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The Conversion of Nathan Poole
Remember the time when innocence was lost and
everything changed? In the midst of an unpopular war, college student Nathan
Poole, a student at Hale College, struggles to find the meaning of life, liberty
and love.
From a social point of view, the Viet Nam War, that raged from 1962 – 1972, was a key time in the lives of many younger Americans, especially the so-called baby boomer generation. This book is a trip back in time for baby boomers. The Vietnam War, roused many American people to anti-war activity in the later 1960s and early 1970s. As the draft increased and casualties mounted in Vietnam, opposition to the war grew.
In 1965 demonstrations in New York City attracted 25,000 marchers; within two years similar demonstrations drew several hundred thousand participants in Washington, D.C., London, and other European capitals. A series of loose-knit coalitions coordinated thousands of local anti-war groups into massive nationwide demonstrations; one was the Student Mobilization (1966). The mass mobilizations against the war reached a peak in 1969 when three quarters of a million people took part in the November 15th rally in Washington – “by any count the largest political mass march and demonstration in the history of the nation to that time”.
On April, 9th 1969, 300 students at Harvard University seized the administration building in protest of the war. They threw out eight deans and locked themselves in. They were later forcibly removed from the building. In May 1969 The New York Times broke the news of the secret bombing of Cambodia. President Nixon ordered the FBI to wiretap the telephones of four journalists and 13 government officials to determine the source of news leak.
In the spring of 1970, after the bombing in Cambodia, the American public were shocked by the death toll on over a dozen college campuses in the United States. Most publicized was the killing of four students by the United States National Guard at the Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. Hobart College faced the same possibility when a police informer, Tommy Traveler led police on a raid at a college dormitory during final exam weekend. A riot occurred between college students and the police, and in this case violence was barely avoided.
This book relates a young man’s journey to find his way through the confusion and college campus strikes of 1969 and 1970. L. W. Elston illustrates his thoughts and paints a picture that is as pertinent today as it was in those turbulent years.
Students for a Democratic Society held its national convention in Chicago from June 18th through June 22nd. The organization split into at least two factions; the Progressive Labor Party and the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM). The Weathermen, later known as The Weather Underground, a group that would shortly split from RYM, held an action they called, “The Days of Rage” in Chicago from October 6th through October 11th,1969.
On 27 June, 1969, Life magazine displayed portrait photos of all 242 Americans killed in Vietnam during the previous week, including the 46 killed at 'Hamburger Hill'. The impact of these photos, and some of the faces behind the numbers, stunned Americans and increased anti-war sentiment in the country.
For protester and soldier alike, the war created many strong opinions in regards to American foreign policy and the justness of war. As a result, the Vietnam War was also significant in showing the degree that the public can influence government policy through mobilization and protest. Several presidential campaigns grew out of the antiwar movement. The campaign of Robert Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in 1968 was based upon opposition to the war.
Most of the demonstrations were peaceful, though acts of civil disobedience—intended to provoke arrest—were common. Much of the impetus for the antiwar protests came from college students. It is here that Nathan Poole found himself in the middle of a protest hotbed, facing the uncertainty of the world and his own life.
The movement against the war in Vietnam was the most successful peace movement in American history. The gross misrepresentation by Lyndon Johnson about the capacity of the Vietnamese to wage a major offensive was exposed with the TET offensive in 1968. Lyndon Johnson was profoundly affected by the growing dissention within the Democratic party, that eventually led to his withdrawal from the 1968 Presidential race. The anti-war momentum continued during the term of Richard Nixon’s presidency, and escalated with the expansion of the war into Laos and Cambodia.
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