Christian Appy

Christian Gerard Appy (born April 5, 1955) is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is widely known as a leading expert on the Vietnam War experience. The most recent of his three books on the subject is "American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity". It explores the war's impact on American politics, culture, and foreign policy from the 1950s to the Obama presidency.
Biography.
Appy was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1955. In 1964, his family moved to Westport, Connecticut, where he attended public school and graduated from Staples High School in 1973. At Amherst College, class of 1977, he majored in American Studies and wrote a prize-winning honors thesis on Appalachian coal miners. He received his Ph.D in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University in 1987. His dissertation received the Ralph Henry Gabriel dissertation prize from the American Studies Association. It went on to become his first book, "Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam". Appy taught at Harvard and MIT before accepting a position in the history department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004. His book "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides" is widely assigned to college students studying the Vietnam War, due to its unique and nearly comprehensive view of those involved in the war. The book includes 135 oral histories drawn from 350 interviews conducted by Appy over the course of researching the book. "Patriots" won the 2004 Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction. 
At the University of Massachusetts, Appy has received the Distinguished Teaching Award, the Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award, and the Chancellor's Medal. Professor Appy is married to Katherine Appy, and has two children and three stepchildren. He and his family live in Amherst, Massachusetts.