8/8: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam Hardcover – Deckle Edge, March 28, 2023 by George Black (Author)
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John Batchelor
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🗓️ 20 May 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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8/8: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam Hardcover – Deckle Edge, March 28, 2023 by George Black (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Reckoning-Story-Redemption-Vietnam/dp/0593534107
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area bounded by the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos. That small region saw the most intense aerial bombing campaign in history, the massive use of toxic chemicals, and the heaviest casualties on both sides.
In The Long Reckoning, George Black recounts the inspirational story of the small cast of characters—veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners—who used their moral authority, scientific and political ingenuity, and sheer persistence to attempt to heal the horrors that were left in the wake of the military engagement in Southeast Asia. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.
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| 0:00.0 | When you join Tinder, you might not have been looking for answers, but there were some good |
| 0:05.0 | clues, like in the way they smiled with their eyes. |
| 0:08.7 | Like how they didn't reach free hand before you'd reach for theirs. |
| 0:11.9 | And when the time was right, they popped the question, |
| 0:15.1 | Will you keep a toothbrush at my place? |
| 0:18.6 | From toothbrush proposals to non awkward silences, there's a world of possible connections on |
| 0:23.6 | Tinder. |
| 0:24.6 | What are you looking for? |
| 0:25.6 | It starts with a swipe, explore the possibilities on Tinder. |
| 0:29.1 | Hello today. |
| 0:30.1 | A John Bachelorette with George Black, his new book is The Long Reckoning, a story of |
| 0:39.2 | war, peace and redemption in Vietnam. |
| 0:42.0 | What I learn importantly is that the story is not closed. |
| 0:46.1 | It remains a challenge, a work in progress. |
| 0:49.6 | But a meeting in 2019, in Vietnam, I have the US ambassador, Kristen Bach, a Charles Bailey |
| 0:57.0 | of the Ford Foundation, Tim Reaser, who George just mentioned, Pat Leahy was there, Chuck |
| 1:02.5 | Sircy was there, others gathering in an airfield to begin a project 2019, that the then secretary |
| 1:10.5 | of defense, Mr. Mattis said, would begin to deal with the ghosts of the past. |
| 1:16.2 | Question is, is it adequate, George, today? |
| 1:19.7 | Because I want to go to a story you tell of a young woman named, yeah, I believe her |
| 1:25.3 | name is. |
| 1:26.3 | Yeah, who goes home to her family, she's disabled in some fashion and she's never flown |
... |
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