Throughout chapters 10 and 11 of American Reckoning, the book described how the United States was in the midst of rebuilding its pride and reputation after suffering one of its most humiliating defeats during the final stages of the Vietnam War. With a chapter within professor Appy’s book entitled “Victim Nation”, it outlined the definition of “willful amnesia” that rewrote the Vietnam War as a story of American victimhood instead of the other way around. While struggling to cope with the effects of “Vietnam Syndrome”, the United States tried to come to grips with the loss of prestige and how to avoid repeating mistakes of the past, a sentiment in which Americans would become part of the political narrative in the ensuing generation. In some
