Vietnam & Beyond: Revolutionary Books & Films Series

Date: January 13 - January 14, 2026
Time (Duration): 6:00pm (1d 2h)

Event Description

The Rockbridge Historical Society’s new VA250-tied bimonthly series, REVOLUTIONARY BOOKS, 1776-2026, continues its Rockbridge-centered focus on experiences during the Vietnam War. The community-based enterprise amplifies RHS’ 50-year anniversary witness of the conflict’s close, while also advancing local celebrations of the national Martin Luther King Holiday.

Pairing both fictional & non-fictional selections, attendees are invited to the Lexington Library on Tuesday January 13 (6 PM) to explore the Vietnam-tied writings of U.S. infantryman, memoirist & novelist, Tim O’Brien (his 1991 Pulitzer-nominated story collection, ‘The Things They Carried’); and Civil Rights activist, preacher & philosopher, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (his catalyzing 1967 speech, ‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence’).

Print and audio versions of O’Brien’s anthology – as well as transcripts and YouTube recordings of King’s speech – can be readily accessed in libraries or online. Discussion of those texts will be enriched by the screening of short interviews with the paired authors. Together, they’ll illuminate complex and often contradictory aims and accounts of the War: highlighting dramatic responses in the field and on the homefront, set against the broadening national and international turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s.

The next night (Wednesday January 14, 6 PM) another sampler extends RHS’ run of REVOLUTIONARY FILMS, 1776-2026. After screening pivotal episodes from Ken Burns’ documentaries on the American Revolution and Vietnam War last Fall, this third gathering will jointly introduce and revisit feature-length movies produced across the war’s 5-decade wake.

Scenes from ‘When We Were Soldiers Once’—and others from Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning trilogy ‘Platoon,’ ‘Born on the Fourth of July,’ and ‘Heaven & Earth’—will be accompanied by filmed interviews with the directors, journalists, historians, and veterans who’ve collectively brought those narratives to mass audiences.

For more: see RHS’ Instagram and Facebook pages or write RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson at Director@RockbridgeHistory.org.