Autopsy On People S War

Timothy Lomperis persuasively argues the ironic point that the lessons of American involvement in Vietnam are not to be found in any analysis of the war by itself. Rather, he proposes a comparison of the Vietnam experience with seven other cases of Western intervention in communist insurgencies during the Cold War era: China, Indochina, Greece, the Philippines, Malaya, Cambodia, and Laos. Lomperis maintains that popular insurgencies are manifestations of crises in political legitimacy, which occur as a result of the societal stresses caused by modernization. Therefore, he argues, any intervention in a 'people's war' will succeed or fail depending on how it affects this crisis. The unifying theme in the cases Lomperis discusses is the power of land reform and electoral democracy to cement political legitimacy and therefore deflect revolutionary movements. Applying this theory to the ongoing Sendero Luminoso insurgency in Peru, Lomperis makes a qualified prediction of that conflict's outcome. He concludes that a global trend toward democratization has produced a new era of 'people's rule.'

On the outside, John Parrish is a highly successful doctor, having risen to the top of his field as department head at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Inside, however, he was so tortured by the memories of his tour of duty as a marine battlefield doctor in Vietnam that he was unable to live a normal life. In Autopsy of War, the author delivers an unflinching narrative chronicling his four-decade battle with the unseen enemy in his own mind as he struggled with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Parrish examines his Southern Baptist childhood and the profound influence of his father, a fire and brimstone preacher turned Navy chaplain, while offering a candid assessment of the "God and Country" ethos that leads young men to rush wide-eyed into war. He describes the unimaginable carnage and acts of cruelty he witnessed in Vietnam, experiences that shattered his world view leaving him to retreat from his family upon his return stateside. Living virtually homeless at times, he visited veteran shelters and relived the horrors of war in a series of harrowing flashbacks as he dealt with suicidal thoughts. The author writes honestly and probingly of his episodes of infidelity and battles with sex addiction. Readers follow his steady journey toward recovery and his professional contributions in the field of medicine and technology, as well as a joint program with the Boston Red Sox and Massachusetts General Hospital to aid returning veterans. Perhaps most poignantly, Parrish speaks of his quest to discover the identity of one particular solider in Vietnam he could not save—and whose memory has haunted him ever since. Autopsy of War is a soul searching memoir that is both an intensely personal narrative and a universally relevant trip through the world of war and recovery.

A politico-military assessment of the Vietnam War analyzing the U.S. Army's strategic and tactical ideologies. Particularly relevant today, it stresses the futility of any military action without the full support of the people.