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Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War

Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War

by PeterMaslowski (Author), Don Winslow (Author)

  • New

    Paperback 2009

    $50.36
Synopsis

Widely acclaimed as the Vietnam War's most highly decorated soldier, Joe Ronnie Hooper in many ways serves as a symbol for that conflict. His troubled, tempestuous life paralleled the upheavals in American society during the 1960s and 1970s, and his desperate quest to prove his manhood was uncomfortably akin to the macho image projected by three successive presidents in their tough policy in Southeast Asia. Looking for a Hero extracts the real Joe Hooper from the welter of lies and myths that swirl around his story; in doing so, the book uncovers not only the complicated truth about an American hero but also the story of how Hooper's war was lost in Vietnam, not at home.

Extensive interviews with friends, fellow soldiers, and family members reveal Hooper as a complex, gifted, and disturbed man. They also expose the flaws in his most famous and treasured accomplishment: earning the Medal of Honor. In the distortions, half-truths, and outright lies that mar Hooper's medal of honor file, authors Peter Maslowski and Don Winslow find a painful reflection of the army's inability to be honest with itself and the American public, with all the dire consequences that this dishonesty ultimately entailed. In the inextricably linked stories of Hooper and the Vietnam War, the nature of that deceit, and of America's defeat, becomes clear.

$50.36

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 644
 Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 01 Apr 2009
ISBN 10: 0803224931
ISBN 13: 9780803224933
Book Overview: Widely acclaimed as the Vietnam War's most highly decorated soldier, Joe Ronnie Hooper in many ways serves as a symbol for that conflict. His troubled, tempestuous life paralleled the upheavals in American society during the 1960s and 1970s

Media Reviews
Peter Maslowski and Don Winslow's meditation on heroism and the Vietnam experience is a truly original book. Its protagonist is not one of the great and good, but a humble 'grunt.' . . . Looking for a Hero has a highly sophisticated structure that is developed with great skill. Maslowski and Winslow bind onto Hooper's modest life a history of the Vietnam era that assumes the form of a moral tale and operates at a number of levels. -Times Literary Supplement * Times Literary Supplement *
Looking For a Hero is an extraordinary feat of biographical reconstruction, as well as a powerful, poignant account of a nation at war. The tale of Joe Hooper's turbulent life and sad death transcends the story of America's most decorated Vietnam veteran to become a meditation about heroism, manhood, and the true cost of combat. -Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of An Army at Dawn -- Rick Atkinson
A stinging indictment of the government's treatment of veterans of our most recent wars. -Vietnam Veterans of America * Vietnam Veterans of America *
I was totally caught up in the story; reading it is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I wish I had written this book. It is daring and it is original. -Roger J. Spiller, George C. Marshall Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College -- Roger J. Spiller
Author Bio
Peter Maslowski is a professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the author of several books, including Armed with Cameras: The American Military Photographers of World War II and (with Allan R. Millett) For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. Don Winslow is the best-selling author of, among other works, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, which received an Edgar nomination for best first novel.