Hurricane Street
Item Number: 275
Time Left: CLOSED
Value: $27
Online Close: Nov 3, 2021 10:00 PM EDT
Bid History: 0 bids - Item Sold!
Description
What people are saying…
“Hurricane Street . . . [is] another raw expose on the cost of war. The book, which he calls a prequel, drills deep into the 17-day drama of a 1974 sit-in and hunger strike staged by Kovic and a band of fellow wounded veterans who took the federal building on Wilshire Boulevard by storm . . . The book is an unflinching anti-war declaration, written in blood and the sweat of too many haunted nights by a Vietnam Marine Corps sergeant who later opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
—Los Angeles Times
Description
In the spring of 1974, as the last American troops were being pulled out of Vietnam, Ron Kovic and a small group of other severely injured veterans in a California VA hospital launched the American Veterans Movement. In a phenomenal feat of political organizing, Kovic corralled his fellow AVM members into staging a sit-in, and then a hunger strike, in the Los Angeles office of Senator Alan Cranston, demanding better treatment of injured and disabled veterans.
This was a short-lived and chaotic but ultimately successful movement to improve the deplorable conditions in VA hospitals across the country. Hurricane Street is their story—one that resonates deeply today—told by Kovic in the passionate and brutally honest style that led to over one million sales of Born on the Fourth of July.
Click here to listen to Robert Scheer interview Ron Kovic about the continuing struggle for American veterans for KCRW’s Scheer Intelligence.
Read a profile on Ron Kovic at the Los Angeles Times.
Read excerpts from Hurricane Street at Parade and Truthdig.
Listen to interviews with Ron Kovic at Background Briefing with Ian Masters, WAMC Northeast Public Radio, The Exchange on Jefferson Public Radio, WORT Radio Madison, and the Steve Fast Show on WJBC Radio.
Ron Kovic participated in a Facebook Live event at Truthdig on June 30; read more here, and watch video footage of the session here.
Read about the Manhattan Beach Pages Bookstore event for Hurricane Street at Easy Reader News.
Read an excerpt from Hurricane Street at the Utne Reader.
Subjects: Nonfiction, Politics/Current Affairs
Special Instructions
About the Author, Ron Kovic
RON KOVIC served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War. He was paralyzed from his chest down in combat in 1968 and has been in a wheelchair ever since. Along with Oliver Stone, Kovic was the coscreenwriter of the 1989 Academy Award–winning film based on Kovic’s best-selling memoir Born on the Fourth of July (starring Tom Cruise as Kovic). Hurricane Street is his latest work.
About Akashic Books
http://www.akashicbooks.com
About Us
Akashic Books is a Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers.
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