This post follows up on my previous one and offers a sample assignment for Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves. Turse’s book one of the major readings for my course on the history of the Vietnam War (syllabus found here and here). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I intentionally choose to teach Kill Anything That Moves because it’s a work of popular history that garnered a great deal of critical praise. I know that after my students graduate from college, the history they encounter will likely be of the popular variety, that is, easy to read narratives rather than dense analysis, typically written by authors who work outside of academia, and sometimes reflecting strong political or even partisan commitments. So I want to give my students practice analyzing and critiquing that type of history.
To help them, out, I assign a scathing review by Peter Zinoman and Gary Kulik. It’s possibly the most scathing review I’ve ever seen in Vietnam or Vietnam War studies. (We refer to them as “K&Z” in class discussion.) Zinoman and Kulik are every bit as passionate about their critique as Turse is about his claims, and students usually come away with very strong feelings regarding who is right and why. The book-and-negative-review combination is not quite a full-fledged, complex historiographical debate, but it is a miniature one, and the readings provide an easy introduction to historiographical debates. As I mentioned in a previous post, I tell students up front that Zinoman was my dissertation adviser but that doesn’t mean they have to agree with him, and I make it a point to stay neutral during class discussion so students don’t feel like they have to agree with me to get a good grade. And I think it’s worked. My students have produced great papers both highly critical of and sympathetic to Turse, and my straw poll in class has yielded different results every year.
Kill Anything That Moves is also interesting for my students to read in light of Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars that they read earlier in the semester. The author of the latter book recounts his experience of atrocities committed by French forces against Vietnamese civilians in northern Vietnam during the First Indochina War/Resistance War. Turse presents an argument about the cause of American atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians in the southern half of the country during the Vietnam War. There are resonances but also profound differences in the two books.
I have my students write a review of Turse’s book, and the assignment includes three elements. The most important is the explanation of the argument, and I weigh this part most heavily in my grading. The second in importance is the assessment of the argument, and the least important is the consideration of the work’s (in)significance. I stress the relative importance of each section when I present the assignment because students often want to jump to criticizing the book and forget that they have to explain the argument really well first or else the reader won’t understand their critique. I also incorporate these three elements into discussion when we read it in class. Since we have discussed Kulik and Zinoman’s critique by that point, I tell students that they can draw on the K&Z’s critique but need to put it in their own words and cite K&Z.
As you can see below, I include an upper page limit. I once had a student who – bless his heart! – wanted to write a fifteen-page book review, and I just can’t handle such a drastic increase in the number of pages that I have to grade.Just goes to show that whatever students think of Turse, they are almost never indifferent to his book.
SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT: Paper #2 – Book Review
Your book review will analyze Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves. Imagine that you are writing a review of the book for an academic journal. Your reader is interested in learning more about new publications on the Vietnam War but may not have read this book.
Your paper should explain and critique Turse’s main argument. The review needs to:
1. Explain the argument
Explaining an argument is not simply summarizing the content. Instead, you should identify the main argument and explain it in your own words. You should also mention the types of sources the author uses for his/her argument. This section should be at least one full page.
2. Explain the significance (or insignificance) of the argument
You can do this in several ways. You can discuss whether the author’s interpretation is new (as he contends it is) or merely a repetition of existing arguments (as Kulik and Zinoman claim). You can explain how the author’s argument helps us understand a particular period of history better. Or, you can argue that the author’s argument fails to shed light on the history of the Vietnam War. Please note that significance does not refer to the validity or relevance of the argument but whether it contributes something new to our understanding of history.
3. Assess the argument
Evaluate the argument. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the argument? Is the usage of sources appropriate to the argument that the author makes? Are the authors’ arguments convincing? This section should be at least one full page.
Keep in mind that book reviews are not thesis-driven arguments and do not need separate introductory or closing paragraphs. You can start the paper by jumping immediately into a discussion of the book. Please mention the author’s full name and the title of the work being reviewed near the start of the paper. The explanation of the argument should come before the assessment, but other than that, you may organize these elements in whatever order you wish, as long as the organization is effective. Also, please be sure to offer specific examples from the work being reviewed. If you use quotes, use them sparingly, and put as much of the narrative or argument in your own words as possible. You can end the paper with just one or two sentences conveying your overall assessment or judgement. The paper should read as a unitary document rather than answers to a list of questions and should be organized, analytical, clear, and polished. You can refer to Kill Anything That Moves as a study or a book, but not a novel.
Format: 3-4 pages, double spaced, 1 inch margins, Times New Roman font, size 12. No more than 5 full pages.