeff Wolin's fifty energetic interviews and stunning portraits provide the reader with unsparing accounts of combat and its aftermath. There is much grit and blood here: A man recalls being shot, grenaded, left in a rice paddy. Another finds the heads of three American's on stakes. He kills the murderer's with his bare hands. A nurse tells of seeing a Buddhist monk self-immolating. She cannot understand such things. A veteran blinded by Agent Orange relates his anti-war point-of-view. A handsome ex-POW evades the question of bombing Hanoi's civilians, but speaks of his torture by a man called the Bug. Freed, the POW has only praise for the disgraced Richard Nixon. A decorated African American recalls the unbridled racism he encountered upon coming home. A soft spoken battle surgeon laments the casualties he treated and the anti-war demonstrators who plucked him from his car and beat him. A well known writer describes the day after a battle: "The sun came up and the smoke cleared and the dew burned off. There was meat all over everything. All around the perimeter it was meat. And the wood line...looked like ruined drapes." Here is war as it is and not as we think or hope or want it to be. Wolin's splendid photographs illuminate these sometimes sad and sometimes brutal, and other times redemptive, and sometimes strange, but always unforgetable 'inconvenient stories'. The book is unputdownable.

I am a Vietnam veteran. I was wounded in the chest and shoulder by machine gun fire during the war. Occasionally people will ask me what movie or book would give them the best picture of what it was like. Until I read this book there really was nothing I could recommend. Wolin let the veterans do the talking. You could smell that he wasn't trying to put words in their mouths. He had no agenda and that made all the difference. I read it at one sitting. It rang true.

Featuring an informative essay by Rod Stemmons (Director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography) and an Afterword by Senator Richard G. Lugar (U.S. Senator for Indiana), Jeffrey Wolin's "Inconvenient Stories: Vietnam War Veterans" pairs brief biographical sketches with full color photos of a series of Vietnam War veterans who endured the horrors of that divisive war and came home to a troubled America that wanted to forget that national tragedy and the men who fought it out in our name. What the reader is so aptly presented are small, personalized snap-shots of a long-lost conflict - but one that has resonating lessons whose suppression or wilful disregard has led us into continued military quagmires that are today giving birth to a new generation of veterans. "Inconvenient Stories: Vietnam War Veterans" is important, informative, and timely reading - telling stories that should not be forgotten so that contemporary conflicts and future military engagements and their aftermath be taken with a great deal more candor, national discussion, and competency that was the Vietnam War.

Jeffrey Wolin is a talented and lauded photographer who has a keen interest in oral history documentation. A few years ago Wolin elected to pursue a project to record the thoughts and reflections of Vietnam Veterans and in the Foreword of this impressive book Rod Slemmons (the Director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art) quotes Wolin's intentions: 'I hope that my photographs and interviews will make a contribution to our understanding of how the trauma of war affects combatants, and civilians caught in the literal and philosophical crossfire. Many important issues of war and peace emerge in the stories of these veterans and in the portraits themselves. Many veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Some still wear their Vietnam War medals. Some fight for veteran's medical issues or make art or write books about their experiences. Others have found ways to put their experiences behind them, often with significant struggle, and to successfully return to civilian life. All were deeply and permanently affected by the war, but the majority are proud of their service.' What follows are full-page color portraits of fifty widely dissimilar veterans accompanied on the opposite page by an interview conducted by Wolin. Reading the content of each veteran as we stare at their experience worn faces makes a tremendous impact, a first hand sharing with thoughts about war that might never have surfaced had Wolin not had the bravery and delicacy of approach needed to gather this oral and visual history. This book will affect every reader and hopefully will add fodder to the concept that war is simply not a solution. Wounds heal at varying rates and with varying scars. Here are fifty examples worth examining. Grady Harp, February 07