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Read 1,381 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. An exciting, eye-catching repackage of acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers' bestselling p...

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Since its publication in 1988, Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers continues to be a book both beloved and banned in school libraries across the country. A realistic novel about the Vietnam War, the day to day struggles of young soldiers and a soldier's view about Vietnam, this book is bound to be offensive to some and embraced by others. Read this review to learn more details about this high-profile book by an established and award-winning author.

It's 1967 and American boys are enlisting to fight in Vietnam. Young Richie Perry just graduated from high school, but he feels lost and unsure about what to do with his life. Thinking the military will keep him out of trouble, he enlists. Richie and his group of soldiers are deployed immediately to the jungles of Vietnam. They believe the war will be over very soon and don't plan to see much action; however, they are dropped down in the middle of a war zone and discover the war is nowhere near being finished.

Richie discovers the horrors of war: landmines, the enemy lurking in spider holes and murky swamps, the accidental shooting of soldiers in your own platoon, burned out villages full of old people and toddlers and the children who are strapped with bombs and sent amongst the American soldiers.

What began as an exciting adventure for Richie is turning into a nightmare. Fear and death are tangible in Vietnam and soon Richie begins to question why he is fighting. After surviving two encounters with death, Richie is honorably discharged from the service. Disillusioned about the glory of war, Richie returns home with a renewed desire to live and an appreciation for the family he left behind.

Author Walter Dean Myers is a war veteran who first enlisted in the military when he was 17. Like the main character, Richie, he saw the military as a way to get out of his neighborhood and away from trouble. For three years, Myers stayed in the military and recalls his time served as "numbing."

In 2008 Myers wrote a companion novel to Fallen Angels called Sunrise Over Fallujah. Robin Perry, the nephew of Richie, decides to enlist and fight the war in Iraq.

Fallen Angels won the prestigious American Library Association's 1989 Coretta Scott King Award, but it also ranks 11 on its most challenged and banned book list between the years 2000 and 2009.

Depicting the reality of war, Walter Dean Myers, who is a veteran himself, is faithful to the way soldiers talk and act. The newly enlisted soldiers are depicted as boastful, idealistic and fearless. After the first exchange of fire with the enemy, the illusion is shattered and the reality of death and dying changes these young boys into tired old men.

The details of combat can be as gruesome as the description of a soldier's final breathing moments. Due to the graphic nature of the language and fighting, Fallen Angels has been challenged by many groups.

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Explore the Vietnam War in Walter Dean Myers' Fallen Angels

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Since its publication in 1988, Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers continues to be a book both beloved and banned in school libraries across the country. A realistic novel about the Vietnam War, the day to day struggles of young soldiers and a soldier's view about Vietnam, this book is bound to be offensive to some and embraced by others.

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War dominated 30 years of Vietnam's history last century. The struggle that began with communists fighting French colonial power in the 1940s did not end until they seized Saigon and control of the whole country in 1975.

The period that Americans refer to as the "Vietnam War" and the Vietnamese call the "American War" was the US military intervention from 1965 to 1973.

Communist forces based in the north and led by the nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh defeated the French in 1954.

Accords were negotiated that split the country into communist north and pro-American south, divided by a demilitarised zone (DMZ).

Country-wide elections to decide a permanent solution were promised but never happened, and within five years the communists had launched a guerrilla war on the south.

Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers were sent to help fight the communists in a costly and ultimately unsuccessful war which brought domestic civil unrest and international embarrassment.

The US was driven by Cold War concerns about the spread of communism, particularly "domino theory" the idea that if one Asian nation fell to the leftist ideology, others would quickly follow.

The Vietnam War was protracted and bloody. The Hanoi government estimates that in 21 years of fighting, four million civilians were killed across North and South Vietnam, and 1.1 million communist fighters died.

US figures covering the American phase record 200-250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers killed and 58,200 US soldiers dead or missing in action.

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War dominated 30 years of Vietnam's history last century. The struggle that began with communists fighting French colonial power in the 1940s did not end until they seized Saigon and control of the whole country in 1975. The period that Americans refer to as the "Vietnam War" and the Vietnamese call the "American War" was the US military intervention from 1965 to 1973.

