Kara Dixon Vuic, Officer, Nurse, Woman

I had once thought about joining the Army Nurse Corps. Its recruiter promised to fund the final two years of my college education, and then introduce me to a career of service and a life of adventure. I decided not to join at the last minute for reasons that now escape me. But I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I had joined. On one level, Kara Dixon Vuic's Officer, Nurse, Woman shows me. Using a rich trove of nurses' own stories, she guides readers through their recruitment, in-country experiences and reactions to their representations in novels, media and memorials. But, in the end, Officer, Nurse, Woman is not just about the Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War. It is as much about larger issues of gender and gendered roles and expectation. By skilfully weaving insights from social history, gender history and military history, Officer, Nurse, Woman is a fascinating and strongly argued story about the complex and sometimes contradictory processes in which individuals and their public negotiate the ultimate meaning of their experiences

Adventure · Art history · Business · Management · Meaning (existential · Negotiation · Officer · Political science · Service (business · Sociology · Vietnam War · American Political and Social Dynamics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · History · Law