Ron Kovic Books

WHEN EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD RON KOVIC enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in the fall of 1964, he couldn't foresee that he would return from Vietnam paralyzed and in a wheelchair for life. His best-selling 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July is an antiwar classic and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Tom Cruise as Kovic. His follow-up, Hurricane Street, chronicled his advocacy for Vietnam veterans' rights, including a seventeen-day hunger strike in the office of the late California senator Alan Cranston. A Dangerous Country: An American Elegy completes Kovic's Vietnam Trilogy, delving deep into his long and often agonizing journey home from war - his physical, sexual, and psychological struggles; his bitterness, loss of faith in God and country, and eventual healing, forgiveness, and spiritual redemption. The book opens with Kovic's never-before-revealed Vietnam diary (July 7, 1967-July 26, 1968). Deeply troubled by the growing antiwar movement in 1967, Kovic decide

A former marine paralyzed from the chest down as a result of an injury suffered in Vietnam recalls his youth, battlefield experiences, and the agonies of his slow reentry into American society.