Long Reckoning

The moving story of a small group of veterans, scientists, and pacifists who forced the U.S. government to take responsibility for the horrors inflicted on the Vietnamese with unexploded munitions and the toxic defoliant Agent Orange.

The Vietnam War has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. In The Long Reckoning, George Black focuses on the worst devastations-the most intense aerial bombing campaign in history, the massive use of toxic chemicals, the heaviest casualties, the largest number of combatants missing in action, and the worst incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans. And he looks at why these devastations were all concentrated in a tiny area, bounded by the Demilitarized Zone between North and South and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos. Then he recounts the inspirational story of a small cast of characters-veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists-who 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 there. Their intersecting story is one of the complex politics of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all of its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into strategic military allies.