Nonfiction Monday

The Nonfiction Monday Round-up is at A Curious Thing this week.

Kent, Deborah. The Vietnam War: From DaNang to Saigon
This is part of the Enslow Publishers' The United States at War series. Since the Vietnam Conflict (as it was known until at least 1995!) started before I was born and ended when I was in grade school, the details have always been foggy to me. I'm pretty sure it was not covered in my high school history class; I don't know that we even got to Korea. This is an excellent book that lays out the causes of unrest in this area of the world, the development of the US involvement, and the particulars of battles, conditions, and public opinion during that time. Well-illustrated with period photographs and supporting documentation, this will interest my students who have an insatiable need to read about war as well as those trying to understand this point in US history. I have a lot of students now whose grandfathers fought in Vietnam.


Samuels, Charlie. Propaganda. (World War II Sourcebook)
This Brown Bear Books series includes the titles Soldiers, Spying and Security, Home Front, and Life Under Occupation. These brief (48 pages) volumes do a nice job of breaking down specific areas of the war. The Propaganda volume was of especial interest to my 8th grade social studies and language arts teachers, since both have a unit on propaganda. With its period posters and descriptions of various information campaigns, this was a good book to share with classes to explain what was meant by "propaganda". The Soliders volume covered everything from volunteering or conscription to demobbing. The only thing that was a little odd was that a lot of British military information was included, and there is no mention anywhere in the book of a publisher's web site.