"True Enough" an Eyeopener
It is not every day that a book can make someone think so much of society and life. It is rare when a book can have so much power to make someone realize the differences in people and is an eye-opener to the audience. Farhad Manjoo, author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, published in 2008, gives thorough and in depth information on how Americans' perspective changes with every individual. It does not matter weather the facts and proof is shown, there will still be people believing something happened and others that will not. Farhad provides facts, experiments, and examples on how "technology and globalization has pushed the world together, it is driving our minds apart" (Manjoo 1). Examples and information about the Swift Boat Veterans, to the tragic attack on September 11, the election of president Bush in 2004,....... all big issues in the United States and people have their believes weather to believe the facts or their personal opinion. Manjoo's questions in the book "How can so many people who live in the same place see the world so differently?" ( 7).
The book starts of with incidence of the Swift Boat Veterans with John Kerry and how a group of people were successful in making Kerry look like he was not a hero during the Vietnam war but a traitor. Fahad Manjoo provides background information about John Kerry enabling the reader to be familiarized on who he was. Manjoo in this sense takes into consideration his audience providing them with sufficient information before going into depth about Kerry. Manjoo mentions that the media plays the major in distorting reality. He asserts, "The veterans lacked any compelling evidence to support their claims,yet they ...
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...l to us, at least, and that´s as real as it gets ¨(158). He does a good job in backing up his arguments with the examples provided. This strenghtens and delivers the book in a well organized manner.
For the book´s weaknesses, there was some confusion by the end of the chapter because there was an excess amount of abreviations that made it hard to keep up with. This caused confusion while reading and the need to turn back to figure out what the meaning of the abreviations were. For example in chapter 6 he used FCC,RJR,MBD,GGOOB, and others which caused uncertainty while reading. If he eliminating some of these abreviations or reminded the reader what they represented can reduce this confusion. Although this was the only flaw that jumped out the most, Farhad Manjoo managed to start and finish the book with curiosity on human biase.
...f the innocent is what captured my attention the most. Hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians were killed for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caputo mourns not only for the dead, but also for the men that are now emotionally and psychologically scarred for life. The images and sounds of death will forever be carved into their minds. Throughout this history class, I have been able to learn and understand new vocabulary and apply it to my reading. I would not have been able to understand the book, as well as I do, without becoming familiar with the terminology. A Rumor of War changed by view on the Vietnam War. Before reading this narrative, I did not realize the number of lives lost or the poor environments soldiers were subjected to. Philip Caputo was extremely detailed in his descriptions and painted a brilliant picture of the war.
The Vietnam War has become a focal point of the Sixties. Known as the first televised war, American citizens quickly became consumed with every aspect of the war. In a sense, they could not simply “turn off” the war. A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo is a firsthand account of this horrific war that tore our nation apart. Throughout this autobiography, there were several sections that grabbed my attention. I found Caputo’s use of stark comparisons and vivid imagery, particularly captivating in that, those scenes forced me to reflect on my own feelings about the war. These scenes also caused me to look at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a soldier, which is not a perspective I had previously considered. In particular, Caputo’s account of
The Vietnam War was a psychological and physical battle for all the young men who were drafted or volunteered. Caputo's own reasons for volunteering illustrate the mentality for some of the men entering into this journey. Those who are inducted into Vietnam face disturbing moral dilemmas that can be expected in an "ethical wilderness." The draft introduced a myriad of young men to the once forgotten moral ambiguity of war. Average American citizens must balance right from wrong in a world without morals or meaning. Caputo himself struggles with the idea that killing in combat is morally justified.
One of the biggest flaws was the lack of follow up. The reader is not told what happens following Ephraim’s execution. Probably the most frustrating part of this is not knowing what becomes of Ephraim’s family. There are many theories, but no actual record of them in history. Now although this is not the Browns’ fault, as a reader, it still causes some frustration towards the book. Also, the fact that there is little or no evaluation of the event is an issue. The purpose of a history book is often to evaluate the significance of the event, but this book does not do that directly. Through the information given the reader is able to understand the importance of the trial, but the book fails to directly address the significance of the event.
John Wade craved love, admiration and affection. All his life, all he wanted was to be loved, and his father’s constant taunting hurt him immensely. In going to the war, John fulfilled his dream to become a figure who was both admired and respected. He was not a strong, macho man, who thrived upon violence and bloodshed, yet he was young and ambitious. Wade saw the war as a way of gaining ‘hero’ status in order to reach his lifelong ambitions of reaching the U.S Senate. When the revelations about his acts in the war were made, John Wade lost everything that he had fought so hard to build for himself. In this superficial way, one may argue that it was the war that ultimately led to who John Wade became at the end of the novel, yet many other factors involving his life before the war must be examined.
