Battle Green Vietnam: The 1971 March on Concord, Lexington, and Boston will appeal to public historians for multiple reasons. Author Elise Lemire, professor of literature, Purchase College, SUNY, demonstrates that Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) successfully invoked US history and historic sites to make their case against the war. Further, VVAW took on the roles of Revolutionary colonists and employed guerrilla street theater to publicize their cause. Lemire identifies the aim of the book as “reveal[ing] the power of place and performance in oppositional politics” (4). The book chronicles the 1971 VVAW reenactment-in-reverse of Paul Revere’s 1775 ride. Revere rode from Boston west to Concord and Lexington to warn of the approaching Redcoats. The antiwar veterans marched from what are now suburban towns to Boston to sound the alarm about the violent, unjust war being waged in the name of the American people.VVAW members organized their group in 1967 as an advocacy organization working within the system, but felt stymied and so quickly evolved to engagement in direct action. Over Labor Day weekend in 1970, they marched from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, two iconic Revolutionary War sites. They followed with the Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit in which veterans testified to atrocities against the Vietnamese people that they had committed or witnessed. The title was a play on words from the Revolutionary figure Thomas Paine’s chastising of the “summer soldier and the sunshine patriot.” To their disappointment, neither action generated organizational growth. Interestingly, what sparked large-scale enlistment by veteran and active duty troops was a full page ad donated by Hugh Hefner in Playboy magazine. Subsequently, in spring 1971, VVAW mounted Operation Dewey Canyon III in Washington, DC, which included guerrilla theater on the steps of the Capitol building dramatizing how Vietnamese civilians were terrorized by American troops in search-and-destroy missions. Their most dramatic action was throwing away their war medals on the Capitol steps.Subsequently, VVAW-New England decided to undertake their reverse Revere march over Memorial Day weekend, 1971. They named it Operation POW (Prisoner of War) as a direct response to President Richard Nixon’s invocation of American POWs as a reason why he could not immediately end the war. Despite the many inaccuracies of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem commemorating Revere’s ride, which Lemire discusses, the veterans sought to capitalize on “the Revere myth—namely, the idea that warning the American people is the greatest of patriotic acts” (23). Lemire focuses each of the book’s six chapters on a participating veteran whom she interviewed. She also conducted a broad array of other interviews with VVAW activists and their civilian supporters. She relates the personal background, combat experience, and motivation for joining VVAW of each of the six veterans, thus enlivening the narrative with personal perspectives and accounts. Further, she utilizes interviews conducted by the Lexington Oral History Project. She draws heavily on two documentary films on the march, one by Hart Perry, which PBS refused to air because they deemed it too one-sided, and Bestor Cram’s Unfinished Symphony. Cram was one of Lemire’s core veteran voices in her narrative.Throughout the volume, Lemire discusses how these veterans creatively engaged with iconic landscapes and structures. She relates, “as they would repeatedly over the weekend, the veterans…repurposed the [Lexington Green 1790 Revolutionary War] obelisk, using it to issue a reproach” (91). With the obelisk in the background, they gathered together to sing the refrain from a John Lennon song: “all we are saying, is give peace a chance.” They later symbolically discarded their toy M16s to represent their repudiation of war violence. Lexington selectmen rejected the veterans’ plan to perform guerrilla theater on the Common as they characterized the space as sacrosanct and sacred ground, a notion which historian Edward Linenthal has addressed substantially in his important work on memory. Lemire indicates the hypocrisy of the elected officials, pointing out the “only performed atrocities they sanctioned were those of the British, enacted every Patriots Day,” the Massachusetts day set aside annually to commemorate the first armed conflict in the Revolutionary War. The selectmen’s refusal to permit an overnight encampment led to the largest mass arrest in the history of Massachusetts, with hundreds of veterans and their supporters arrested.Bestor Cram told one of the film crews capturing the protest, “Some people may say they are Captain John Parker or Paul Revere. They want to identify themselves as a Minute Man” (107). It was this reenactment element of the protest, this identification and almost transformation into Revolutionary figures, that, Lemire argues, gave both veterans and civilian supporters “the courage of their convictions” (107). On Monument Square in Concord, VVAW members engaged in mock search and destroy performances that were brutally graphic and mirrored their wartime experiences. VVAW members were easily able to obtain their “weapons.” The American toy company Mattel had been producing a toy, the M16 Marauder, which was almost a full-sized replica of an actual M16.The veterans approached their final leg of their protest march with some trepidation. They were anxious as to the reception they would receive in Charlestown, site of the Bunker Hill Monument and the location from which Revere began his ride. In contrast to the wealthier suburbs of Concord and Lexington, Charlestown was solidly working class. However, they were greatly heartened by the love and acceptance they encountered. The last part of their protest weekend was attendance at a large antiwar rally on Boston Common where they symbolically smashed their plastic M16s. Although intended as theater, emotion took over as many sobbed with feelings of grief and rage.Lemire’s epilogue, focused on memorializing the Vietnam War, is solid but too brief. Still, this short, eminently readable book would be excellent for course adoptions and would interest anyone wanting to learn about how place and performance are employed by social activists. The author concludes that fifty years after VVAW marched in DC and New England “in a bid to wake the nation, our memorialization practices,”—here she convincingly disparages “The Three Soldiers” sculpture at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the massive World War II memorial—“as well as our overseas military incursions indicate that we have forgotten the lessons VVAW imparted” (162). With this volume, Lemire has eloquently captured the spirt and practice of VVAW, an organization whose history has much that is important and relevant for today.