"Blindness Will be Like This." So says ten-year-old Will Burton, trying to reimagine his life in the wake of his father's abrupt disappearance, as his family picks up stakes and moves to California.

Between 1968 and 1980, fears about family deterioration and national decline were ubiquitous in American political culture. In No Direction Home, Natasha Zaretsky shows that these perceptions of decline profoundly shaped one another. Throughout the 1970s, anxieties about the future of the nuclear family collided with anxieties about the direction of the United States in the wake of military defeat in Vietnam and in the midst of economic recession, Zaretsky explains. By exploring such themes as the controversy surrounding prisoners of war in Southeast Asia, the OPEC oil embargo of 1973-74, and debates about cultural narcissism, Zaretsky reveals that the 1970s marked a significant turning point in the history of American nationalism. After Vietnam, a wounded national identity--rooted in a collective sense of injury and fueled by images of family peril--exploded to the surface and helped set the stage for the Reagan Revolution. With an innovative analysis that integrates cultural, intellectual, and political history, No Direction Home explores the fears that not only shaped an earlier era but also have reverberated into our own time.

Recommendations -- Methodology -- Background -- The Yemeni detainee population -- Roadblocks to repatriation -- Abuses against repatriated detainees -- International legal standards.

No Direction Home is a dramatic action adventure inspired by a true story. An all-American Indian boy leaves the backwoods of the Smokey Mountains and moves with his family to Southern California. Maturing into a gifted athlete and a musician, he runs afoul of his traditional fathers values. Joining the marine corps, he goes to Vietnam, thriving in an environment of killing fields. Severely wounded, he returns to SoCal after two combat tours. The marine corps reassigns him as a weapons instructor in Quantico, Virginia. The CIA recruits him for a clandestine operation in Mexico. He assassinates some bad guys then remains undercover to gather data on the escalating drug war. Organizing flights of tons of marijuana and documenting the web of conspiracies, he amasses a fortune but is eventually betrayed by his CIA contacts. Moving through Columbia, Mexico, and the western United States, he eludes capture and survives against fearsome odds.

A collection of short stories from the acclaimed author of 'Bug Jack Barron'. Includes "No Direction Home" which depicts a drug dystopia, and "Sierra Maestra." A violent rock group with maniacal music boils up a craze for a nuclear blast. A man finds himself blown into a ghastly world by a bolt of lightning.