“The Wages of War,” by Michael H. Hunt, published from the text Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade …show more content…
“Competing Memorials,” an essay by Arnold R. Isaacs, from the text Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy, was published after Hunt’s essay, in 1997. This text is different in the sense that it offers a different kind of multiperspectivity. While Hunt showed the perspectives of the losses in both America and Vietnam, Isaacs solely explored the mental effects of the war on America. He states that “Vietnam had split this country apart,” in reference to the United States, showing the clear difference in opinions of citizens about the war. He goes on to explain how he learned that the world was essentially “absurd,” although from World War II, his father’s generation that the world may be terrible at times, but it also contained rationality and justice for partaking in battle. Despite Isaacs detailed account of why an effect of a divide of opinion could have taken place in America, he fails to mention the perspective of how the war may have affected Vietnam, therefore making itself less detailed than “The Wages of War.” Hunt’s