Alan Canfora memoir book available in DAYS AHEAD!
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NOTICE!
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Alan Canfora memoir book AVAILABLE HERE IN DAYS AHEAD! Stay tuned...(title announced here soon).
*** Soon to be a major motion picture by J2 Films in Hollywood. Our feature film screenplay is written by James V. Hart. Inquire, for details. Starring Evan Rachel Wood as Allison Krause.
*** MY BOOK AVAILABLE IN LATE MAY OR EARLY JUNE 2010 at Amazon.com or here at ALANCANFORA.COM/
Full of accurate, inside information & 1970 photographs of Kent & Vietnam.
*** Canfora book links Kent State & Vietnam tragedies. The only book ever written by a 1970 Kent State eyewitness/leader of the 1970 revolt!
Soon, learn the inside story from one who shed his blood while leading the historic revolt at Kent State during May 1-4, 1970.
Learn all the inside details about the link between one soldier's death in Vietnam & the impact days later at Kent State -- a revolt in the streets of Kent, Ohio, an attack upon the KSU ROTC Building (which burned under suspicious circumstances), the arrival of 1200 armed Ohio National Guardsmen and a culmination in May 4 tragedy as told by a key eyewitness & leader of the student rebellion.
Read it here SOON in days ahead & at amazon.com as a book or ebook.
*Final editing now undertaken by esteemed writer Greg Schwartz in Austin, Texas! Thanks, Greg, my dear friend & editor.*
ALAN CANFORA MEMOIR BOOK AVAILABLE ONLINE HERE AT ALANCANFORA.COM AS EBOOK & PRINT-ON-DEMAND AT AMAZON.COM IN APRIL!
Below is Alan Canfora's book description followed by an outline of chapters.
BOOK SUMMARY: Alan Canfora's memoir book focuses upon eyewitness descriptions of war in Vietnam as well as Kent State University student anti-war action during years leading to infamous tragedy on May 4, 1970.
Canfora offers his personal anti-war evolution along with true war stories of his hometown friends who suffered and survived the controversial Vietnam war. When one of Canfora's friends was killed in Vietnam in April of 1970, that lone soldier's death inspired Canfora's own Kent State anti-war actions culminating in the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970. Canfora, a leading anti-war protester, was shot and wounded when Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of unarmed anti-war demonstrators killing four students.
Canfora offers Vietnam veterans' verbatim descriptions provided by interviews of his hometown friends -- Ohio working-class US soldiers who fought for survival and suffered during the bloody US war in Southeast Asia. Canfora also weaves his own memoir chapters amidst true-war commentaries of returning anti-war Vietnam veterans in Ohio. A modern-day "Trojan Horse" -- anti-war Vietnam war veterans sparked homegrown Kent State student anti-war opposition to a controversial US government war in Southeast Asia.
War and anti-war, Vietnam and Kent State, culminating in tragedy in 1970. The death of a soldier in Vietnam inspired Kent State students' anti-war protests which culminated in deaths of Kent State students. The resulting Kent tragedy triggered the only National Student Strike in US history. Over four million students protested across America and hundreds of colleges and universities were shut down by the unique national tidal wave of student protests during May of 1970. President Richard Nixon, the war in Vietnam, the nation, the Congress and corporate America became affected by the unique historical impact.
Alan Canfora and his room-mate, Tom Grace, were among students shot down at Kent State on May 4, 1970. Experienced as dedicated Kent State University student anti-war activists, Canfora and Grace had recently known genuine compassion for the Caldwell family when the war come home from Vietnam to Ohio.
Ten days before they were shot down by Ohio National Guard bullets, Canfora was joined by Grace and other Kent friends at a nearby April 24, 1970, funeral in Barberton, Ohio. One of Canfora's childhood friends, 19-year-old William Caldwell, was killed in Vietnam. Bill Caldwell's ex-Marine brother, George Caldwell, was also one of Canfora's Kent room-mates.
Vietnam and Kent State are linked forever.
This is the only Kent State 1970-insider's book ever to be published -- a vivid description of parallel tragic events at Kent State and Vietnam sliding toward chaos and anarchy.
Days after the Kent massacre, over 100,000 angry student demonstrators converged on the White House and President Richard Nixon was beseiged. Paranoid President Nixon ordered armed machine-gunners to be stationed inside the White House and barricaded himself to the point of ongoing illegal, unconsitutional actions which ultimately ended in the only resignation of a US President.
From an insider's perspective, this book reveals the misunderstood 1970 Kent State anti-war revolt and tragedy as well as the difficult eyewitness experiences of soldiers who fought the bitter war in Vietnam.
Political, social and cultural aspects of life among Kent State anti-war students are described as the years and months unfold before the tragic massacre. Canfora barely survived his experiences as a bold, young, Ohio man who submerged himself in the counter-cultural/anti-war revolutionary movements in the days of his youth.
