Veterans' Policy, Veterans' Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States

Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics is the first multidisciplinary, comprehensive examination of the American veteran experience. Stephen Ortiz has compiled some of the best work on the formation and impact of veterans’ policies, the politics of veterans’ issues, and veterans’ political engagement over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States.

By examining the U.S. government’s treatment of veterans vis-à-vis such topics as health care, disability, race, the GI Bill, and combat exposure, the contributors reveal how debates regarding veterans’ policies inevitably turn into larger political battles over citizenship and the role of the federal government.

With the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq now the longest military operations in U.S. history and the numbers of veterans returning from overseas deployment higher than they’ve been in a generation, this is a timely and necessary book.