Vietnam Reflexes and Reflections

Would you believe I got this book for just over a dollar brand new?Well at that price I decided to take a chance on purchasing it and I am glad I did.What an amazing book is all I can say.Nearly very page is filled with stunning, shocking, haunting, humorous, reflective and horrific artwork, created by Vietnam Vets over the years and you are treated to a Table Top book with a difference.In a nut shell this book, along with its down to earth narratives bites at your soul.This is no Gung Ho patriotic war book about the glories of war; this book turns war on its head through sculpture, painting, photographs, poetry and pure raw self expression, Vietnam vets, both men and women able to tell their story, as they experienced it.Nothing prepared me for what I was going to behold, not only visually but through the written word too.This is one hell of a book that leaves you with a bitter sweet taste in your mouth that you will never, ever forget.

These works of art tell so many strong and painful stories, I will never forget these images of a time (that I hope) will never be repeated.

This book is an extremely moving overview of the experiences of our nation's young men and women, who traveled half way around the world to fight in America's longest and most unpopular war. For those interested in the NVVAM's artifact collection, check out Weapons and Field Gear of the NVA and VC and the forthcoming Viet Cong due to be released in January 1999.

Vietnam - the war we would all rather forget and bury, so painful are the memories and wounds it engendered on America and on Asia - is at last viewed from the standpoint of artists who lived it. This visually magnificent collection of works of art made by Vietnam Veterans, both while they were in Vietnam and in the tortured years subsequent to their return as "non-heroes", not only introduces for the first time another form of documentation about the Vietnam Experience. It provides a touchstone as powerful as the Vietnam War Memorial Wall in Washington DC where surviving veterans and the families and loved ones of veterans can begin to understand what happened there. VIETNAM: REFLEXES AND REFLECTIONS is at once a catalogue of the artists (some 95 men/women, US/Vietnamese ) represented in the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, IL; with the tender forward by Director Sondra Varco and insightful essays on art and war through history and art in the Vietnam setting, this book becomes the standard for scholarly studies about a particularly painful time and the body of art it produced. This book should be required reading for all Americans: the art contained in it touches us all.

This is an absolutely incredible book that looks at what Vietnam really was through the eyes of others. I especially enjoyed John Plunkett's artwork, which is excellent. Highly recommened.