All American Boys Draft Dodgers in Canada from the Vietnam War

Subjects:

• History » American History -- 1946 to Present
• History » Vietnam War

Reviews:

• This interesting volume examines self-proclaimed American "draft dodgers" who became expatriates in Canada during the Vietnam War, and refutes several myths about these individuals who opted to depart permanently from their home country....Recommended for general readers and all academic levels.
  —Choice April 2002

• Endorsement From Howard Zinn
  author of A People's History of the United States: All American Boys is an important addition to our literature on the Vietnam War. But it goes beyond that particular historical episode to examine with acute intelligence the phenomenon of disobedience to authority in any time. It gives us fresh insights into the complex motivations that led some Americans to decide to avoid military service.
• Endorsement From George Herring
  University of Kentucky: Based on extensive interviews with Americans who went to Canada in the 1960s to escape the Vietnam War draft, Frank Kusch's "All American Boys" explores the essential issues of who they were, why they went, and why, in many cases they chose to remain. Kusch advances original and provocative interpretations of his subjects, and fills an important gap in our knowledge of what happened to the Vietnam Generation and why.
• Endorsement From Mark Bradley
  Associate Professor
  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  author, Imagining Vietnam and American: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919,1950: Frank Kusch's excellent study forces us to reconsider our understanding of what it meant "to go to Canada" during the Vietnam War....Drawing on oral interviews and manuscript sources, Kusch persuasively argues that for many of the young men who went to Canada, opposition to the Vietnam War was less important the social and cultural dislocations they experienced growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• Introduction
• The Draft in American History: Balancing Liberty and Necessity
• Childhood: The Origins of Disaffection
• Adolescent Philosophers: From Teens to Draftees
• Selective Service and Vietnam: Deferments, Loopholes and Class Privilege
• Northern Bound: Dodging the Deferments--Evading the Country
• "Boys without a Country" Exiles or Émigrés?
• Traitors or Quintessential Americans? Reflections From Across the Border
• Epilogue
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index