SPENCER C. OLIN, PhD

Influenced by the historical fiction of Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance, J. Lawrence Graham’s dual purpose in Charlotte’s War is to entertain and to edify. He admirably accomplishes those goals by ingeniously interweaving historical facts about the Vietnam War with such fictional characters as Charlotte Fletcher. The stories of her relationships over many years with such non-fictional characters as Ho Chi Minh, Henry Kissinger, Alfred Kroeber, and Ursula Le Guin are enhanced by Graham’s extensive historical research and by his own professional experiences as a Navy SEAL officer and a leading scholar of international business negotiations.