"This is a True War Story" with Author Robert K. Brigham at Millbrook Library

The Millbrook Library will host author Robert K. Brigham for a reading and signing of his latest book, "This is a True War Story: My Improbable History with Vietnam." This event is free and open to the public.

Brigham has had a substantial career as a historian of the Vietnam War, with a hand in nine books, a documentary, public history projects, and more. While many a historian has felt compelled at some point to write about a subject close to them personally, Brigham did not think he was doing that. But, at age 58, Brigham, who had long known he was adopted, discovered that he’d improbably and unknowingly been studying and talking about his biological father Bruce Atwell, a famous Marine combat photographer in Vietnam.

In a story shot through with echoes and shadows, Brigham not only reveals his own history as an adoptee but opens a startlingly fresh vantage on the fragility of American families; the power of social norms and taboos to shape lives; and the forces that inequitably disrupt families, not least of them war.

Brigham is the Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations at Vassar College. He is a specialist on the history of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the Vietnam War. 

This program is brought to you in partnership with Merritt Bookstore. Copies of Brigham’s books will be available to purchase following the reading.