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Subject Headings are a way that we organize information for you. Think of it like a hashtag #uafs - these tags organize books and articles by subjects, much like you might do in a tweet or Instagram post! Below are several subjects you should browse when looking for books from the library:
After Tet by
In the wake of the TET offensive in March, 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced the cessation of bombing against North Vietnam and his decision not to run for president.
America in Vietnam by
This controversial and timely book about the American experience in Vietnam provides the first full exploration of the perspectives of the North Vietnamese leadership before, during, and after the war. Herbert Y. Schandler offers unique insights into the mindsets of the North Vietnamese and their response to diplomatic and military actions of the Americans, laying out the full scale of the disastrous U.S. political and military misunderstandings of Vietnamese history and motivations. Including frank quotes from Vietnamese leaders, the book offers important new knowledge that allows us to learn invaluable lessons from the perspective of a victorious enemy. Unlike most military officers who served in Vietnam, Schandler is convinced the war was unwinnable, no matter how long America stayed the course or how many resources were devoted to it. He is remarkably qualified to make these judgments as an infantry commander during the Vietnam War, a Pentagon policymaker, and a scholar who taught at West Point and National Defense University. His extensive personal interviews with North Vietnamese are drawn from his many trips to Hanoi after the war. Schandler provides not only a definitive analysis of the American failure in Vietnam but a crucial foundation for exploring the potential for success in the current guerrilla wars the United States is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Columbia History of the Vietnam War by
Rooted in recent scholarship, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War offers profound new perspectives on the political, historical, military, and social issues that defined the war and its effect on the United States and Vietnam. Laying the chronological and critical foundations for the volume, David L. Anderson opens with an essay on the Vietnam War's major moments and enduring relevance. Mark Philip Bradley follows with a reexamination of Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism and the Vietminh-led war against French colonialism. Richard H. Immerman revisits Eisenhower's and Kennedy's efforts at nation building in South Vietnam, and Gary R. Hess reviews America's military commitment under Kennedy and Johnson. Lloyd C. Gardner investigates the motivations behind Johnson's escalation of force, and Robert J. McMahon focuses on the pivotal period before and after the Tet Offensive. Jeffrey P. Kimball then makes sense of Nixon's paradoxical decision to end U.S. intervention while pursuing a destructive air war. John Prados and Eric Bergerud devote essays to America's military strategy, while Helen E. Anderson and Robert K. Brigham explore the war's impact on Vietnamese women and urban culture. Melvin Small recounts the domestic tensions created by America's involvement in Vietnam, and Kenton Clymer traces the spread of the war to Laos and Cambodia. Concluding essays by Robert D. Schulzinger and George C. Herring account for the legacy of the war within Vietnamese and American contexts and diagnose the symptoms of the "Vietnam syndrome" evident in later debates about U.S. foreign policy. America's experience in Vietnam continues to figure prominently in discussions about strategy and defense, not to mention within discourse on the identity of the United States as a nation. Anderson's expert collection is therefore essential to understanding America's entanglement in the Vietnam War and the conflict's influence on the nation's future interests abroad.
The Control War by
The Vietnam War--a conflict defined by an ever-evolving mixture of conventional and guerrilla warfare and mass politics--has often been called a "war without fronts." In fact, Vietnam had a multitude of fronts, as insurgents and counterinsurgents wrestled for control throughout 44 provinces, 250 districts, and more than 11,000 hamlets. In The Control War, Martin G. Clemis focuses on South Vietnam, where a highly complex politico-military struggle fragmented the battlefield along countless divergent points of conflict as both sides sought spatial and political hegemony. Complicating the conventional view that the Vietnam War was about winning "hearts and minds," Clemis argues that both sides were more interested in asserting control over the people--and resources--of the countryside. As in other revolutionary civil conflicts, the key to winning political power in South Vietnam was to control the physical world of territory, population, and resources, as well as the ideational world of political organization and long-term legitimacy. Despite their countervailing purposes, both insurgency and pacification provided the means to exert this control. Proponents of each approach pursued the same goals, relying on a blend of military force, political violence, and socioeconomic policy to achieve them. Revealing the unique spatiality of the Vietnam War, The Control War analyzes the ways that both sides of the conflict conceptualized and used geography and the environment to serve strategic, tactical, and political ends. Clemis shows us that the operational environment of Vietnam, both natural and human-made, was far more than a backdrop to two decades of war.
Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger by
Outside of its war with the United States, Vietnam’s past has often been neglected and understudied. Whether as an aspiring subordinate or a rebel province, Vietnam has been viewed by most historians in relation to its larger neighbor to the north, China. Seeking to reshape these accounts, Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger chronicles the vast sweep of Vietnam’s tumultuous history, from the Bronze Age to the present day, in order to lay out the first English-language account of the full story of the Vietnamese people. Drawing on archeological evidence that reveals the emergence of a culturally distinct human occupation of the region up to 10,000 years ago, Vu Hong Lien and Peter D. Sharrock show that these early societies had a sophisticated agricultural and technological culture much earlier than previously imagined. They explore the great variety of cultures that have existed in this territory, unshackling them from the confined histories of outsiders, imperial invaders, and occupiers in order to show that the country has been central to the cultural, political, and ethnic development of Southeast Asia for millennia. Unrivaled in scope, this comprehensive account will be the definitive history of the Vietnamese people, their culture, and their nation.
The Eaves of Heaven by
From the award-winning author of Catfish and Mandala comes a son's searing memoir of his Vietnamese father's experiences over the course of three wars.
Embers of War by
"The struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the twentieth century. Fought over a period of three decades, the conflict drew in all the world s powers and saw two of them first France, then the United States attempt to subdue the revolutionary Vietnamese forces. For France, the defeat marked the effective end of her colonial empire, while for America the war left a gaping wound in the body politic that remains open to this day. How did it happen? Tapping into newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and making full use of the published literature, distinguished scholar Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to lose their way in Vietnam. Embers of Waropens in 1919 at the Versailles Peace Conference, where a young Ho Chi Minh delivers a petition for Vietnamese independence to President Woodrow Wilson. It concludes in 1959, with a Viet Cong ambush on a U.S. outpost outside Saigon and the deaths of two American officers whose names would be the first to be carved into the black granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In between come years of political, military, and diplomatic maneuvering and miscalculation, as le
GIAP by
General Vo Nguyen Giap was the commander in chief of the communist armed forces during two of his country's most difficult conflicts--the first against Vietnam's colonial masters, the French, and the second against the most powerful nation on earth, the United States. After long and bloody conflicts, he defeated both Western powers and their Vietnamese allies, forever changing modern warfare. InGiap, military historian James A. Warren dives deep into the conflict to bring to life a revolutionary general and reveal the groundbreaking strategies that defeated world powers against incredible odds. Synthesizing ideas and tactics from an extraordinary range of sources, Giap was one of the first to realize that war is more than a series of battles between two armies and that victory can be won through the strength of a society's social fabric. As America's wars in the Middle East rage on, this is an important and timely look at a man who was a master at defeating his enemies even as they thought they were winning.
Ho Chi Minh by
Ho Chi Minh is one of the towering figures of the twentieth century, considered an icon and father of the nation by many Vietnamese. Pierre Brocheux's biography of Ho Chi Minh is a brilliant feat of historical engineering. In a concise and highly readable account, he negotiates the many twists and turns of Ho Chi Minh's life and his multiple identities, from impoverished beginnings as a communist revolutionary to his founding of the Indochina Communist Party and the League for the Independence of Vietnam, and ultimately to his leadership of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and his death in 1969. Biographical events are adroitly placed within the broader historical canvas of colonization, decolonization, communism, war, and nation building. Brocheux's vivid and convincing portrait of Ho Chi Minh goes further than any previous biography in explaining both the myth and the man, as well as the times in which he was situated.
Indochina and Vietnam by
The Indochina and Vietnam Wars followed one another over thirty-five years, from 1940 to 1975, yet these two closely related conflicts are usually treated separately. This book seeks to tell the story of those wars as a single historical event. Within days of France's defeat by Nazi Germany and Japan's military expansion into Southeast Asia in July 1940, the United States became involved in Indochina. Most histories quickly mention the colonial past, usually limited to the battle of Dien Bien Phu, to concentrate exclusively on the American war. A selection of published sources explains the context and the development of the long war while providing an overview of France's imprint on Indochina and Vietnam. The question "Why were we in Vietnam?" comes up regularly regarding the root causes for the ultimate deployment of over five hundred thousand US troops, most of them conscripts, into a virtually unknown land. When France left Indochina in 1954 it became an American problem. Weeks before the murder of John F. Kennedy came the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem and the escalation of the war in 1965#150;68. Finally, Richard Nixon, after extending the war into Cambodia, enacted both the Vietnamization process and negotiations in Paris between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, until the final act in April 1975, when the US embassy rooftop with the last helicopter taking off was flashed around the world as the grand finale to the war.
