Vietdamned: How the World’s Greatest Minds Put America on Trial

By: Clive Webb

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Synopsis: Guilty: the conclusion of many trials. But this verdict was unusual, delivered by a jury comprising of the greatest minds of the twentieth century: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin and Stokely Carmichael, and over a dozen international luminaries - all presided over by the legendary philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell. The defendant was unusual, too: the United States government.In Vietdamned, award-winning historian Clive Webb reveals the extraordinary, little-known history of the 1967 Russell Tribunal and its attempt to hold the US government to account for atrocities committed during the Vietnam War. What they revealed shocked the world. In a revolutionary decade, these celebrity intellectuals put their careers and reputations at stake - and faced fierce opposition from the media, governments and the CIA.Vietdamned is both a history of the anti-war movement and a story of the power (and limits) of celebrity, cover-ups and abuses of government.