A Dangerous Country eBook

Ron Kovic, author ofBorn on the Fourth of Julyand one of this country's most vital antiwar voices, completes his Vietnam Trilogy with this visceral, poignant, and personal elegy to America

"Classic and timeless." —New York Times onBorn on the Fourth of July

When eighteen-year-old Ron Kovic enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1964, he couldn't foresee that he would return from Vietnam in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down. His 1976 memoirBorn on the Fourth of July has become an antiwar classic, and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Tom Cruise. His follow-up,Hurricane Street,chronicled his advocacy for veteran's rights at home, including a devastating but ultimately triumphant hunger strike in the office of a powerful US senator.

A Dangerous Country completes his Vietnam Trilogy, delving deeper into the raw trauma haunting our returning veterans as they attempt to assimilate into a society their heroism has spared from the horrors they continue to experience. The book opens with Kovic's never-before-revealed diary from Vietnam—a primary source portraying a patriotic young soldier with a strong moral and religious conscience, unburdened by the foreknowledge of the terrible events that would occur.

The diary ends abruptly, and the narrative arc ofA Dangerous Countrybegins, as Kovic recalls his harrowing return home from Vietnam, his fractured physique complicated by the tremendous guilt he feels over his culpability in the death of a fellow soldier. His guilt comes to torment him nearly as much as his disability, especially in his fragmented romantic entanglements, not to mention his growing skepticism of faith in god and country. Finally, contemplating an ultimate resignation, he experiences a powerful epiphany, giving him both the hope to carry on and the tools with which to forge lasting, meaningful relationships.

Kovic tells his story in the passionate and brutally honest style that led to over one million sales ofBorn on the Fourth of July. Although his trauma is severe, his third memoir is ultimately a story of personal redemption and hope as he finds a way to rise above his despair as a fierce advocate for veterans' rights. In doing so, he helps illuminate that a country with an aggressive and brutal foreign policy, but a policy of ambivalence toward injured vets, is a dangerous country indeed.