In the Jaws of History by
... the ultimate insider's account of the war from the South Vietnamese side, including the appalling story of how the American intervention actually happened." --Washington Post This book gives Americans a rare opportunity--the chance to see the Vietnam experience through Vietnamese eyes. Few Vietnamese know their recent history as well as Bui Diem does. And none has told it better." --Ambassador William Jorden ... well-written and at times illuminating... " --Library Journal In the Jaws of History is the most important book written on the Vietnam War from the viewpoint of the South, from an author who was a senior official of the South Vietnamese government and later ambassador to the U.S.
Kill Anything That Moves by
Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civiliansAmericans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by "a few bad apples." But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of orders to "kill anything that moves".Drawing on more than a decade of research in secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time how official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. In shocking detail, he lays out the workings of a military machine that made crimes in almost every major American combat unit all but inevitable. Kill Anything That Moves takes us from archives filled with Washington's long-suppressed war crime investigations to the rural Vietnamese hamlets that bore the brunt of the war; from boot camps where young American soldiers learned to hate all Vietnamese to bloodthirsty campaigns like Operation Speedy Express, in which a general obsessed with body counts led soldiers to commit what one participant called "a My Lai a month".Thousands of Vietnam books later, Kill Anything That Moves, devastating and definitive, finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts Americans to this day.
Mourning Headband for Hue by
Vietnam, January, 1968. As the citizens of Hue are preparing to celebrate Tet, the start of the Lunar New Year, Nha Ca arrives in the city to attend her father's funeral. Without warning, war erupts all around them, drastically changing or cutting short their lives. After a month of fighting, their beautiful city lies in ruins and thousands of people are dead. Mourning Headband for Hue tells the story of what happened during the fierce North Vietnamese offensive and is an unvarnished and riveting account of war as experienced by ordinary people caught up in the violence.
My Lai by
On the early morning of March 16, 1968, American soldiers from three platoons of Charlie Company (1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division), entered a group of hamlets located in the Son Tinh district of South Vietnam, located near the Demilitarized Zone and known as "Pinkville" because of the high level of Vietcong infiltration. The soldiers, many still teenagers who had been in the country for three months, were on a "search and destroy" mission. The Tet Offensive had occurred only weeks earlier and in the same area and had made them jittery; so had mounting losses from booby traps and a seemingly invisible enemy. Three hours after the GIs entered the hamlets, more than five hundred unarmed villagers lay dead, killed in cold blood. The atrocity took its name from one of the hamlets, known by the Americans as My Lai 4. Military authorities attempted to suppress the news of My Lai, until some who had been there, in particular a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson and a door gunner named Lawrence Colburn, spoke up about what they had seen. The official line was that the villagers had been killed by artillery and gunship fire rather than by small arms. That line soon began to fray. Lieutenant William Calley, one of the platoon leaders, admitted to shooting the villagers but insisted that he had acted upon orders. An exposé of the massacre and cover-up by journalist Seymour Hersh, followed by graphic photographs, incited international outrage, and Congressional and U.S. Army inquiries began. Calley and nearly thirty other officers were charged with war crimes, though Calley alone was convicted and would serve three and a half years under house arrest before being paroled in 1974. My Lai polarized American sentiment. Many saw Calley as a scapegoat, the victim of a doomed strategy in an unwinnable war. Others saw a war criminal. President Nixon was poised to offer a presidential pardon. The atrocity intensified opposition to the war, devastating any pretense of American moral superiority. Its effect on military morale and policy was profound and enduring. The Army implemented reforms and began enforcing adherence to the Hague and Geneva conventions. Before launching an offensive during Desert Storm in 1991, one general warned his brigade commanders, "No My Lais in this division--do you hear me?" Compelling, comprehensive, and haunting, based on both exhaustive archival research and extensive interviews, Howard Jones's My Lai will stand as the definitive book on one of the most devastating events in American military history.
Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars by
This extraordinary memoir tells the story of one man's experience of the wars of Viet Nam from the time he was old enough to be aware of war in the 1940s until his departure for America 15 years after the collapse of South Viet Nam in 1975. Nguyen Cong Luan was born and raised in small villages near Ha Noi. He grew up knowing war at the hands of the Japanese, the French, and the Viet Minh. Living with wars of conquest, colonialism, and revolution led him finally to move south and take up the cause of the Republic of Viet Nam, exchanging a life of victimhood for one of a soldier. His stories of village life in the north are every bit as compelling as his stories of combat and the tragedies of war. This honest and impassioned account is filled with the everyday heroism of the common people of his generation. "Long overdue, this memoir will be a worthy addition to any academic library interested in the tragedy of Vietnam." --Choice
Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam by
This book offers the first detailed English-language examination of the Great Vietnamese Famine of 1945, which left at least a million dead, and links it persuasively to the largely unexpected Viet Minh seizure of power only months later. Drawing on extensive research in French archives, Geoffrey C. Gunn offers an important new interpretation of Japanese-Vichy French wartime economic exploitation of Vietnam's agricultural potential. He analyzes successes and failures of French colonial rice programs and policies from the early 1900s to 1945, drawing clear connections between colonialism and agrarian unrest in the 1930s and the rise of the Viet Minh in the 1940s. Gunn asks whether the famine signaled a loss of the French administration's "mandate of heaven," or whether the overall dire human condition was the determining factor in facilitating communist victory in August 1945. In the broader sweep of Vietnamese history, including the rise of the communist party, the picture that emerges is not only one of local victimhood at the hands of outsiders--French and, in turn, Japanese-- but the enormous agency on the part of the Vietnamese themselves to achieve moral victory over injustice against all odds, no matter how controversial, tragic, and contested the outcome. As the author clearly demonstrates, colonial-era development strategies and contests also had their postwar sequels in the "American war," just as land, land reform, and subsistence-sustainable development issues persist into the present.
The Vietnam War on Trial by
The military trial of William Calley for his role in the slaughter of five hundred or more Vietnamese civilians at My Lai shocked a nation already sharply divided over a controversial war. In this superb retelling of the My Lai story through the prism of the law, Michal Belknap provides new perspectives and keen insights into core issues about the war that still divide Americans today. One of the most highly publicized trials of its day, the Calley case emerged at a time when protests against the war were growing larger, louder, and more intense. Well aware of this, the Nixon administration sought to downplay the My Lai incident, which military officers in Vietnam had tried to cover up in order to protect their own careers and reputations. It might never have come to light had it not been for the efforts of Vietnam veteran Ron Ridenhour and journalist Seymour Hersh. Their investigations revealed the full extent of the My Lai tragedy, further inflamed the antiwar movement, and brought to trial Lieutenant William Calley. Unfolding the Calley case step by step, Belknap shows how our system of military justice actually works. His dramatic reenactment takes readers through every stage of the trial, from pre-trial investigations to actual courtroom exchanges among prosecutors, defenders, witnesses, and judges. In the process, he reveals how a court-martial conducted within the public eye transformed a purely legal proceeding into a political debate about the conduct of the war. Calley's trial clearly demonstrated both how deeply the Vietnam War had divided our nation and how difficult it was for any court to deliver justice under such intense media coverage. Scrupulously fair to all parties involved, Belknap portrays Calley as both criminal and victim-guilty of the crimes of which he stood accused, but also an unintended scapegoat of the American military machine. His court-martial, for hawks and doves alike, epitomized all that was wrong with our involvement in Vietnam. By reopening the Calley case, Belknap helps a new generation of readers better understand why the Vietnam War was so controversial and damaging to national unity. His book, however, also provides insights that apply well beyond events of a particular war, suggesting that the grim lessons of My Lai will continue to shadow the conduct of America's present and future wars.
Red Thunder Tropic Lightning by
"Extraordinary...recreates the Vietnam experience in visceral terms."--Col. Harry G. Sumniers, Jr., editor, Vietnam magazine.
