Kent State (eBook)

An American Tragedy

Brian VanDeMark (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
416 Seiten
W. W. Norton & Company (Verlag)
978-1-324-06626-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Longlisted for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionA Kirkus Reviews and New Yorker Best Book of 2024An ALA Notable BookA definitive history of the fatal clash between Vietnam War protestors and the National Guard, illuminating its causes and lasting consequences.On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, political fires that had been burning across America during the 1960s exploded. Antiwar protesters wearing bell-bottom jeans and long hair hurled taunts and rocks at another group of young AmericansNational Guardsmen sporting gas masks and rifles. At half past noon, violence unfolded with chaotic speed, as guardsmenmany of whom had joined the Guard to escape the draftopened fire on the students. Two reductive narratives ensued: one, that lethal state violence targeted Americans who spoke their minds; the other, that law enforcement gave troublemakers the comeuppance they deserved. For over fifty years, little middle ground has been found due to incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence.Kent State meticulously re-creates the divided cultural landscape of America during the Vietnam War and heightened popular anxieties around the country. On college campuses, teach-ins, sit-down strikes, and demonstrations exposed the growing rift between the left and the right. Many students opposed the war as unnecessary and unjust and were uneasy over poor and working-class kids drafted and sent to Vietnam in their place. Some developed a hatred for the military, the police, and everything associated with authority, while others resolved to uphold law and order at any cost.Focusing on the thirteen victims of the Kent State shooting and a painstaking reconstruction of the days surrounding it, historian Brian VanDeMark draws on crucial new research and interviewsincluding, for the first time, the perspective of guardsmen who were there. The result is a complete reckoning with the tragedy that marked the end of the sixties.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.8.2024
• Zusatzinfo: 28 illustrations
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: 1970s history • massacre • school shooting • sds history • Shooting • State Violence • student protest • Students for a democratic society • vietnam war history
• ISBN-10: 1-324-06626-1 / 1324066261
• ISBN-13: 978-1-324-06626-2 / 9781324066262