Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement: Essays from the Charles DeBenedetti Memorial Conference

This collection of 14 essays, generated by a 1990 conference on the Vietnam antiwar movement, analyzes movement strategies, the role of the military and women in resistance, and the movement in the schools. While the essays contain much useful information, including some new material based on oral histories, they lack the narrative drive of less academic histories. A few of the contributions stand out: historian Maurice Isserman, analyzing the triumph of militance over pacifism in Students for a Democratic Society, says that its rank and file was more diverse and less radical than the leadership; peace activist David McReynolds reflects on how more radical social critics shook pacifists' ``unexamined'' view of America; David Cortwright, a former soldier-activist, traces the socioeconomic profiles of GIs who practiced dissent and disobedience, noting that volunteers opposed the war more than draftees. Particularly stimulating is historian Kenneth J. Heineman's portrait of Kent State University, which, contrary to myth, had been a hotbed of activism. Small wrote Resort to Arms ; Hoover is a professor of history at the University of Toledo. (July)