Hue 1968 by
ALos Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction The first battle book from Mark Bowden since his #1New York Times bestsellerBlack Hawk Down,Hue 1968 is the story of the centerpiece of the Tet Offensive and a turning point in the American War in Vietnam.In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam's intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours theentire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the Front's presence, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city, block by block and building by building, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave.Hue 1968 is a gripping and moving account of this pivotal moment.
Westmoreland's War by
General William C. Westmoreland has long been derided for his failed strategy of "attrition" in the Vietnam War. Historians have argued that Westmoreland's strategy placed a premium on high "body counts" through a "big unit war" that relied almost solely on search and destroy missions. Manybelieve the U.S. Army failed in Vietnam because of Westmoreland's misguided and narrow strategy.In a groundbreaking reassessment of American military strategy in Vietnam, Gregory Daddis overturns conventional wisdom and shows how Westmoreland did indeed develop a comprehensive campaign which included counterinsurgency, civic action, and the importance of gaining political support from theSouth Vietnamese population. Exploring the realities of a large, yet not wholly unconventional environment, Daddis reinterprets the complex political and military battlefields of Vietnam. Without searching for blame, he analyzes how American civil and military leaders developed strategy and howWestmoreland attempted to implement a sweeping strategic vision.Westmoreland's War is a landmark reinterpretation of one of America's most divisive wars, outlining the multiple, interconnected aspects of American military strategy in Vietnam - combat operations, pacification, nation building, and the training of the South Vietnamese armed forces. Daddis offers acritical reassessment of one of the defining moments in American history.
Pacification by
During the Vietnam War, the United States embarked on an unusual crusade on behalf of the government of South Vietnam. Known as the pacification program, it sought to help South Vietnam's government take root and survive as an independent, legitimate entity by defeating communist insurgents and promoting economic development and political reforms. In this book, Richard Hunt provides the first comprehensive history of America's "battle for hearts and minds," the distinctive blending of military and political approaches that took aim at the essence of the struggle between North and South Vietnam.Hunt concentrates on the American role, setting pacification in the larger political context of nation building. He describes the search for the best combination of military and political action, incorporating analysis of the controversial Phoenix program, and illuminates the difficulties the Americans encountered with their sometimes reluctant ally. The author explains how hard it was to get the U.S. Army involved in pacification and shows the struggle to yoke divergent organizations (military, civilian, and intelligence agencies) to serve one common goal. The greatest challenge of all was to persuade a surrogate--the Saigon government--to carry out programs and to make reforms conceived of by American officials.The book concludes with a careful assessment of pacification's successes and failures. Would the Saigon government have flourished if there had been more time to consolidate the gains of pacification? Or was the regime so fundamentally flawed that its demise was preordained by its internal contradictions? This pathbreaking book offers startling and provocative answers to these and other important questions about our Vietnam experience.
Vietnam Shadows by
Nearly a quarter-century after the fall of Saigon, the memory of America's defeat in Vietnam continues to haunt the national psyche. In Vietnam Shadows, former war correspondent Arnold Isaacs turns his reportorial eye to the conflict since Vietnam, covering the skirmishes and firefights of a cultural battle -- some would say stalemate -- that refuses to end. Isaacs takes on the popular myths and misconceptions about Vietnam -- among them the mistaken belief that the U.S. military lacked clear goals. ("In many conversations with U.S. officers in Vietnam, I do not recall discovering any who were in doubt about what they were supposed to do there.") He exposes the myth of the MIAs -- a myth sustained not only by grieving relatives but also by professional con men of breathtaking cynicism -- and shows how the many false MIA stories may nonetheless reveal a deeper truth: "We lost something in Vietnam and we want it back." Isaacs talks to the veterans unable to forget the war no one wanted to talk to them about. He explores the class divisions deepened by a conflict in which the privileged avoided service that an earlier generation had embraced as a duty. (691 Harvard alumni died in World War II, Isaacs points out; in Vietnam, nineteen.) And he shows how the "Vietnam Syndrome" continues to affect nearly every major U.S. foreign policy decision, from the Persian Gulf to Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti. Capturing the ironic legacies of a war that abounds in them, Isaacs introduces the "new Americans" -- the Vietnamese, Thais, and Cambodians -- who fled Indochina to settle in the U.S., where fashion spreads in the New York Times Magazine feature models photographed in Vietnamese settings wearing "Indo-chic clothes" that sell for four to five years' income for the average Vietnamese. ("Farm girl's jacket in 'periwinkle blue' raw silk: $1,460 by Richard Tyler.") And he recounts the experiences of Americans who have returned to Vietnam, only to find their former enemies turned entrepreneurs -- such as the operators of a popular Saigon bar called Apocalypse Now. Isaacs reports and writes for those whose lives were changed by the war and also for a generation that has come of age without memory of Vietnam but who nonetheless feels its shadow in the country they soon will lead.
