My Day with History

I went to the Beering Technology Center to research the history textbooks, and guess what I found: not enough information. The history textbooks barely discussed the literature impacted by the Vietnam War. The textbook that we had in high school (The Americans) mentioned some literature written about the Vietnam War, but nothing about the literature of those who were influenced by war but not involved in it (a.k.a. the counterculture). Another textbook (The American Pageant) reviewed the counterculture and its literature, which was more helpful. It talked about The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a book written by Tom Wolfe about Ken Kesey's life on the road. Ken Kesey was a poet of the Beat generation. It also discussed the sexual revolution and Alfred Kinsey's findings and estimates on the sexual habits of many Americans. The third textbook (The American Nation) didn't review much at all. It provided a small amount of information about Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese refugee who escaped imprisonment by the South Vietnamese government to the United States. It also mentioned Born on the Fourth of July, a book about life as a soldier in Vietnam and the lack of support for the Americans from their fellow citizens at home. The final textbook I found only mentioned two books: Silent Spring and Unsafe at Any Speed. Silent Spring, as many of you biology majors may know, is a book concerning the spread of the pesticide DDT and its impact on nature. The pesticide spread through the consumption of insects by birds and the dinner that other predators would make of those birds. It led to an investigation of pollution. The other book, Unsafe at Any Speed, was written by a famous presidential candidate, Ralph Nader. He argued in the book that many Americans would die in automobile accidents due to the faulty creations of the automakers. This textbook (A History of the United States) wasn't quite what I was looking for; despite its inclusion of literature during the time, the included literature wasn't the direct impact of the Vietnam War. The rest of the textbooks I looked through made no mention of any literature impacted by the Vietnam War. The search was, overall, unproductive.