The authors who wrote True Faced were right on the money with their thoughts on how we often times walk around constantly wearing a mask in an attempt to hide the judgment from the outside world because of our imperfections. In the first chapter the authors tell that many of us have “lost our confidence that we will always please our audience, so we feel compelled to hide and put on a mask.” This immediately reminded me of one of my favorite articles written by the founder of Youth Specialties, Mike Yaconelli. He wrote an article called “Reader’s Digest Selves” in which he talks about this exact issue of hiding our true selves and keeping the rest of the world away at a distance. In this article, Yaconelli says “That is why the "Good News" of the Gospel is so painful. Jesus wants to do much more than forgive our sins; He wants to capture our real self—and for us to face who we are. Not only is our real self full of sin, it is full of flaws and brokenness—and full of hope” He then concludes this article with one of the truest statements ever saying, “The power of the Church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws. The Church is not made up of the whole people, rather of the broken people who find wholeness in a Christ who was broken for us.” I also really like that the authors give us reasons why unresolved sin damages us to the core. I like books that are practical and applicable and this book is definitely both.
Based on true story, Lieutenant Phillip Caputo and his experience of the Vietnam War. During this era there was a rebalance act within the young adults community in America, they did not want to live the boring and peaceful life their parents lived. This generation of young adults got fixated on the stories and heroes that came from the WWII and what they can do to experience this “trill” first hand. The novel is written with Lieutenant Phillip Caputo in mind starting when he first enrolled in the Marine Corps at the age of 20 in hopes of chasing his fixated dream of the war. At first Phillip had this elusion that the war would only last a couple of months and that he’ll be the American hero everyone talked about. Then the slap to the face
One weakness is that much of the information included is not in chronological order. This makes it difficult for the reader to understand in which order these events had occurred. Flipping back and forth between pages is sometimes needed, as well as making a timeline of your own. While Kusmer did have a rhyme or reason as to why he had written the book how he did, a way to solve this issue would have been to simply write the book in chronological order. Another weakness is that sometimes the book is quite dry. It is an interesting read, however at times it is more like reading a history book:
Wallace Terry has collected a wide range of stories told by twenty black Vietnam veterans. The stories are varied based on each experience; from the horrific to the heart breaking and to the glorified image of Vietnam depicted by Hollywood. Wallace Terry does not insinuate his opinion into any of the stories so that the audience can feel as if they are having a conversation with the Vietnam Veteran himself. Terry introduces the purpose of the book by stating, “ Among the 20 men who portray their war and postwar experiences in this book. I sought a representative cross section of the black combat force.”(p. XV) Although the stories in this book were not told in any specific order, many themes became prominent throughout the novel such as religion, social, and health.
Protests were forming around the United States. As the Soldiers started returning home, some Americans were doing horrible things to the Soldiers. As they would return home, people would boo and hiss at them. People would even spit on them as the Soldiers would walk by them. Many civilians had a negative image of the retuning Soldiers that was hard to shake, Veterans recalled. Many Vietnam vets complained of employment discrimination and hostility from anti-war activists who didn’t understand the traumas Soldiers suffered. (Carroll) Even many years later some Vietnam Veterans still don’t say that they served or that they are a Veteran because people made them feel ashamed for doing the job their country called them up to
The speech that I chose to analyze and critique is from John Forbes Kerry “Vietnam Veterans Against the War” to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In this speech he did not represent himself, he represented the group of 1000 veterans that feels the same way he does about the war.
The Vietnam War was a controversial conflict that plagued the United States for many years. The loss of life caused by the war was devastating. For those who came back alive, their lives were profoundly changed. The impact the war had on servicemen would affect them for the rest of their lives; each soldier may have only played one small part in the war, but the war played a huge part in their lives. They went in feeling one way, and came home feeling completely different. In the book Vietnam Perkasie, W.D. Ehrhart describes his change from a proud young American Marine to a man filled with immense confusion, anger, and guilt over the atrocities he witnessed and participated in during the war.
One weakness can be found with the way the information flowed together, sometimes making the text either difficult to follow, or in the second and third chapters, quite dry. Also, in my edition of the book, one of the few pictures Nuland decided to add to supplement his writing was a complete waste of space. The pictures were supposed to show the differences between Ingác Semmelweis over a span of a few years, but the reader can’t even see any differences because the printing quality was absolutely terrible. Still, the overall strengths of the book overrule the few flaws mentiones.
Several stories into the novel, in the section, “How to tell a true war story”, O’Brien begins to warn readers of the lies and exaggerations that may occur when veterans tell war stories.
The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.