After the Good War: A Vietnam Memoir

As part of the first major wave of American troops, Loving describes in After the Good War: A Vietnam Memoir his life of nearly nine months in the combat zone between the treacherous streets of Saigon and the harbor and air base at Cam Ranh Bay. Loving’s memoir, primarily based on letters he wrote while “in-country” to his wife and a diary kept during his service in Vietnam, is not a war story per se but a lament. Its looming symbol is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, DC; unlike previous war memorials or statues, this one is a wall of words with the names of the deceased American combatants.

After the Good War offers a deeply personal, nuanced meditation on the war and its aftereffects, both on American society and in the minds and hearts of the Americans who fought there.