Inside the VC and the NVA by
If the costs of the Vietnam War were great to Americans and staggering to the South Vietnamese, they were even worse for the North. And those costs were borne largely by the individual soldiers--the soldiers who won the war. Based on interviews, soldiers' diaries, letters, and government documents, this book, first published in 1992, gives a classic, soldier's-eye account of the war our opponents fought and the men who fought it.
Dereliction of Duty by
"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C." --H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion) Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. McMaster pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants. A page-turning narrative, Dereliction Of Duty focuses on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress and the American public. McMaster's only book, Dereliction of Duty is an explosive and authoritative new look at the controversy concerning the United States involvement in Vietnam.
The 11 Days of Christmas by
By December 1972, the Paris Peace Talks to end the Vietnam War had fallen apart. With Congress preparing to cut off all funding for the war, President Richard Nixon had to act quickly to pressure the North Vietnamese into signing a peace agreement. He ordered the massive bombing of Hanoi for the first time by America's big stick, the Strategic Air Command's B-52s. But instead of being overwhelmed, the North Vietnamese SAM missile crews initially shattered the B-52 force. For eleven days the air battle swung back and forth, moving from what appeared to be a certain U.S. victory, to what appeared to be a North Vietnamese victory to the ultimate ambiguous denouement. Marshall Michel has used hundreds of formerly classified documents from both American and Vietnamese archives and interviews with dozens of Americans and Vietnamese who participated at all levels to tell, for the first time, the dramatic story of this critical battle in the war. Moving from the White House to the B-52 cockpits to the missile sites and POW camps of Hanoi, "The Eleven Days of Christmas" is a gripping tale of heroism and incompetence in a battle whose political and military legacy is still a matter of controversy.
Hanoi's War by
While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of U.S. involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the reader from the marshy swamps of the Mekong Delta to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow, all to reveal that peace never had a chance in Vietnam. Hanoi's War renders transparent the internal workings of America's most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and much more wide ranging than it had been previously. Using never-before-seen archival materials from the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as materials from other archives around the world, Nguyen explores the politics of war-making and peace-making not only from the North Vietnamese perspective but also from that of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States, presenting a uniquely international portrait.
The Combined Action Platoons by
This is the first comprehensive history for the academic reader of the Combined Action Program (CAP) in Vietnam. Created as a response by the U.S. Marines to what was known as the other war in Vietnam, the CAP Program was comprised of platoons each combining a fourteen man marine rifle squad, a navy corpsman, and a platoon of South Vietnamese militia. These CAP units were unique to the war. Their function was to capture and hold rather than to search and destroy. While the main forces of the Army and Marines all too often waged war on the Vietnamese hamlets, the CAP marines waged war from the hamlets. Their intent was to keep the hamlet intact. The uniqueness of the CAP Program justifies this study not only from an historical and political perspective but also sociologically. The CAP Marines were among the few Americans who lived with the Vietnamese in their own setting for long periods of time, developing community projects and civic action programs. The 1980s has brought about a resurgence of valuable research, the declassification of official documentation, and most important, an emotional distance from the trauma of defeat. The author takes full advantage of these conditions to present a thorough and comprehensive history and civic program analysis. Many critics of the Vietnam War now agree that the tactics of the Combined Action Program were among the most promising of the war. The CAP Marines fought a deadly and personal war with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. In this volume, the author achieves his twofold objective. He not only provides a valuable historical account of the Program, but also analyzes the civic action and community development projects undertaken by the CAP Marines. His study is done with an eye to the future as U.S. counterinsurgency has again found expression in other Third World conflicts.
