Dispatches, Episode 34: Rick Parker
Here's Episode 34 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with the artist, writer, and cartoonist Rick Parker, best known for the 28 MTV Beavis and Butt-Head comic books and his graphic novel “Deadboy.” They’ll be discussing Parker’s new graphic memoir, “Drafted,” an off-beat, clever, insightful, often-funny look at his short but eventful military career after being conscripted into the Army in 1966. It’s a book that millions of Vietnam War veterans can relate to as Parker brilliantly brings to life in words and pictures experiences all us went through during those memorable months of our lives.
Dispatches, Episode 33: Ray Boomhower
Here's Episode 33 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Ray Boomhower, a prolific author who specializes in telling life stories, including biographies of war correspondents Richard Tregaskis, Ernie Pyle, and Robert Sherrod. He’ll be discussing his latest book, “The Ultimate Protest: Malcolm W. Browne, Thich Quang Duc, and the News Photograph that Stunned the World,” a slice-of-life biography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Vietnam War correspondent Malcolm W. Browne. As the Associated Press’s Saigon Bureau Chief, Browne took one of the most reproduced and important photographs of the Vietnam War, the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation in the middle of a Saigon street on June 11, 1963.
Dispatches, Episode 32: Jim Morris
Here's Episode 32 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with former Green Beret Jim Morris, who served three tours of duty in the Vietnam War and went on to a multi-faceted writing career that including contributing to magazines such as Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Soldier of Fortune, and working as a book editor and writing books of his own. They’ll be discussing Morris’ wartime exploits and “War Story,” his award-winning 1985 Vietnam War memoir, and “The Dreaming Circus,” a spiritual memoir of his post-war reintegration into civilian life.
Dispatches, Episode 31: Geoffrey Wawro
Here is Episode 31 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with University of North Texas History Professor Geoffrey Wawro about "The Vietnam War: A Military History," his highly praised new book. It’s a deeply researched, compellingly written, analytical dive into the war that concentrates on military tactics and strategy, along with the political calculations behind them that had an impact on developments on the battlefield. Tom Ricks, in his New York Times review, called the book “the best overview of America’s misadventure in Southeast Asia,” and one that is “sure to become the standard one-volume book on the war.”
Dispatches, Episode 31: Geoffrey Wawro
Here is Episode 31 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with University of North Texas History Professor Geoffrey Wawro about "The Vietnam War: A Military History," his highly praised new book. It’s a deeply researched, compellingly written, analytical dive into the war that concentrates on military tactics and strategy, along with the political calculations behind them that had an impact on developments on the battlefield. Tom Ricks, in his New York Times review, called the book “the best overview of America’s misadventure in Southeast Asia,” and one that is “sure to become the standard one-volume book on the war.”
Dispatches, Episode 31: Geoffrey Wawro
Here is Episode 31 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with University of North Texas History Professor Geoffrey Wawro about "The Vietnam War: A Military History," his highly praised new book. It’s a deeply researched, compellingly written, analytical dive into the war that concentrates on military tactics and strategy, along with the political calculations behind them that had an impact on developments on the battlefield. Tom Ricks, in his New York Times review, called the book “the best overview of America’s misadventure in Southeast Asia,” and one that is “sure to become the standard one-volume book on the war.”
Dispatches, Episode 31: Geoffrey Wawro
Here is Episode 31 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with University of North Texas History Professor Geoffrey Wawro about "The Vietnam War: A Military History," his highly praised new book. It’s a deeply researched, compellingly written, analytical dive into the war that concentrates on military tactics and strategy, along with the political calculations behind them that had an impact on developments on the battlefield. Tom Ricks, in his New York Times review, called the book “the best overview of America’s misadventure in Southeast Asia,” and one that is “sure to become the standard one-volume book on the war.”
Dispatches, Episode 30: Julia Cooke
Here is Episode 30 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Julia Cooke, the widely published journalist and the author of “Come Fly the World.” That illuminating book, which came out in 2021, is an important story about the hundreds of Pan American World Airways stewardesses who volunteered to serve aboard Pan Am charters that took troops into and out of the war zone throughout the entire Vietnam War. The book offers fascinating details about an underappreciated and little-known story—and one that hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War veterans experienced.
Dispatches, Episode 29: Marc Yablonka
Here is Episode 29 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Marc Yablonka, a long-time military journalist and author who’s written for many publications, served as a public affairs officer with the California State Military Army Reserve’s 40th Infantry Division, and has written a great deal about the Vietnam War, including in his books, Tears Across the Mekong, tales of the so-called “secret war” in Laos; Vietnam: Bao Chi: Warriors of Word and Film; and his latest, Hot Mics and TV Lights: The American Forces Vietnam Network, a history of AFVN.
Here is Episode 28 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Bob Parsons, the self-made entrepreneur, marketing wizard, and philanthropist best known as the founder of GoDaddy and PXG Golf. They’ll be discussing Parsons’ time in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam in 1968 where he was severely wounded, the impact his wartime service and serving in the Marine Corps has had on his life since then, his new book, “Fire in the Hole! The Untold Story of My Traumatic Life and Explosive Success,” and much more!
"Dispatches" Episode 27: Carl Sciacchitano
Here is Episode 27 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Carl Sciacchitano, the writer and illustrator, about his brilliant new graphic novel, “The Heart That Fed: A Father, a Son and the Long Shadow of War.” This creatively crafted and compulsively readable book focuses on Carl’s father David’s radically life-changing 18-month Vietnam War tour of duty as an Air Force aircraft mechanic who—among many other things—manned an M-60 machinegun during an NVA attack near Quang Tri during the 1968 Tet Offensive, and also flashes back and forward to David’s and Carl’s lives before and after the war.
"Dispatches," Episode 26: Molly Stillman
Here is Episode 26 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with in Molly Stillman, who hosts the “Can I Laugh on Your Shoulder?” podcast, and is the author of a great new memoir, "If I Don’t Laugh. I’ll Cry." They’ll be talking mainly about Molly’s mother, Lynda Van Devanter, a Vietnam War surgical nurse who became a powerful women veterans advocate. After joining Vietnam Veterans of America in 1979, the year after it was founded, Lynda became the head of VVA’s Women’s Project, the first-ever U.S. veterans service organization’s women veterans advocacy group. In 1983, she wrote what would become a classic Vietnam War memoir: "Home Before Morning."
The VVA Veteran is the bimonthly publication of Vietnam Veterans of America. http://www.vvaveteran Congress.
