Wil HaygoodThe Bookplate is proud to announce a new author event in town featuring author and former C.V. Starr Center scholar Wil Haygood, in conversation with his friend and fellow author, Paul Hendrickson. The talk will be held in the Sultana Education Foundation’s Holt Center on Cross Street.
On Sunday, March 22nd at 2pm, all are invited to the Holt Center to meet author Wil Haygood, as he discusses his new book about the African American experience in and around the Vietnam War; “The War Within A War”.
Drawing on the lives of soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, journalists and activists, artists and politicians, Haygood illuminates a generation caught between two battles: one on the front lines in Vietnam and another for justice and dignity in America.
Among those at the heart of the story are Air Force pilot Fred Cherry, the first Black officer captured by the North Vietnamese and a hero to millions back home; Dr. Elbert Nelson, a doctor who came to Vietnam after watching TV footage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles and soon found himself amid rising Black soldier protests overseas; Wallace Terry, a groundbreaking Black reporter determined to expose the dynamics of race and war to the American public and Philippa Schuyler, a biracial concert pianist who traveled to Vietnam to rescue mixed-race orphans, many fathered by Black soldiers, and died trying to bring them to safety.
Surrounding their experiences are the cultural and political forces of the era, including Martin Luther King Jr., Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy, and Lyndon Johnson, whose voices and actions shaped a decade of turbulence and transformation.
The War Within a War is both sweeping history and intimate revelation, capturing the tragedies and triumphs, the honor and hypocrisies, the courage and cowardice that shaped an era and whose repercussions resonate today.
“A compelling book, the deep, moving story of how men and women of color experienced the war in Vietnam. With this book, Wil Haygood has become the preeminent chronicler of the Black experience in America.” —Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Laureate for The Making of the Atomic Bomb
“A searing history of the Black experience in Vietnam.” —Kirkus Reviews
Wil Haygood is the author of ten nonfiction books. His biography of Thurgood Marshall, Showdown, and his biography of White House butler Eugene Allen, The Butler, were New York Times bestsellers. The Butler was adapted into a film directed by Lee Daniels. His longtime journalism career-which took him around the world and into several war zones- was spent largely at The Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and at The Washington Post, where he won numerous awards. A John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, and an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, Haygood was the recipient of the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, an international prize bestowed by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. Haygood is a visiting scholar at Miami University in Ohio.
Paul Hendrickson is a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a winner of it once—for his 2003 Sons of Mississippi. His The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War was a 1996 finalist for the National Book Award. His 2011 Hemingway’s Boat was a New York Times best seller and also a best seller in the UK. He has been the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation. From 1998 to 2024, he was on the faculty of the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania, and for two decades before that he was a staff writer at The Washington Post. His latest book is a tribute to his father Joe; Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer’s Life.
For more event details contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or contact@thebookplate.net. These events are free and open to the public, but reservations are strongly recommended. The next event co-sponsored by The Bookplate is The Robert Earl Price Poetry Festival from March 27th-29th. Sultana’s Holt Education Center is located at 200 S. Cross Street in Chestertown, Maryland.
