A Temporary Sort of Peace by Jim McGarrah (review)

150 Michigan Historical Review strata. In their essay, James R. Akerman and Daniel Block assert that the many changes to official state-highway maps of the Midwest were and are the result of conscious efforts by state agencies to present travel information as simply as possible. Moreover, the same maps also served to remind travelers of the array of easily accessible tourist destinations in each state. Mapping inMichigan will appeal to a wide audience. The book is visually impressive. Its large size allows for a wealth of images, all of which make each essay more enjoyable. Although David Buisseret's introduction has some difficulty fitting the essays into recent trends of cartography, Gerald A. Danzer's concluding essay, a survey of the evolution of maps of Michigan, more than makes up for this shortcoming. Mapping in Michigan will make a fine addition to a personal library for those who are interested in the history, setdement, and development of Michigan and the Great Lakes, or those who want to appreciate the cultural value of maps. Daniel P. Glenn Washburn University Jim McGarrah. A Temporary Sort of Peace. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2007. Pp. 251. Illustrations. Cloth, $19.95. Christian Appy argues in his landmark 1993 study, Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, that the voices of Vietnam veterans have long been marginalized in American culture. Even before Appy's book appeared, however, and certainly in the fifteen years since it was published, we have witnessed a veritable flood of Vietnam-era memoirs and oral histories representing veterans from a diverse cross-section of American life. From well-known authors like Tim O'Brien, Ron Kovic, and Philip Caputo, to lesser-known veterans like Frederick Downs and Robert Tonsetic, a quick search of any bookstore will quickly confirm that those voices, which initially may have been silenced in the 1970s, are today in search of neither words nor audiences. This fact then leads one to ask a fundamental question of any "new" memoir from a veteran of the American war inVietnam: Do we really need another one? Presumably, new offerings in this genre should break new ground, tell new tales, or reveal some larger truth Book Reviews 151 about the American experience. Sadly, Jim McGarrah's new memoir, A Temporary Sort ofPeace, while engagingly written, does none of these. McGarrah's tale follows a narrative most readers will find familiar: He chronicles growing up in rural Indiana; the complicated relationship he had with his father and his decision to enlist in the Marine Corps after flunking out of college; his harrowing time in combat, around the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive; and his roller coaster return to "the world," including a nightmarish experience at a VA hospital and a torturous addiction to various drugs. Sadly, the section of the book with the greatest potential to break new ground is also the shortest part of A Temporary Sort ofPeace. In his concluding chapter, McGarrah travels back to Vietnam to confront his past. This has become an increasingly common journey for American vets, but it has rarely been documented, much less by someone with McGarrah's talents. Yet this original section is all too brief, and the book ends rather abruptiy at this point. For many veterans, writing has been a means to both find their voices and confront their demons. And although the period during which Vietnam veterans were "silenced" has long since passed, they should nevertheless continue to be encouraged to write, speak, and share their stories. If we are to take these stories seriously as literary and historical writing, however, they must be evaluated not just for their cathartic potential, but for their significance and originality as well. In these respects, McGarrah's book falls short. Ed Martini Western Michigan University Eric D. Olmanson. The Future City on the Inland Sea: A History of Imaginative Geographies ofLake Superior. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. Pp. 276. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth, $27.00. If you are looking for a fine piece of scholarship that elegandy melds historical geography and environmental history, or if you are just looking for a new and interesting work on Great Lakes history, especially...