Hurricane Street
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The author of Born on the Fourth of July delivers “a harrowing, poignant telling of the American Veteran’s Movement and its members’ struggles” (Manhattan Book Review).
In the spring of 1974, as the last American troops were being pulled out of Vietnam, Ron Kovic and a small group of other severely injured veterans in a California VA hospital launched the American Veterans Movement. In a phenomenal feat of political organizing, Kovic corralled his fellow AVM members into staging a sit-in, and then a hunger strike, in the Los Angeles office of Senator Alan Cranston, demanding better treatment of injured and disabled veterans.
This was a short-lived and chaotic but ultimately successful movement to improve the deplorable conditions in VA hospitals across the country. Hurricane Street is their story—one that resonates deeply today—told by Kovic in the passionate and brutally honest style that led to over one million sales of Born on the Fourth of July.
“Another raw exposé on the cost of war . . . The book is an unflinching anti-war declaration, written in blood and the sweat of too many haunted nights by a Vietnam Marine Corps sergeant who later opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” —Los Angeles Times
“A deeply moving account of the struggle of Vietnam veterans to hold politicians accountable to the maimed warriors they sent into harm’s way and then abandoned.” —Robert Scheer, author of They Know Everything About You
“An impassioned and timely memoir about the 1974 American Veterans Movement that will strike a chord with veterans and their families today.” —Publishers Weekly, Top 10 Pick for Spring 2016
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this brief but compelling snapshot of early 1970s activism, Kovic recalls the sit-in and hunger strike he led in 1974 to protest the poor quality of the care he and other disabled Vietnam veterans were receiving at the VA hospital in Long Beach, Calif. He sets the mood quickly with references to the era's music and vivid descriptions of the hospital's grim environment. Stirred by deplorable conditions and corrupt aides, Kovic eventually writes a book (Born on the 4th of July, the basis for the 1989 blockbuster film of the same name) and organizes the protest depicted here. Kovic selected the site strategically: it was the office of California senator Al Cranston, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, who was up for re-election at the time. The small group of Vietnam veterans, in wheelchairs and wearing combat medals, made for dramatic news footage when they appeared at Cranston's office one morning and turned it into a "makeshift VA hospital ward." Without social media or cell phones to boost the signal, it was Kovic's flair for the dramatic and ability to marshal reporters that turned the protest into a battle victory. His account of subsequent, less successful protests could easily have been omitted, but Kovic's updates on the fates of his fellow veterans provide a memorable and bittersweet conclusion.
