“Rhythmic, visceral, laconic, powerful, Levy’s stories will haunt the reader long after reading them.” Nguyen Ba Chung, William Joiner Center “… Any family member, any therapist, who wants to know something of the pain that vets carry in their heads and hearts…should read this book.” Hamilton Gregory, author of MacNamara’s Folly “His quiet voice details […]
My Books
Dreams, Vietnam
“If ever you find yourself wondering about what Joyce meant when Stephen Dedalus said he was trying to wake from the “nightmare of history,” you can begin with this book.” Fred Marchant, author of The Looking Glass “This book is a rare gift. Using a spare style that startles with its directness, Marc Levy transforms […]
Other Dreams
“You are about to read a rare and valuable gift to human understanding and to dream research. Other Dreams consists of several hundred dreams the author, an infantry medic in Vietnam, recorded from 2016 to 2017. Reading this book, may you be moved, troubled, informed, puzzled. May you benefit from reading the dreams of a […]
Books by friends of Medic
Buffgrunt: memoirs of a tree vet
Tommy J Skiens
Buffgrunt walks among the baby boomers and steps into the Vietnam War with curiosity and expectation. The war upsets and traumatizes this generation who react to the cold war rhetoric and fear of nuclear disaster. The boomers watched as a president was assassinated on Television and our first step was a giant leap for all mankind as we landed on the moon. Buffgrunt is little more than a personal attempt to understand the journey. Buffgrunt contains new information and shocking revelations about combat in Southeast Asia and the emotional battles that will plaque a generation of boomers. Honest, to the point and insightful, Buffgrunt sprinkles traumatic events with a coating of humor from a grunts point of view.
Medic’s friend Tommy was an RTO with C 2/4 LIB, saw much heavy combat and is more than acquainted with My Lai. His website is http://www.buffgrunt.com/.
Of Better Blood Hardcover
Susan Moger
Teenage polio survivor Rowan Collier is caught in the crossfire of a secret war against “the unfit.” It’s 1922, and eugenics―the movement dedicated to racial purity and good breeding―has taken hold in America. State laws allow institutions to sterilize minorities, the “feeble-minded,” and the poor, while local eugenics councils set up exhibits at county fairs with “fitter family” contests and propaganda. After years of being confined to hospitals, Rowan is recruited at sixteen to play a born cripple in a county fair eugenics exhibit. But gutsy, outspoken Dorchy befriends Rowan and helps her realize her own inner strength and bravery. The two escape the fair and end up at a summer camp on a desolate island run by the New England Eugenics Council. There they discover something is happening to the children. Rowan must find a way to stop the horrors on the island…if she can escape them herself.
The Cadence of Mercy
Richard Levine
Richard Levine’s The Cadence of Mercy insists the contradictions of praise and blame, the march of events, belong to us all. “Are [we] suffering/ from loss or too much memory?” And in “Fall,” the recurring wonder of tenderness: “Didn’t we fall into that exquisite /embrace with nothing to hold / us up but each other?” This is a spirited collection, ranging from the historical fate of the Indians, the Holocaust, our melting pot America, the ritual blessing of making bread, the [Brooklyn] Dodgers, Vietnam, what we learned on the playground and in school: “Leaving for holiday, I pack / language and inventions we shaped, history/we made. All our fingerprints are there.”
Richard, a Marine’s during Tet ’68, where he was wounded, is the author of Snapshots from a Battle (2001), A Language Full of Wars and Songs (2004), That Country’s Soul (2010), A Tide of a Hundred Mountains (2012), and The Cadence of Mercy (2014). His poem “Believe This” was featured in former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s column, “American Life in Poetry”. In 2010, Levine’s poem “Picket Fences” was a runner-up for Rosebud magazine’s William Stafford Award for Poetry. A retired teacher, he is learning to steward a forest. He lives in Brooklyn.
Lamentation with June Bug
Nancy Esposito
Nancy Esposito has published three previous books of poems. She is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the Discovery Award, a Poetry Society of America Award, and a Massachusetts Arts Lottery Award as well as a Fulbright Grant, an NEH, and several grants from Bentley University to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. Her own work as well as translations of Nicaraguan poets has appeared in numerous American journals and magazines. Her own poems have been translated into Spanish and Vietnamese. She was born in Dallas, Texas, and educated at New York University. She has taught writing at Harvard, Tufts, and Bentley Universities.
