Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, & Fantasies of Betrayal

"The book deconstructs Hanoi Jane, the myth, to locate its origins in the need of Americans to explain defeat in Vietnam through fantasies of home-front betrayal and the emasculation of the national will-to-war. Lembcke shows that the expression 'Hanoi Jane' did not reach the eyes and ears of most Americans until five or six years after the end of the war in Vietnam. By then, anxieties about America's declining global status and deteriorating economy were fueling a populist reaction that pointed to the loss of the war as the taproot of those problems. Blaming the antiwar movement for undermining the military's resolve, many found in the imaginary Hanoi Jane the personification of their stab-in-the-back theories"--Publisher's description.