Voices from captivity

Popularized by books and films like Andersonville, The Great Escape, and The Hanoi Hilton and recounted in innumerable postwar memoirs, the POW story holds a special place in American culture. Robert Doyle shows that, though setting and circumstance may change, POW stories share a common structure and are driven by remarkably similar themes. His study illustrates the timelessness of the POW story and shows why it has retained such enormous power to move and instruct us.