SANTOLI : To bear any burden (fülszöveg)
"This important work adds a significant new dimension to popular perceptions of the entire Vietnam experience. Scholars for years to come will find new, fresh
and fertile fields to explore in this revealing oral history "
—LEO CHERNE
Chairman, International Rescue Committee
Executive Director, Research Institute of America
"These testimonies as to what really happened in Vietnam – the heroic acts of Americans; the full devotion of others in helping the Vietnamese; the
suffering undergone by victims, etc. – are stories that have never been told by anyone, and the public needs to know them."
—DR. NGUYEN VAN CANH
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace
Author of Vietnam Under Communism
Al Santoli's Everything We Had awakened America to the average GI's Vietnam experience. His new book seeks broader evidence – from the Vietnamese themselves, from before and after the direct American involvement, from noncombatants – and retains its focus on the human side of war. The forty eight American and Asian witnesses who recount their stories in To Bear Any Burden are survivors of a great cataclysm – survivors who have emerged unbroken and with a new commitment to freedom.
The veterans, refugees, and officials who speak here come from widely divergent backgrounds yet combine to narrate a synchronous chronicle, a human-scale history of the still ongoing struggle in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Reading their narratives, we hear them reliving crucial moments in the preparation, execution, and aftermath of war. We hear POW Dan Pitzer learning of the American buildup from his bamboo cage; Viet Cong operative Nguyen Tuong Lai describing a terrorist run into Saigon; Cambodian teacher Kassie Neou charming his executioners with fairy tales learned from the BBC. Their experiences in extreme circumstances of war, revolution, and imprisonment provide an epic drama of heroism in the midst of tragedy.
To Bear Any Burden thus gives us not only a riveting, eyewitness account of the war but reclaims from this tragic continuum larger patterns of courage and dedication. These survivors, first threatened by gunfire, then despised, ignored, or persecuted, have drawn strong lessons from their trauma. Whether we agree with their conclusions or not, their voices cannot be stilled.
"Once again Al Santoli has made a major contribution to the oral history of the American experience in Vietnam."
—STEVE BELL
Correspondent/Anchorman, ABC News
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