Veterans' Policies, Veterans' Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States

“Provides a much-needed interdisciplinary approach to the study of the important intersection of veteran policies and political arguments that have helped to define the modern American state.”—Robert Saxe, author of “Settling Down”: World War II Veterans’ Challenge to the Postwar Consensus

“An outstanding collection of essays that will engage anyone interested in the veteran experience in modern America. It should be read by political leaders and the general public who want to develop better ways to reintegrate veterans of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq back into American society.”—G. Kurt Piehler, author of Remembering the War the American Way

The study of military veterans and politics has been a growing topic of interest, but to date most research on the topic has remained isolated in specific, unconnected fields of inquiry.

Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics is the first multidisciplinary, comprehensive examination of the American veteran experience. Stephen Ortiz has compiled some of the best work on the formation and impact of veterans’ policies, the politics of veterans’ issues, and veterans’ political engagement over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States.

By examining the U.S. government’s treatment of veterans vis-à-vis such topics as health care, disability, race, the GI Bill, and combat exposure, the contributors reveal how debates regarding veterans’ policies inevitably turn into larger political battles over citizenship and the role of the federal government.

With the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq now the longest military operations in U.S. history and the numbers of veterans returning from overseas deployment higher than they’ve been in a generation, this is a timely and necessary book.