In Four Decades On, historians, anthropologists, and literary critics examine the legacies of the Second Indochina War, or what most Americans call the Vietnam War, nearly forty years after the United States finally left Vietnam. They address matters such as the daunting tasks facing the Vietnamese at the war's end-including rebuilding a nation and consolidating a socialist revolution while fending off China and the Khmer Rouge-and "the Vietnam syndrome," the cynical, frustrated, and pessimistic sense that colored America's views of the rest of the world after its humiliating defeat in Vietnam. The contributors provide unexpected perspectives on Agent Orange, the POW/MIA controversies, the commercial trade relationship between the United States and Vietnam, and representations of the war and its aftermath produced by artists, particularly writers. They show how the war has continued to affect not only international relations but also the everyday lives of millions of people around the world. Most of the contributors take up matters in the United States, Vietnam, or both nations, while several utilize transnational analytic frameworks, recognizing that the war's legacies shape and are shaped by dynamics that transcend the two countries.Contributors. Alex Bloom, Diane Niblack Fox, H. Bruce Franklin, Walter Hixson, Heonik Kwon, Scott Laderman, Mariam B. Lam, Ngo Vinh Long, Edwin A. Martini, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Christina Schwenkel, Charles Waugh

Acknowledgments ixIntroduction: National Amnesia, Transnational Memory, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War / Scott Laderman and Edwin A. Martini 11. Legacies Foretold: Excavating the Roots of Postwar Viet Nam / Ngo Vinh Long 162. Viet Nam and "Vietnam" in American History and Memory / Walter L. Hixson 443. "The Mainspring in This Country Has Been Broken": America's Battered Sense of Self and the Emergence of the Vietnam Syndrome / Alexander Bloom 584. Cold War in a Vietnamese Community / Heonik Kwon 845. The Ambivalence of Reconciliation in Contemporary Vietnamese Memoryscapes / Christina Schwenkel 1036. Remembering War, Dreaming Peace: On Cosmopolitanism, Compassion, and Literature / Viet Thanh Nguyen 1327. Viêt Nam's Growing Pains: Postsocialist Cinema Development and Transnational Politics / Mariam B. Lam 1558. A Fishy Affair: Vietnamese Seafood and the Confrontation with U.S. Neoliberalism / Scott Laderman 1839. Agent Orange: Coming to Terms with a Transnational Legacy / Diane Niblack Fox 20710. Refuge to Refuse: Seeking Balance in the Vietnamese Environmental Imagination / Charles Waugh 24211. Missing in Action in the Twenty-First Century / H. Bruce Franklin 259Bibliography 297About the Contributors 313Index 315