Veterans Book Group to Meet April 4
A Veterans Book Group meets on the first Saturday of the month from 2 to 4pm at the Lexington Park Library. Vietnam veteran Wayne Karlin leads the book discussion series for vets. Registration required; space is limited.
For more information, contact Kimberlé Fields at 301-863-8188 or [email protected].
The series is tailored for veterans and their families. Service members of all eras, their spouses, and adult children are welcome.
Author and retired college professor Karlin leads the group through conversations about books written in very different styles but connected by themes of war, courage, love, honor, and trauma.
Supplies are limited; participants may pick up a copy of the book one month before the meetings.
The Veterans Book Group is coordinated statewide by Maryland Humanities and is presented locally in partnership with St. Mary’s County Library.
Register here.
BOOK LIST
April 4 – Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina by Bernard Fall
First published in 1961 by Stackpole Books, Street without Joy is a classic of military history.
Journalist and scholar Bernard Fall vividly captured the sights, sounds, and smells of the brutal — and politically complicated — conflict between the French and the Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina. The French fought to the bitter end, but even with the lethal advantages of a modern military, they could not stave off the Viet Minh insurgency of hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, booby traps, and nighttime raids. The final French defeat came at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, setting the stage for American involvement and a far bloodier chapter in Vietnam’s history. Fall combined graphic reporting with deep scholarly knowledge of Vietnam and its colonial history in a book memorable in its descriptions of jungle fighting and insightful in its arguments.
May 2 – An Artist’s Legacy by Khanh Ha
Amid the raging Indochina War blossoms a love story when an artist/reporter meets a singer/performer who travels with an entertainment troupe to the valley of Dien Bien Phu for the climactic confrontation between the Viet Minh and the French Union. The lovers become separated after the victory of Đien Bien Phu when the artist is sent to South Viet Nam to fight the American Vietnam War. They meet again 40 years later in that valley called Đien Bien Phu. His solitary soul is reunited with his true love. It is a simple love story that transcends cultural barriers.
An Artist’s Legacy is a lush, evocative, epic journey, from a love story amid the horror of war to the muted anguish of death and destruction. It carries the quality of Tree of Smoke in a foreign historical setting and an epic sense of Love in the Time of Cholera.
June 6 – Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule
Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the US Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor. Now, as a retired brigadier general and professor emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, Mr. Seidule believes that American history demands a reckoning.
In a unique blend of history and reflection, the author deconstructs the truth about the Confederacy—that its undisputed primary goal was the subjugation and enslavement of Black Americans—and directly challenges the idea of honoring those who labored to preserve that system and committed treason in their failed attempt to achieve it.
Part history lecture, part meditation on the Civil War and its fallout, and part memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the deeply held legends and myths of the Confederacy—and provides a surprising interpretation of essential truths that our country still has a difficult time articulating and accepting.
