Vietdamned

The untold story of the writers and philosophers who took on the United States government for its war in Vietnam

Guilty: the conclusion of many trials. But this verdict was unusual, delivered by jury comprising of the greatest minds of the twentieth century: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin and Stokely Carmichael, and over a dozen international luminaries - all presided over by the legendary philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell. The defendant was unusual as well: the United States government. In Vietdamned, award-winning historian Clive Webb reveals the extraordinary, little-known history of the 1967 Russell Tribunal and its attempt to hold the US government to account for the atrocities it committed during the Vietnam War. What they revealed shocked the world. In a revolutionary decade where public intellectuals wielded a celebrity since unheard of, these writers and philosophers put their careers and reputations at stake - and faced fierce opposition from the media, governments, and the even the CIA. Both a vivid group biography and a compendious account of this unprecedented event, Vietdamned is a story of the power (and limits) of celebrity, government abuse and cover-ups, and is the first global history of the anti-war movement.