Merchant Marine Survivors of World War II: Oral Histories of Cargo Carrying Under Fire
Michael Gillen
World War II could not have been won without the U.S. Merchant Marine. Crewed by civilian seamen in peacetime and carrying much of the nation’s ocean-borne commerce, the Merchant Marine became the “fourth arm of defense” in wartime, providing vital support for beachheads in all theaters of operation. Twenty World War II Merchant Marine veterans are featured in this oral history. Most had at least one ship torpedoed, bombed, shelled or mined out from under them–some of them two. Some became prisoners of the Japanese for the duration of the war, working on the infamous River Kwai Bridge. Many spent time on lifeboats or flimsy rafts under harsh conditions; one–Donald Zubrod–endured 42 days in a lifeboat with several others before their eventual rescue, close to death. American merchant mariners suffered a casualty rate that was a close second to the Marine Corps during the war.
Admit One: An American Scrapbook
Martha Collins
“A strikingly original collection that combines brilliant storytelling and compelling commentary on ethics and race. The interwoven poems begin with the speaker’s grandparents entering the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, where technological advances and artistic marvels were proudly displayed, as were examples of ‘inferior’ human beings, such as Ota Benga, a Congolese Pygmy who was later housed in the primate exhibit of the new Bronx Zoo. The poems follow his short, sad life and the rise of Madison Grant, a hunter friend of Theodore Roosevelt who created the zoo. Grant later became a key proponent of the eugenics movement. Collins, who has published seven previous books of poetry, doesn’t sensationalize the material. Exquisitely spare, these works recount some of the sinister moments of American history, quietly pushing readers to learn from those episodes and consider our collective responsibility for them. As she writes in Admit One: “hate to have to concede/ as evidence into the record/ we have to guilt mistake own/ as a right openly into.”
—Washington Post
Vietnam Wars 1945-1990
Marilyn Young
In this dark account of the political and diplomatic sides of the Vietnam wars and the psychic aftermath, the author contends that the Indochina experience refuted (temporarily) the simplistic assumptions that in foreign policy America always “meant well” and that communism was always “bad.” The epithets popularly employed to characterize the enemy in Vietnam–“indifferent to human life,” “dishonest,” “ruthless”–came to characterize our own actions as well. From counterinsurgency expert Edward Lansdale’s “cheerful brutalization of democratic values” to President Nixon’s attempt to “make war look like peace,” the moral breakdown is assessed here in disturbing detail. Young goes on to argue that more recent U.S. intervention in Lebanon, Libya, Grenada and Panama suggests that few lessons were learned in Vietnam–indeed, that the past decade has seen a dangerous resurgence of native faith in the benevolence of American foreign meddling. This, she maintains, goes hand in hand with a renewed commitment to use force in a global crusade against Third World revolutions and governments. Young, a history professor at New York University, paints a grim picture of our part in the Indochina war and its excoriating effects on the nation. Publishers Weekly
After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese
Lady Borton (Author), Grace Paley (Foreword)
As an administrator for the Friends Service Committee in Quang Ngai Province, Borton (Sensing the Enemy: An American Among the Boat People of Vietnam) was one of the few Americans to work in both South and North Vietnam during the war. Much later, 1987-1993, she lived in Vietnamese villages, including a former Viet Cong base where women played a prominent role during the war. Her beautifully modulated memoir is less about the war itself than about the unique character of the village women: their formalized social interaction, use of traditional medicine, food-gathering and preparation and the Buddhist beliefs that guide their behavior. Borton’s gently compelling narrative follows the rhythm of the seasons and weather patterns and records the jarring advent of Western-style consumerism with the appearance of jeans, tennis shoes, motorcycles and VCRs. Describing her life in Hanoi (“Vietnam’s largest village”), where in 1990 she opened a Quaker Service office, she conveys her great affection for its hurly-burly pace. The author conversed with Vietnamese women fluently in their own language and thus is able to present fuller portraits than could be found elsewhere in English.
Thai Binh: Great Peace
Kevin Bowen
“Kevin Bowen’s poems are powerful, authoritative and essential. They bring news from a world much of America has turned its back on, and they do so without bitterness or rancor, offering instead profound testimony of love and compassionate wisdom. This is some of the most important and accomplished poetry I’ve read in a long time”—Sam Hamill
Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1993
Kevin Bowen (Editor), Nguyen Ba Chung (Editor), Bruce Weigl (Editor)
“Translation of poetry from Vietnamese to English presents difficult problems; these translations are among the best I’ve ever seen. The book will appeal to scholars and teachers in the fields of Viet Nam War studies, postcolonial literary studies, and Pacific Rim studies. It could easily be used as a course text, as well as provide important material for scholars. … A most useful and beautiful work.” – Renny Christopher, author of The Viet Nam War/The American War: Images and Representations in Euro-American and Vietnamese Exile Narratives
“The quality of the translations is excellent.” – Ngo Nhu Binh, Harvard University.
