How I Learned That I Could Push the Button

These essays compose a compact history of the effects of the war in Viet Nam on American life. Colored by the impact of the war, they portray some of the ways in which we looked at later events. Certain themes arise again and again-the perceived threat presented by the Other, the permeability of borders that separate like from other, the tension between loyalty to one’s fellows and obligation to nation or country or society, the distrust of abstraction and those who use abstraction to manipulate us. These essays, drawing on the author’s direct experience of one war and his peripheral experience of another, may be considered a companion volume to his acclaimed novel, Sergeant Dickinson.