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Haas, Kristin. Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Los Angeles: University of California, 1998.

In this interesting study, Haas shows how "ordinary Americans" contribute to the publicly contested debate over the meaning of the American war in Vietnam.  Studying the collection of artifacts left at the wall over the years, Haas also engages in a material culture study to show how the centrality of objects to the way people make sense of mourning and of the past, generally, in what she calls the "symbolic lives of things." After briefly sketching the debate over the construction of the memorial and giving a brief history of other war memorials in the United States, she offers a very insightful chapter on some different funeral practices in different cultures in the U.S., which have historically revolved around artifacts and grave decorations and which can be seen in the memorial practices expressed at the Vietnam Veterans memorial.  Moving on to discuss the collection of artifacts collected by the National Park Service, she argues that the intense and controversial debates over the war have not allowed the dead to rest, forcing people to actively engage in the mourning process and constantly renegotiate their feelings about the war and their loved ones.  Haas then gives a more detailed reading of some of the specific artifacts left at the wall, particularly those that are explicitly related to the POW/MIA issue.  These artifacts in particular mark the contradictions and complex meaning which the war holds for so many, and emblem of oppositional historical narratives situated within the hegemonic discourse of official histories of the War and its legacies. [E. Martini.]