James R. Kelly

Casting Alpha is the story about a platoon of Marine Corps amtrac crewmen who served during the Vietnam War. Kelly, a former trac rat, has wanted to write about his unit since he returned from Vietnam in 1967. He wanted Casting Alpha to be different; not just another blood and guts book about Vietnam. Casting Alphais the story of young Marines sharing a common goal: getting home in one piece. It's the story of their daily activities and their feelings combined with the sense of helplessness they endured as they carried out their sworn duty. Kelly opened his Vietnam photo album and searched the faces on now faded photographs. Each one transported Kelly back thirty-five years to a time in his life that he refers to as his personal twilight zone. The young faces in the photographs brought back memories, memories of situations and occurrences that seemed to have happened only yesterday. A few memories were of comical situations while others reflect sadness, cruelty, and anger. One memory most trac rats can't forget is the anxiety associated with thoughts of enemy land mines and snipers. Kelly named that anxiety "the big wait." Discover what it was like to be a crewman aboard an amtrac during the Vietnam War. Feel the anxiety build as you climb into the driver's seat, start the engine, and begin a mission into no-man's land on roads and trails that have been previously visited by enemy soldiers. Are land mines in your path? Will your number be up today? The big wait will take control of your senses as you read Casting Alpha.

Amtracs in Vietnam

Casting Alpha

David William Foster

While the academic world devoted to literary study has been absorbed with new and distinct forms of literary criticism, bibliography has received scant attention--much less than in former times when it was understood as more than just an aid to research. Enormous changes have taken place in enumerative bibliography over the past thirty years, especially with the widespread use of computers, but these changes have gone unrecognized as bibliography has gone unappreciated. This work is a collection of essays concentrating exclusively on bibliography and its uses in the academic world, especially in literature, folklore, language, and linguistics. The book begins with a discussion of what bibliography is, what it does, and how to create the optimum bibliography. Other subjects include bibliography and postcolonialism, critical theory and bibliography in cross-disciplinary environments, issues and problems with tools for feminist and women's studies scholars in literature, strategies for the incorporation of pluridisciplinary work, bibliographical databases and databased bibliographies, and ideas for the future of the MLA International Bibliography.

James R. Kelly

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