Description

The moving story of how a small group of peopleincluding two Vietnam veteransforced the US government to take responsibility for the ongoing horrorsagent orange and unexploded munitionsinflicted on the Vietnamese

Fifty years after the last US service member left Vietnam the scars of that war remainThis is the remarkable story of a group of individuals determined to heal those enduring woundsElliot Ackerman author of The Fifth Act and 2034

The American war in Vietnam has left many longlasting 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 charactersveterans scientists and Quakerinspired pacifists and their Vietnamese partnerswho 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 onetime mortal enemies in the endless shapeshifting of geopolitics have been transformed into close allies and partners

The Long Reckoning is being published on the fiftieth anniversary of the day the last American combat soldier left Vietnam