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Antiwar Movement Begins

In August 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, and President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. By the time U.S. planes began regular bombings of North Vietnam in February 1965, some critics had begun to question the government's assertion that it was fighting a democratic war to liberate the South Vietnamese people from Communist aggression.

The antiwar movement began mostly on college campuses, as members of the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) began organizing "teach-ins" to express their opposition to the way in which it was being conducted.

Though the vast majority of the American population still supported U.S. government policy in the Vietnam War, a small but outspoken minority was making its voice heard by the end of 1965, especially after Johnson began an increasingly aggressive air and ground war in Vietnam.

This vocal minority included many students as well as prominent artists, intellectuals and members of the "hippie" movement, i.e., the growing number of mostly young people who rejected authority and embraced the counterculture.

Did you know? Boxer Muhammad Ali was one prominent American who resisted being drafted into service during the Vietnam War. Ali, then heavyweight champion of the world, declared himself a "conscientious objector," earning a prison sentence (later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court) and a three-year ban from boxing.

Widespread Disillusionment

By November 1967, American troop strength in Vietnam was approaching 500,000 and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. The Vietnam War was costing the United States some $25 billion per year, and disillusionment was beginning to reach greater sections of the taxpaying public.

More casualties were reported in Vietnam every day, even as U.S. commanders demanded more troops. Under the draft system of conscription, as many as 40,000 young men were called into service every month, adding fuel to the fire of the antiwar movement.

On October 21, 1967, one of the most prominent antiwar demonstrations took place as some 100,000 protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial-around 30,000 of them continued in a march on the Pentagon later that night.

After a brutal confrontation with the soldiers and U.S. Marshals protecting the building, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. One of them was the author Norman Mailer, who chronicled the events in his book "The Armies of the Night," published the following year to widespread acclaim.

Also in 1967, the antiwar movement got a big boost when the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. went public with his opposition to the war on moral grounds, condemning the war's diversion of federal funds from domestic programs as well as the disproportionate number of Black casualties in relation to the total number of soldiers killed in the war.

At a march of over 5,000 protestors in Chicago, Illinois, on March 25, 1967, King called the Vietnam War "a blasphemy against all that America stands for."

Vietnam War Protest Songs

The Vietnam War protest inspired many popular songs that became an anthem for that generation. Phil Ochs wrote "What Are You Fighting For?" in 1963 and "I Ain't Marching Anymore" in 1965. Other songs whose very titles were a protest themselves included Pete Seeger's "Bring 'Em Home" (1966) and Joan Baez 's "Saigon Bride" (1967).

Nina Simone's "Backlash Blues" (1967) took a civil rights poem by Langston Hughes and adapted it into a protest of Vietnam: "Raise my taxes/Freeze my wages/Send my son to Vietnam." Marvin Gaye 's "What's Going On?" from 1971 went on to be one of the most popular songs of all time.

John Lennon's first song after leaving the Beatles, "Give Peace a Chance," hit airwaves in 1966. " Imagine," from 1971, has transcended the Vietnam era to be a timeless song of peace and unity.

Political Consequences of Vietnam War Protests

The launch of the Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese communist troops in January 1968, and its success against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, sent waves of shock and discontent across the home front and sparked a most intense period of antiwar protests. By February 1968, a Gallup poll showed only 35 percent of the population approved of Johnson's handling of the war and a full 50 percent disapproved.

Joining the antiwar demonstrations by this time were members of the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches. The sight of these men on television throwing away the medals they had won during the war did much to win people over to the antiwar cause.

After many 1968 New Hampshire primary voters rallied behind the antiwar Democrat Eugene McCarthy, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

Later that year, Hubert Humphrey accepted the Democratic nomination for president at the 1968 Democratic Convention, held at Chicago's International Amphitheatre. Meanwhile, outside the convention hall, 10,000 antiwar demonstrators showed up, clashing violently with security forces assembled by Mayor Richard Daley.

