Editorial Note: Led by our Editor Dr Mike Hankins, From Balloons to Drones produces a monthly podcast that provides an outlet for the presentation and evaluation of air power scholarship, the exploration of historical topics and ideas, and provides a way to reach out to both new scholars and the general public. You can find our Soundcloud channel here. You can also find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
In the latest episode of our podcast series, we interview Dr Gregory Daddis about his latest book, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Before and during the Vietnam War, some of the most popular magazines among those who served were pulp fiction men’s adventure magazines. In this interview, Daddis unpacks the relationship between fiction and reality, how we talk about wars and choose to remember them, and how constructions of gender really matter when we analyse war.
Dr Gregory A. Daddis is a Professor of History and the USS Midway Chair in Modern US Military History at San Diego State University. A retired US Army colonel, he has served in both Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. He has authored four books, including Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam (2017).
Header image: Company E, 2/9 Marines, being re-supplied by a Sikorsky CH-34 during Operation Harvest Moon, 10 December 1965. (Source: Wikimedia)