Carol Reardon

A pioneering study of the contested landscape of memory of an event versus the actual event, how that memory supplanted the actual events, and how that memory shaped / frame / reflected the society that created it. Far from trying to retrieve the reputation of North Carolina soldiers, Reardon explores the how Reunion shaped the political landscape of the New South, how that Reunion came through the reconciliation of soldiers around honor, valor, and virtue, and how North Carolina soldiers themselves defended that honor, valor, and virtue against the misleading statements of Virginia Confederate Veteran groups. Memory studies, how a people remember their history, are a worthy addition to the study of history. Not only is this what history is all about but it is why historians get excited about the profession.… (meer)

"The heart of all-weather attack is two aviators in a single aircraft going to bad places on dark nights." That quote on the last page of the narrative is as good a high concept summation of this book as you're going to get, as Reardon has produced a fine life and times study of the USN attack squadron VA-75, which flew off the USS Saratoga for the last year of the American involvement in Vietnam, including the climax that was the Christmas raids of 1972. Pretty much every aspect of that year is covered, from combat actions to family relations to the slow wastage of will and endurance that being on the combat line had on the men and machines of the squadron.

I really have no reason to mark this book down for anything except that it would have been nice to know a little bit more of what the whole endeavor then and now meant to the enlisted men of the unit.… (meer)