Humphrey lost the 1968 presidential election to Richard M. Nixon, who promised in his campaign to restore "law and order"-a reference to conflict over antiwar protests as well as the rioting that followed King's assassination in 1968-more effectively than Johnson had.

Silent Majority

The following year, Nixon claimed in a famous speech that antiwar protesters constituted a small-albeit vocal-minority that should not be allowed to drown out the "silent majority" of Americans. Nixon's war policies divided the nation still further, however: In December 1969, the government instituted the first U.S. draft lottery since World War II, inciting a vast amount of controversy and causing many young men to flee to Canada to avoid conscription.

Tensions ran higher than ever, spurred on by mass demonstrations and incidents of violence by officials such those at Kent State in May 1970, when National Guard troops shot into a group of protesters demonstrating against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, killing four students.

At the Mayday Protest in 1971, thousands of antiwar protestors tried to shut down Washington, D.C., completely, all but crippling the U.S. government. Traffic was stopped for a few hours, and CIA director Richard Helms later remarked that Mayday was "one of the things that was putting increasing pressure on the [Nixon] administration to try and find some way to get out of the war."

Vietnam War Ends

As antiwar fervor grew, in mid-1971, Daniel Ellsberg brought about the publication of the Pentagon Papers -which revealed previously confidential details about the war's conduct-and misconduct by government and military officials. Ellsberg called the Pentagon Papers "evidence of a quarter-century of aggression, broken treaties, deceptions, stolen elections, lies and murder."

These and other revelations caused more and more Americans to doubt the accountability of the U.S. government and the integrity of the U.S. military establishment.

Finally, in response to an almost overwhelming antiwar mandate, Nixon announced the effective end to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia in January 1973. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, effectively ending the Vietnam War.

Sources

Vietnam War. Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium: University of Washington.
Anti-War Protests of the 1960s-70s. The White House Historical Association.
Anti-War Movement. PBS.

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Vietnam War Protests: Antiwar & Protest Songs - HISTORY

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Vietnam War protests began among antiwar activists and students, then gained prominence in 1965 when the U.S. military began bombing North Vietnam heavily.

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The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.

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Encyclopedia Britannica

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Vietnam War, (1954-75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Called the "American War" in Vietnam (or, in full, the "War Against the Americans to Save the Nation"), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict ( see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.

At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The South Vietnamese government, on the other hand, fought to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. U.S. military advisers, present in small numbers throughout the 1950s, were introduced on a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China poured weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North, which in turn provided support, political direction, and regular combat troops for the campaign in the South. The costs and casualties of the growing war proved too much for the United States to bear, and U.S. combat units were withdrawn by 1973. In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North.

The human costs of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the war. Over the following years, additions to the list have brought the total past 58,200. (At least 100 names on the memorial are those of servicemen who were actually Canadian citizens.) Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam on a smaller scale, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen.

Vietnam emerged from the war as a potent military power within Southeast Asia, but its agriculture, business, and industry were disrupted, large parts of its countryside were scarred by bombs and defoliation and laced with land mines, and its cities and towns were heavily damaged. A mass exodus in 1975 of people loyal to the South Vietnamese cause was followed by another wave in 1978 of " boat people," refugees fleeing the economic restructuring imposed by the communist regime. Meanwhile, the United States, its military demoralized and its civilian electorate deeply divided, began a process of coming to terms with defeat in what had been its longest and most controversial war. The two countries finally resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1995.

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Vietnam War | Facts, Summary, Years, Timeline, Casualties, Combatants, & Facts

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Vietnam War (1954-75), conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. It was part of a larger regional conflict as well as a manifestation of the Cold War.