Simultaneously, the voices of Canfora's hometown Vietnam veteran friends sound as a "Greek Chorus" of wartime misfortune -- American military survivors of wrongful war. Mixing anti-war student viewpoints with brutal, disturbing real war stories of Vietnam veterans, Canfora's book culminates with parallel tragedies in Vietnam and America.
This timely memoir offers lessons for both older and younger Americans. While the USA again slides toward international and national chaos provoked by another Vietnam-style war in Iraq, this book has cross-generational appeal.
In 2009, Iraq is Vietnam and a new anti-war generation is emerging once again. Now is the time for the 1960s generation to reconsider their passionate years of youth.
And now is the time for a new generation to learn valuable true lessons about unwinnable wars based upon deception -- and patriotic, anti-war opposition emerging in response -- before another war at home breaks out, citizen against citizen, here again in America.
At high noon on May 4, 1970, Alan Canfora stood alone and faced deadly killers during moments before an epic tragedy occurred affecting his generation. This is his story and our true modern American history.
War,
Anti-War,
Vietnam,
Kent State,
the fall of Richard Nixon.
Alan Canfora's book is available for publication now.
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-- Alan Canfora memoir book --
Preliminary chapter preview.
a) Personal preface: Alan Canfora
b) Introduction: Dr. George Katsiaficas, Wentworth Institute, Boston.
I) BRIGHT BEGINNINGS – EARLY YEARS, OHIO, PENNSYLVANIA: PRE-1960.
1) Family origin, Italian and Slovak immigrant grandparents, Ohio/Pennsylvania.
2) Parents: Albert Canfora, Anna Minarik, childhood, war, injury, love.
3) Canfora family, children in working class Barberton, Ohio, idyllic 1950s-1960s.
4) Alan Canfora, Barberton childhood friends, peace before war.
II) THE DARK CLOUD OF WAR – VIETNAM AND PEACEFUL OHIO: 1960-1967.
1) Vietnam War: early experiences, Vietnam veterans, Barberton, Ohio.
2) Home front, 1960s evolution, Alan Canfora, family and friends.
3) Alan Canfora goes to Kent State University; hometown friends go to Vietnam.
III) WAR/ANTI-WAR, PEACE AND LOVE, 1967-1969.
1) Friends in Vietnam War, worsening true war stories told upon return home.
2) Alan and Chic Canfora, early college experiences, hippie counter-culture impact.
3) Vietnam War, the terror of war, darker true war tales, anti-war veterans.
4) KSU anti-war movement: anti-Nixon militant actions in Ohio and Washington.
5) The field of dishonor: the Vietnam War divides the Kent State campus.
6) "Spring Offensive": Kent State anti-war Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
7) A spring and summer of love—a psychedelic introduction.
IV) SUMMER, 1969: FACTORY WORK, UNION STRIKE, WOODSTOCK, WAR.
1) Deepening impact of even more terrible hometown true-war commentaries.
2) Summer job: Alan at the Barberton boilermaker factory — on strike.
3) Alan: personal impact of war/anti-war/hippie counter-culture.
4) Joy before tragedy: Alan's hometown friend Bill Caldwell and his family.
5) Alan and the Caldwells: Woodstock interlude, fate descends.
V) DESTINY ON THE HORIZON – WINTER OF DISCONTENT, 1969-1970.
1) Anti-war students and Vietnam War veterans living together in Kent.
2) Vietnam war stories inspire students and anti-war awareness.
3) Moratorium: peaceful protest in Kent, militant action in Washington again.
4) The illusion of peace amidst blossoming true love.
5) "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die."
6) Hippie hedonism and radical revolution inspired by rock and roll.
VI) THE SPRINGTIME OF OUR MADNESS – CALM BEFORE THE STORM.
1) Spring break: trip to Cape Hatteras, NC, in search of the meaning of life.
2) "Once in my younger days, I had a girl to love".
3) Vaguely anticipating a not-so-silent spring.
VII) WAR COMES HOME: VIETNAM DEATH, OHIO FUNERAL, APRIL, 1970.
1) War comes home: Death of Bill Caldwell, April 13, 1970.
2) "Avenge Bill Caldwell": our vow of anti-war action "when the time is right".
3) Inspirational anti-war rock music: "We Should Be Together", "Machine Gun".
4) Our Kent Cadre emerges: mid-April anti-war action in Kent and Cleveland, Ohio.
5) Funeral of Bill Caldwell, April 24, 1970.
6) Into the forest wilderness: nature, beauty, peace, love, sadness and anger.
7) President Nixon expands war, invades Cambodia: our vow to bring Nixon down.
VIII) INSIDE OUR WAR AT HOME: KENT, OHIO, MAY 1-3, 1970.
1) May 1: Afternoon of calm, our Kent Cadre anticipates anti-war action.
2) May 1: Night-time lightning anti-war action in Downtown Kent.
3) May 2: Afternoon of calm, our Kent Cadre anticipates anti-war action.
