University of Wisconsin professor and writer, Craig Werner, recently published a new book he co-authored with Doug Bradley titled “We Gotta Get Out of Here: The Soundtrack to the Vietnam War,” which was honored by Rolling Stone magazine as the best music book of 2015.

The book delves into several Vietnam War veterans’ lives and explores how the music of that era was influential in shaping their experiences and memories of the war. Simultaneously, the book discovers the prominent songs that defined the Vietnam time period.

Werner began his professional career as a journalist. When he was in graduate school he focused on literature while earning a Ph.D. in English. While teaching at UW as an Afro-American studies professor, he then realized that many of the things he loved about African-American literature closely resembled rock ‘n’ roll and black music.

Werner then began focusing on the relationship between music and literature in his classes and his own research. He wrote his first book in 1998, “A Change is Gonna Come,” which examines influential black music spanning four decades.

For Werner, writing is all about teaching and communicating with different individuals. Music, however, is perhaps equally as important for Werner as he developed his own love for and interest in music while he was growing up.

He describes music as the way he made sense of the world and continues to utilize the power of music in this same way in his life today.

“Music continues to speak to people,” Werner said. “I think there was something special about what was happening in the ’60s and ’70s.”

During a visit to the Madison Veterans Center, Werner met Doug Bradley who became his co-author. The two started talking about music and many of the veterans at the center joined in the conversation and began sharing their stories, Werner said.

Their discussion sparked an idea.

“I thought to myself, ‘I think there is a book to be written here about the importance of music to the Vietnam vets,’” Werner said.

After that night, the idea for the book came into focus and both Werner and Bradley began their research and discussions with veterans from the local community, as well as others from places around the country, such as Colorado and California.

During the process of writing the book, Werner discovered the challenge of organizing the hundreds of voices they had collected through various interviews and memoirs, in order to create a coherent story that has the ability to reach many readers.

He also experienced an emotional challenge while listening to the intense and frightening experiences many of the veterans described.

“Part of me wishes we could have a larger book so we could have done justice to everyone we talked to,” Werner said.

Werner said the book was just as important for him to write as it is for people to read. He believes the Vietnam War is a defining element of modern American history, and the veterans’ stories would educate the public on the experiences and adversities faced by veterans returning from the wars in the Middle East today.

Werner values discovering the truth about the events that occurred in the Vietnam War by omitting both a political and ideological lens the stories. The book was able to give them an open space to speak about their music, their lives and share with others the reality of war.

“I think recognizing the power of music and the power that music has to open up truer and deeper stories to help people heal is important,” Werner said.