St. Martin's Press, April, 2001
This book is a product of interviews with men who had been prisoners of war, men who for decades did not want to talk about their experiences but now tell their stories. The writer, Lewis H. Carlson, is a retired professor of history and Director of American Studies at Western Michigan University. He is angry about the pop-culture and Cold War nonsense that maligned these American prisoners of war, and he captures some of the bitterness that these men have felt over the years. There was talk in the United States in the 1950s about the Korean War generation being weakened by over-indulgent mothers and being insufficiently schooled on morality. These, it was alleged, caused those taken prisoner in the Korean War to fail to stand up to Communist brainwashing.
The former prisoners did not talk to Carlson with exaggerations or fantasies. Their descriptions are of the down-to-earth variety that rise above myth and official distortion. This book says something about the Cold War and its concept of brainwashing. It tells what happened to the American prisoners during the Korean war and pays them the respect that is their due.