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In this conversation: war poems by Walt Whitman, Yehuda Amichai, and Siegfried Sassoon; Jonathan Shay’s books Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, how veterans view the representation of war in Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now; Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death; war and politicians from the Iliad and Thucydides to Henry Kissinger; and much more.

See also: ⁠Tom Palaima, “Writing on War”⁠

Thomas G. Palaima is Robert M. Armstrong Centennial Professor of Classics emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is recipient of a MacArthur fellowship (1985-90) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023.

Correction: The two senators who stood tall opposed to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution were Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska.