Myth, Memory and Music of the Vietnam War

This is a musical history of the world’s first “rock and roll” war. Authors Bradley and Werner see not one, but rather three consecutive Vietnam Wars from an American perspective: a professional war prior to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, then an increasingly conscript war, as casualties rose and enlistment fell, that stretched up to North Vietnam’s Tet offensive ­‒ and that proved at the same time a military defeat and psychological masterstroke ‒ and finally one that segued into the long dying endgame as the troops on the ground fell into drugs and despair, mutiny and music and the racial, generational and political divisions created.