Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam WarIn the decades since the Vietnam War, veteran memoirs have influenced Americans understanding of the conflict. Yet few historians or literary scholars have scrutinized how the genre has shaped the nations collective memory of the war and its aftermath. Instead, veterans accounts are mined for colorful quotes and then dropped from public discourse; are accepted as factual sources with little attention to how memory, no matter how authentic, can diverge