4) May 2: Night-time lightning anti-war action, mysterious KSU ROTC building fire.
5) May 2: Invasion by Ohio National Guard and our message to Nixon.
6) May 3: Ohio Governor James Rhodes provokes anti-student violence.
7) May 3: Bayonets! Ohio National Guard begins two-day reign of anti-student terror.
IX) May 4, 1970, KENT STATE: EPIC TRAGEDY OF A GENERATION.
1) A beautiful Ohio spring morning inside a police-state.
2) The field of honor: Kent State—from triumph toward tragedy.
3) HIGH NOON: my anger, my despair, my black flag.
4) Hunters on the attack: tear-gas, bayonets and aiming rifles.
5) Bullets! Tragedy under the noonday sun – eyewitness to planned massacre.
6) Survivor: bloodshed and survival of an American nightmare.
X) THE REVOLUTION OF 1970: NATIONAL STUDENT STRIKE.
1) Solace: national tidal wave of youthful rebellion inspired by our revolt and tragedy.
2) Passion of youth, the national impact of our cry of love and peace.
3) Return trip to Cape Hatteras and the mountains of Virginia.
4) The meaning of life.
XI) SUMMER OF 1970 – AFTERMATH OF TRAGEDY.
1) Investigation, cover-up and uncertainty after our revolt and tragedy.
2) "Something is amiss"— another escape to the mountains.
3) To Washington, to Ohio, new inspiration, new despair -- saved by love.
4) Conclusion: the beginning of the end of President Nixon and war in Vietnam.
XII) EPILOGUE
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ATTENTION PUBLISHERS: See below for proof our 1970 Kent revolt sparked the only National Student Strike in US history & ultimately brought down President Richard Nixon...
QUOTATIONS BELOW re: the historical importance of the Kent State tragedy & the National Student Strike of May, 1970...
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"Those few days after Kent State were among the darkest of my presidency."
--from the book RN: THE MEMOIRS OF RICHARD NIXON by President Richard Nixon
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"Kent State, in May 1970, marked a turning point for Nixon, a beginning of his downhill slide toward Watergate."
--from the book THE ENDS OF POWER by H.R. Haldeman (one of Nixon's closest White House advisers)
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"When on May 4, four students at Kent State University were killed by rifle-fire from National Guardsmen dispatched by Ohio Governor James Rhodes, to keep order during several days of violence, there was a shock wave that brought the nation and its leadership close to the point of physical exhaustion...The momentum of student strikes and protests accelerated immediately...Washington took on a character of a beseiged city. A pinnacle of mass public protest was reached... Police surrounded the White House; a ring of buses was used to shield the grounds of the President's home...The tidal wave of media and student criticism powerfully affected the Congress...The very fabric of governmment was falling apart. The executive branch was shell-shocked. After all, their children and their friends' children took part in the demonstrations...The President saw himself as the firm rock in this rushing stream, but the turmoil had its effect on him as well. Pretending indifference, he was deeply wounded... Nixon reached a point of exhaustion that caused his advisors deep concern."
--from the book THE WHITE HOUSE YEARS by Henry Kissinger (Nixon's Secretary of State)
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"This country's first national student strike was the result of the killing of four students by National Guardsmen. The 100-a-day new campus protests that occurred during the four days following theing the four days following the student fatalities at Kent State are unprecedented in our history. Kent State escalated years of student unrest to historic heights that shocked the nation. What gave the period of May 1-15 its unique intensity and agony was the killing of four students at Kent State on May 4."
--from the book ON STRIKE...SHUT IT DOWN! (a 1970 scientific national survey by Urban Research Corporation of Chicago)
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"The climax of dissent, disruption and tragedy in all American history to date occurred in May, 1970. That month saw the involvement of students and institutions in protests in greater numbers than ever before in history."
--Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California
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"The impact is only barely suggested by the statistics, but they are impressive enough. In the next four days (after the Kent State shootings), from May 5 to May 8, there were major campus demonstrations at a rate of more than 100 a day, students at a total of at least 350 institutions went on strike and 536 schools were shut down completely for some period of time, 51 of them for the entire year. More than half of the colleges and universities in the country (1,350) were ultimately touched by protest demonstrations, involving nearly 60% of the student population (nearly five million students) in every kind of institution anery kind of institution and in every state in the union."
--from the book SDS by Kirkpatrick Sale
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"There can be little doubt that the current period (May, 1970) of student unrest has had more impact on the body politic than any previous epoch in American history..."
--from the book PASSION and POLITICS by Seymour Martin Lipset
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for further details about the Kent State 1970 impact, see:
http://alancanfora.com/?q=node/8
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"Again, where the people are absolute rulers of the land,
they rejoice in having a reserve of youthful citizens,
while a king counts this a hostile element
and seeks to slay the leading ones,
all such as he deems discreet,
for he feareth for his power."
--from the Greek tragedy, THE SUPPLIANTS,
by Euripedes
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