School Library Journal
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

YA-- A collection of art from the Vietnam War created by the citizens at home and soldiers after and during the conflict. The book serves as both a catalogue for the traveling exhibition and a survey of the art of the war. The breadth of media is nearly as impressive as the art's impact--performance art, sculpture, lithography, photography, mixed media, painting on canvas, silkscreens, etc. The emotions evoked are universally visceral and assaulting. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

In the two-part essay accompanying this catalog's 64 color and 35 black-and-white illustrations, Lippard, a prominent feminist-leftist art critic, chronicles the responses--both in and apart from their work--of artists opposed at the time to American involvement in Vietnam and of later artists, many of them Vietnam veterans. There is little of conventional beauty but much that is moving and provocative in the pictures, and the text enters intelligently into the emotions the artworks stir, as well as into their political agendas, when they have any. The exhibition, "A Different War," has appeared in Bellingham (Wash.) and Lincoln (Mass.) and will travel to Evanston, Akron, Madison, Los Angeles, and Boulder. Notes, list of further reading, checklist; artist index. --Ray Olson

Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

This is a catalog published in conjunction with a traveling exhibition of more than 100 works of art related to the war in Vietnam. Although it serves as a permanent visual record of a temporary exhibition, the strength of this book lies in the provocative text written by Lucy Lippard. Lippard's reputation as a political activist is only slightly less well deserved than her reputation as a major art critic. She provides a thorough history of antiwar protests staged by artists' groups during the Vietnam era. But she also poses the larger question of the role of art in a time of ugly political realities. A Different War is not a book for everyone, primarily because of the controversy surrounding the war. As Lippard points out, Vietnam was the first war in which more artists opposed the war than supported it. The result of this is an anguish and outrage that goes beyond the traditional images of war. This book demonstrates that two decades after it ended, the Vietnam war is only beginning to be seen in its true historical perspective. If a successful book is one that accurately describes its subject, this book succeeds in that it provocatively represents an extraordinarily wide variety of artistic images of the Vietnam war. -K. Dills, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Library Journal
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

This is the catalog accompanying ``A Different War,'' a traveling exhibition organized by the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington. The art works in this well-titled exhibition collectively capture the rage, injustices, and turmoil that made Vietnam an American tragedy. Whether made by a recognized contemporary artist or by an unknown, the works--executed in various media--represent shared anger and a strongly delivered message: this war was senseless and unnecessary. Torn and jagged, the images seem to produce a visual scream announcing each artist's passionate disbelief in the war. Though the book is far from comprehensive in its look at works inspired by Vietnam, the quality of reproduction and the gathering of mostly unknown works around this theme make it recommended for academic, museum, and public libraries.-- David Bryant, Belleville Lib., N.J. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.