The Blood Road by
"Enormously illuminating. . . . John Prados can lead a reader, from the battle buff to the expert, through the series of campaigns near the DMZ and along Route 9 better than any other author I have read. . . . His understanding of the decision-making process in Hanoi is nuanced and sophisticated. . . . A first-rate book from a first-rate scholar." Robert K. Brigham, Vassar College "The most comprehensive treatment yet of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and its place in the war." Washington Post "An excellent book about one of the most important facets of the Vietnam War. . . . From now on it will be irresponsible for any Vietnam War scholar to deal with the strategy for this still controversial conflict without referring to The Blood Road, a thoughtful, painstakingly researched book." The Quarterly Journal of Military History "A valuable work of interest to all scholars of the Vietnam War." Journal of Military History Could the United States have won the Vietnam War if it had been able to cut off the Viet Cong from their North Vietnamese support by severing the Ho Chi Minh Trail? Acclaimed historian John Prados tackles this crucial question in this elegant, unprecedented, and exciting work of historical scholarship. Aided by recently declassified government documents and previously unavailable oral histories, memoirs, and interviews, Prados explores all sides of the conflict, providing details of the action in Hanoi and North Vietnam and avoiding the narrowly focused battle histories, atomized individual accounts, and overly generalized visions dominating previous histories. A History Book Club Selection
Valley of Decision by
The definitive history of one of the most pivotal and bloody battles of the Vietnam War.
A Bright Shining Lie by
Fourteen years in the making, this story of a man and a war is so mesmerizing and monumentalze winner, is scheduled to appear on Good Morning America this fall. The New Yorker will feature this book in three installments this summer. 16 pages of photos, maps.
The Pentagon Papers as published by the New York Times by
The Truman and Eisenhower years, 1945-1960 / by Fox Butterfield -- Origins of the insurgency in South Vietnam -- The Kennedy years, 1961-1963 / by Fox Butterfield -- The overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, May-November, 1963 / by Hedrick Smith -- The covert war and Tonkin Gulf, February-August, 1964 / by Hedrick Smith -- The consensus to bomb North Vietnam, August, 1964-February, 1965 / by Neil Sheehan -- The launching of the ground war, March-July, 1965 / by Neil Sheehan -- The buildup, July, 1965-September, 1966 / by Fox Butterfield -- Secretary McNamara's disenchantment, October, 1966-May, 1967 / by Hedrick Smith -- The Tet offensive and the turnaround / by E. W. Kentworthy -- Appendix 1: Analysis and comment -- The lessons of Vietnam / by Max Frankel -- Editorials from the New York Times -- Appendix 2: Court records -- Appendix 3: Biographies of key figures.
A Better War by
Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years of conflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not only about how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawing from thousands of hours of previously unavailable (and still classified) tape-recorded meetings between the highest levels of the American military command in Vietnam, A Better War is an insightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these final years. Through his exclusive access to authoritative materials, award-winning historian Lewis Sorley highlights the dramatic differences in conception, conduct, and-at least for a time-results between the early and later years of the war. Among his most important findings is that while the war was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress, the soldiers were winning on the ground. Meticulously researched and movingly told, A Better War sheds new light on the Vietnam War.
Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land by
Fifteen renowned authors from widely varied backgrounds examine the Vietnam War, providing a fresh insight into this controversial conflict, even for those who have 'read it all before'. First-hand accounts, maps and contemporary photographs, analysis from the soldiers involved and new perspectives from combatants on both sides provide an incisive investigation into a fascinating and terrible war.
Vietnam War Almanac by
With more than 58,000 casualties and 300,000 wounded, at a cost of more than $130 billion, the Vietnam War became one of the most divisive conflicts in American history. The scars left by the war can still be felt today, making it crucial that we have the facts about this watershed event. Vietnam War Almanac contains a chronological history of the war in Vietnam, with day-by-day listings of the war on the ground, in the air, and at sea; international and U.S. events; and a biographical dictionary of major military and civilian figures. It may be impossible to fully understand such a complicated and horrible struggle, but for the families of veterans and for historians, the thorough presentation here, along with its extensive bibliography and index, is an excellent place to start. Coverage here includes: * The Tet Offensive * Walter L. Cronkite * The Battle of Dien Bien Phu * Vo Nguyen Giap * Ngo Dinh Diem * The Battle of Ia Drang Valley * Robert S. McNamara * The Battle of Hamburger Hill * Abbie Hoffman * The Battle of An Loc * And much more President Nixon claimed that the war was "misreported then, and it is misremembered now." This almanac will ensure that it is remembered correctly.
