"I am not saying that working-class men started that war. But a number of them were complicit in fighting it. The rhetoric of Vietnam, particularly in the last five years, has made all of the soldiers heroes. Not just survivors, but heroes. And I don't think that's true, and that's one of the things that has led us into further aggression in the Middle East and in Central America. So there is some urgency in confronting this...To say that working-class men during that war were heroes and to exonerate them is the worst kind of castration. It's taking all their power and all their culpability away from them. In the book I am trying to look at working-class protest against the war and support of the war. One of the things that really bothers me is that often working-class lives are presented as having no choices."