cover image War and the Ivory Tower: Algeria and Vietnam

War and the Ivory Tower: Algeria and Vietnam

David L. Schalk. Oxford University Press, USA, $35 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-19-506807-8

Schalk ( The Spectrum of Political Engagement ) offers a comparative analysis of domestic opposition to France's Algerian war and America's Vietnam war, showing how the intelligentsia in both countries expressed disapproval in similar ways. He notes that Jean-Paul Sartre's 1960 signing of the ``Manifesto of the 121'' was not only a turning point in the French antiwar movement but directly inspired the ``Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority'' in its American counterpart seven years later. Schalk makes the unsupported charge that President Lyndon Johnson ``took steps, perhaps out of spite,'' to prove that antiwar activism would have the opposite effect of what was intended. Some readers may wonder what the author means by ``the intellectual elite;'' nor does the author explain how the influence of that ``elite'' on the conduct of the 1954-62 war in Algeria and the 1964-75 war in Vietnam was more significant than that of the ``non-elite.'' Photos. (Sept.)