For this installment of our weekly book reviews from Booklist, the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication, we have Donna Seaman’s review of “The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home” by Wil Haygood, first published February 11, 2026, in Booklist.
Enjoy.
“The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home”
By Wil Haygood, 2026. 384p. illus. Knopf, $35 (9780593537695).
During the Vietnam War, the American press was overwhelming white. When Wallace Terry, a Black reporter on assignment for Time, arrived in-country, Black soldiers appreciated talking with a journalist who would understand that they were embroiled in “the war within the war,” their battle for equality and justice. This deeply rooted struggle was also being fought on the streets of American cities, as Haygood (“Colorization,” 2021) so clearly chronicles. He also reveals how military recruiters targeted young Black men in poor communities and how Black soldiers were then disproportionately killed in combat and incarcerated in military jails. When Black veterans returned home after bravely fighting for their county, they were met with racism and a lack of jobs. Terry, who created the seminal oral history, “Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War,” is one of a set of remarkable individuals Haygood, a celebrated writer whose many accolades include the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Peace Prize Foundation, profiles in this eye-opening history of an often-overlooked aspect of the disastrous war in Vietnam. He tells the dramatic stories of Black men and women who excelled in their chosen fields against all odds and valiantly served their country.
Elbert Nelson was a combat doctor and Dorothy Harris was an Army nurse. Readers meet war heroes Captain Joe Anderson, a West Point graduate who became the subject of an Academy Award–winning documentary; Fred Cherry, a phenomenally gifted and decorated Air Force pilot who survived a brutal internment as a POW; and Art Gregg, the first Black lieutenant general in the Army and “the only living person to have a fort named after him.” Philippa Schuyler, a musical prodigy turned journalist and activist, lost her life in Vietnam while helping ostracized biracial war orphans. Veteran Maude DeVictor risked her career at the VA in Chicago to investigate and reveal the dire effects Agent Orange was having on the health of those who served in Vietnam. Haygood vividly conveys the nuances of personalities, circumstances, and events within a richly rendered social, cultural, and political context. He concludes with the Trump administration’s firing of Black military leaders and “the website purge that erased the history of Black and women achievements in the military.” Haygood’s vibrant, astute, and moving look at one front in the ongoing struggle to live up to our nation’s founding declarations reverberates with particular significance as we approach America’s 250th anniversary.— Donna Seaman
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