McNamara’s Folly
Hamilton Gregory
In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were desperate to find additional troops for the Vietnam War, but they feared that they would alienate middle-class voters if they drafted college boys or sent Reservists and National Guardsmen to Vietnam. So, on October 1, 1966, McNamara lowered mental standards and inducted thousands of low-IQ men. Altogether, 354,000 of these men were taken into the Armed Forces and a large number of them were sent into combat. Many military men, including William Westmoreland, the commanding general in Vietnam, viewed McNamara’s program as a disaster. Because many of the substandard men were incompetent in combat, they endangered not only themselves but their comrades as well. Their death toll was appallingly high. In addition to low-IQ men, tens of thousands of other substandard troops were inducted, including criminals, misfits, and men with disabilities. This book tells the story of the men caught up in McNamara’s folly.
Tipping Point
Fred Marchant
Introduction by Nick Flynn. With his deft and timeless blend of the lyrical and narrative, Fred Marchant explores the wars inside us and the ones we wage in the world: spiritual, familial, political.
“In the spirit of Wilfred Owen, TIPPING POINT is a book seared by personal and historical fact. Many artists are eager to assume the mantle of ‘witness,’ as if will or ambition could do the work of experience and imagination. In contrast, the gravity, modesty, and moral questioning in Marchant’s poems reveal a mind committed to a version of history that is resolutely human scale.”—Tom Sleigh
“Explicit in its detailing, subtly graded in its responsiveness, TIPPING POINT is also a kind of latter-day metaphysics of morals. Marchant searches out the hidden springs of action and yet never loses sight of the larger contexts in which our deeds and gestures come to matter. An honest, earned book.”—Sven Birkerts
Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, the Sixties, and a Journey of Self-Discovery
Doug Anderson
Starred Review. In his first book of nonfiction, Anderson tells his story in inviting, poetic prose. He begins with his dysfunctional childhood in Memphis, then offers an evocative depiction of his service in Vietnam, which included a firefight on his first day in the field and more than his share of closely observed horror. He shows the hell of war as he went through it. Only in recent years did Anderson stop drinking, find meaningful work as a poet and teacher, marry and make a life-changing trip back to Vietnam in 2000. Yet what Anderson dubs “Snakebrain” (the demons inside him) remains a part of him. His beautifully told story is one of redemption, but also one without a happy ending.
Publishers Weekly
Mother Tongue
Demetria Martinez
That it is possible to learn as much from fiction as from nonfiction is made abundantly clear from a reading of MOTHER TONGUE. Martinez focuses her story on a young woman who becomes involved with a refugee from El Salvador who is smuggled into the U.S. by members of the Sanctuary movement, advocates for the tens of thousands of Salvadorans who have been harassed, tortured, and “disappeared” by a U.S.-supported military government.
There is the truth of experience behind Martinez’ fiction. In 1987, she was charged with conspiring against the U.S. government and aiding the entry of Salvadorans into the country. At the end of her 1988 trial, she was acquitted of the charges on First Amendment grounds — the jury determined that she had a right, as a reporter for the National Catholic Reporter, to witness efforts to aid refugees as part of the Sanctuary movement. Martinez knows whereof she speaks, and writes of it with the voice of the poet that she is.
Margaret Sanborn/Publicity
Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal and Raging Egos
Clancy Sigal
This a hilarious memoir of Clancy Sigal’s escapades as a young Hollywood agent on the Sunset Strip, peddling writers and actors in a blacklist-crazed “golden age” movie industry of the 1950s. Atom bomb tests light up the night sky, and everyone is either naming names or getting named in the McCarthy witch hunt. By day a fast-talking salesman, at night he’s the point person of a small circle of anarchistic oddballs. He’s dogged by two FBI agents who want to be set up with starlets and have a screen test. They trail him as he goes from studio to studio hustling clients like Humphrey Bogart, Donna Reed, Jack Palance, Peter Lorre and Stanwyck. Barred from a studio he brazenly uses a bolt cutter to break through the chainlink fence to make a deal.
Song of Napalm: Poems
Bruce Weigl (Author), Robert Stone (Introduction)
“Song of Napalm is more than a collection of beautifully wrought, heartwrenching, and often very funny poems. It’s a narrative, the story of an American innocent’s descent into hell and his excruciating return to life on the surface. Weigl may have written the best novel so far about the Vietnam War, and along the way a dozen truly memorable poems.” — Russell Banks
Poems from Captured Documents: A Bilingual Edition
Thanh T. Nguyen (Translator), Bruce Weigl (Translator)
These poems were written in journals and notebooks by ordinary soldiers who fought against American forces in Vietnam. The format of this edition is bilingual to enable both Vietnamese and American readers to appreciate these documents.
The Best of Medic in the Green Time
“Reading this collection of Vietnam-related stories and recollections is excruciatingly painful — which is precisely why it demands to be widely read.” —-Andrew Bacevich, professor emeritus, Boston University “This book is simply astounding. I don’t think I’ve ever learned as much from any text about the Vietnam War, and the emotional impact of some of […]