Ending in 1975

Elisa Tamarkin will speak about her recent book, Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon, about the last day of the Vietnam War and the last helicopter that evacuated civilians from the rooftop of the US embassy. Now, more than fifty years later, the book offers a social and cultural autopsy of that moment, based in personal history but vividly unfolding amid the vast documentation of America’s obvious defeat, which never seemed to register even as it got out, in the writings of journalists and essayists, in the backchannel cables between the US ambassador and Henry Kissinger, in congressional hearings, and in photographs of the war’s end. The book is about the 1970s and its psychologies of denial and defeat, about “limited” wars that are also endless wars, and about the problem of how to raise consciousness of world events. Her talk will reflect on all that ended in a day—and about what it means to recognize and to write about endings even as we live through them.

All events will take place in the large seminar room downstairs at the Rothermere American Institute. To receive reminders and updates, please join the ALRS mailing list by sending a blank email to alrs-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk.