Until the Last Man Comes Home - by Michael J Allen (Paperback)

About the Book

Until the Last Man Comes Home: POWs, MIAs, and the Unending Vietnam War

Book Synopsis

Fewer Americans were captured or missing during the Vietnam War than in any previous major military conflict in U.S. history. Yet despite their small numbers, American POWs inspired an outpouring of concern that slowly eroded support for the war. Michael J. Allen reveals how wartime loss transformed U.S. politics well before, and long after, the war's official end.

Throughout the war's last years and in the decades since, Allen argues, the effort to recover lost warriors was as much a means to establish responsibility for their loss as it was a search for answers about their fate. Though millions of Americans and Vietnamese took part in that effort, POW and MIA families and activists dominated it. Insisting that the war was not over "until the last man comes home," this small, determined group turned the unprecedented accounting effort against those they blamed for their suffering. Allen demonstrates that POW/MIA activism prolonged the hostility between the United States and Vietnam even as the search for the missing became the basis for closer ties between the two countries in the 1990s. Equally important, he explains, POW/MIA families' disdain for the antiwar left and contempt for federal authority fueled the conservative ascendancy after 1968. Mixing political, cultural, and diplomatic history, Until the Last Man Comes Home presents the full and lasting impact of the Vietnam War in ways that are both familiar and surprising.

Review Quotes

"[An] absorbing addition to the immense literature on the [Vietnam] war." -- History News Network

"A perceptive analysis of the history of the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. . . . Valuable." -- Publishers Weekly

"A valuable, even unique, contribution to the field. . . . Skillfully written, very well researched, and wonderfully documented and presents a fair and balanced view of the issues. . . . Appropriate for all who seek to understand the Vietnam War in a fuller context." -- Library Journal

"Allen does an excellent job chonicling the history of the Vietnam War POW/MIA movement. . . . [A] valuable look at what he accurately calls a 'strange' story." -- Vietnam Veterans of America Magazine

"Allen masterfully traces the development of the POW/MIA movement, and possesses keen insight concerning the motives and behaviors of those who sought to make the issue theirs. . . . A very important contribution to POW/MIA studies." -- Journal of Military History

"Michael J. Allen . . . has completely changed the way we should think about the politics surrounding America's prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action (POW/MIA) from the Vietnam conflict. . . . Based on extensive research and superbly written, Allen's book will become the standard on the cultural politics of the POW/MIA issue." -- Journal of American History

"Presents the full and lasting impact of the Vietnam War in ways that are both familiar and surprising." -- McCormick Messenger

"This complex book . . . develops a critical history of the National League of Families of POWs and MIAs. . . . Highly recommended." -- CHOICE

"Wonderfully insightful and thoughtful. . . . By unraveling and revealing the various strands of memory created since the late 1960s by the U.S. government, POW/MIA activists, special-interest grops, political parties, and the Vietnamese, Allen clearly establishes his main theme." -- Proceedings

"Works out the politics of the POWs in staggering depth." -- Rick Perlstein, The Nation