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This Q&A with author Walter Dean Myers appeared on the Zola Books blog on November 7th, 2013, and was shared with the Horn Book by Emma McKinstry of Goodman Media International, Inc. See Betty Carter's discussion of themes in Fallen Angels, its sequel Sunrise over Fallujah, and its prequel here.
The human element of war can fade as time goes on, a trend Walter Dean Myers chose to counteract in his novel on the Vietnam War, Fallen Angels. Hoping to understand the death of his brother, Myers wrote a story about a young soldier and the truth of war. In this interview, Myers discusses the impact of this work after 25 years and how his opinions on war have changed. 1. What was the reaction to Fallen Angels when it was first published and has it changed over the years?
The initial reactions to the book were mixed. Some people were put off by the profanity, others to the references to race, and some to the sheer brutality depicted. The book took on a life of its own, being passed from hand to hand, and acquiring readers along the way.
2. How did its publication impact you?
When it was first published, I had a listed telephone number. I started getting phone calls from veterans throughout the country (usually after the third or fourth drink) offering condolences for the death of my brother, or just wanting to share their stories. There were so many calls that I got a new, unlisted, number.

3. Are there any letters relating to Fallen Angels that have stuck with you?

The first hint that I had that the book had more weight than I expected was the reaction of women who had heard about the book, had read it, and had given it to their sons. One heartfelt letter stated that a young man wanted to quit high school to join the military. The mother stated that she begged her son to at least finish high school and he said that he would. In the interim, he read every book on war that he could get his hands on. Eventually, he came to Fallen Angels. The mother was writing to thank me for writing a realistic book on combat that changed her son's mind about quitting school and about joining the Army.

Most of the letters I receive are from teenaged boys. They enjoy the adventure of war but increasingly they are from women who have read the book as teenagers and have given copies to their sons or husbands. This was totally unexpected.

4. Why do you believe Fallen Angels has remained popular 25 years later?

The popularity of the book deals with our efforts to understand and emotionally absorb the idea of war on a human level. Most wars are discussed in the history books in general terms - a company took this hill, or this regiment was assigned to protect a certain territory. Fallen Angels brings the feelings of the actual young men as they face death and the challenges presented to them in combat. I lived through the Vietnam era, the protests, the controversies, and the traumas. But it wasn't until the death of my brother that I needed to change all of that to "How did he die?" "What was he thinking?" "How did those last moments feel for him?" I tried writing short stories about Vietnam to deal with his death. They helped, but they didn't resolve the emotional issues I was facing. Writing Fallen Angels, for me, was the answer.

5. Has your perspective on war changed since writing Fallen Angels?

Fallen Angels was written from a young man's perspective. When I was helping to train Vietnamese soldiers (they were supposed to fight the damned war) it was as an eighteen-year-old. The camaraderie expressed in the work was based on the friendships I had when I was in the Army. My perspective now encompasses a larger view of war, and a decidedly pessimistic outlook that I didn't have even twenty five years ago.

6. Have you gone back to re-read Fallen Angels since its debut?

I will occasionally reread a passage if one is mentioned in a letter.

7. Any comments you would like to share with the reader who is just discovering Fallen Angels?

Memories of wars fade away, even from those who fought in them. In interviewing WWII vets for , I could see how often films, newspaper accounts, and documentaries influence the recollection of actual events. Heroes are created decades after the events, and stories are retold to fit the mood of the country. The human elements are often lost because they don't fit the shifting momentums of the times. Books like Fallen Angels help to counter this trend.

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This Q&A with author Walter Dean Myers appeared on the Zola Books blog on November 7th, 2013, and was shared with the Horn Book by Emma McKinstry of Goodman Media International, Inc. See Betty Carter's discussion of themes in Fallen Angels, its sequel Sunrise over Fallujah, and its prequel here.

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Walter Dean Myers discusses Fallen Angels

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A range of maps and diagrams relevant to the conflict in Vietnam from the 1800s to 1976. These Vietnam War maps have been selected by Alpha History authors.

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History Chanel

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Featured

Vietnam Background: Uneasy French Rule *&nbsp;1887: France imposes a colonial system over Vietnam, calling it French Indochina. The system includes Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China and Cambodia. Laos is added in 1893. *&nbsp;1923-25: Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh is trained in the Soviet Union as an agent of the Communist International (Comitern). *&nbsp;February 1930: Ho Chi [...]
Read more Read more about Vietnam War Timeline

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Vietnam War: Dates and Timeline | HISTORY

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The Vietnam War lasted about 40 years and involved several countries. Learn about Vietnam War protests, the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, the Pentagon Papers and more.