Finalist for the 1971 National Book Award

In early 1968, Communist forces in Vietnam launched a surprise offensive that targeted nearly every city, town, and major military base throughout South Vietnam. For several hours, the U.S. embassy in Saigon itself came under siege by Viet Cong soldiers. Militarily, the offensive was a failure, as the North Vietnamese Army and its guerrilla allies in the south suffered devastating losses. Politically, however, it proved to be a crucial turning point in America's involvement in Southeast Asia and public opinion of the war. In this classic work of military history and war reportage--long considered the definitive history of Tet and its aftermath--Don Oberdorfer moves back and forth between the war and the home front to document the lasting importance of this military action. Based on his own observations as a correspondent for the "Washington Post" and interviews with hundreds of people who were caught up in the struggle, "Tet " remains an essential contribution to our understanding of the Vietnam War.

With the planned withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the longest conflicts in our nation's history were supposed to end. Yet we remain at war against expanding terrorist movements, and our security forces have had to continually adapt to a nihilistic foe that operates in the shadows.The result of fifteen years of reporting, Twilight Warriors is the untold story of the tight-knit brotherhood that changed the way America fights. James Kitfield reveals how brilliant innovators in the US military, Special Forces, and the intelligence and law enforcement communities forged close operational bonds in the crucibles of Iraq and Afghanistan, breaking down institutional barriers to create a relentless, intelligence-driven style of operations. At the forefront of this profound shift were Stanley McChrystal and his interagency team at Joint Special Operations Command, the pioneers behind a hybrid method of warfighting: find, fix, finish, exploit, and analyze. Other key figures include Michael Flynn, the visionary who redefined the intelligence gathering mission the FBI's Brian McCauley, who used serial-killer profilers to track suicide bombers in Afghanistan and the Delta Force commander Scott Miller, responsible for making team players out of the US military's most elite and secretive counterterrorism units. The result of their collaborations is a globe-spanning network that is elegant in its simplicity and terrifying in its lethality. As Kitfield argues, this style of operations represents our best hope for defending the nation in an age of asymmetric warfare. Twilight Warriors is an unprecedented account of the American way of war,and the iconoclasts who have brought it into the twenty-first century.

Efforts to understand the impact of the Vietnam War on America began soon after it ended, and they continue to the present day. In "After Vietnam" four distinguished scholars focus on different elements of the war's legacy, while one of the major architects of the conflict, former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara, contributes a final chapter pondering foreign policy issues of the twenty-first century.

In the book's opening chapter, Charles E. Neu explains how the Vietnam War changed Americans' sense of themselves: challenging widely-held national myths, the war brought frustration, disillusionment, and a weakening of Americans' sense of their past and vision for the future. Brian Balogh argues that Vietnam became such a powerful metaphor for turmoil and decline that it obscured other forces that brought about fundamental changes in government and society. George C. Herring examines the postwar American military, which became nearly obsessed with preventing "another Vietnam." Robert K. Brigham explores the effects of the war on the Vietnamese, as aging revolutionary leaders relied on appeals to "revolutionary heroism" to justify the communist party's monopoly on political power. Finally, Robert S. McNamara, aware of the magnitude of his errors and burdened by the war's destructiveness, draws lessons from his experience with the aim of preventing wars in the future.

This concluding volume of The Vietnam War and International Law focuses on the last stages of America's combat role in Indochina. The articles in the first section deal with general aspects of the relationship of international law to the Indochina War. Sections II and III are concerned with the adequacy of the laws of war under modern conditions of combat, and with related questions of individual responsibility for the violation of such laws. Section IV deals with some of the procedural issues related to the negotiated settlement of the war. The materials in Section V seek to reappraise the relationship between the constitutional structure of the United States and the way in which the war was conducted, while the final section presents the major documents pertaining to the end of American combat involvement in Indochina. A supplement takes account of the surrender of South Vietnam in spring 1975. Contributors to the volume--lawyers, scholars, and government officials--include Dean Rusk, Eugene V. Rostow, Richard A. Falk, John Norton Moore, and Richard Wasserstrom. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

THE GRIPPING FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT OF BIN LADEN'S EXECUTION For the first time, read the first-hand account of the planning and execution of the extraordinary mission to kill the terrorist mastermind. No Easy Day puts readers inside the elite, handpicked twenty-four-man team known as SEAL Team Six as they train for the most important mission of their lives. From the crash of the Black Hawk helicopter that threatened the mission with disaster, to the radio call confirming their target was dead, the SEAL team raid on bin Laden's secret HQ is recounted in nail-biting second-by-second detail. Team leader Mark Owen takes readers behind enemy lines with one of the world's most astonishing fighting forces, in the only insider's account of their most spectacular mission. 'No Easy Day amounts to a cinematic account of the raid to kill Bin Laden: you feel as if you're sitting in the Black Hawk as it swoops in' NY Times 'A blistering first-hand account' The Sun

Issues of the war that have provoked public controversy and legal debate over the last two years--the Cambodian invasion of May-June 1970, the disclosure in November 1969 of the My Lai massacre, and the question of war crimes--are the focus of Volume 3. As in the previous volumes, the Civil War Panel of the American Society of International Law has endeavored to select the most significant legal writing on the subject and to provide, to the extent possible, a balanced presentation of opposing points of view. Parts I and II deal directly with the Cambodian, My Lai, and war crimes debates. Related questions are treated in the rest of the volume: constitutional debate on the war; the distribution of functions among coordinate branches of the government; the legal status of the insurgent regime in the struggle for control of South Vietnam; prospects for settlement without a clear-cut victory; and Vietnam's role in general world order. The articles reflect the views of some forty contributors: among them, Jean Lacouture, Henry Kissinger, John Norton Moore, Quincy Wright, William H. Rhenquist, and Richard A. Falk. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This concluding volume of The Vietnam War and International Law focuses on the last stages of America's combat role in Indochina. The articles in the first section deal with general aspects of the relationship of international law to the Indochina War. Sections II and III are concerned with the adequacy of the laws of war under modern conditions of combat, and with related questions of individual responsibility for the violation of such laws. Section IV deals with some of the procedural issues related to the negotiated settlement of the war. The materials in Section V seek to reappraise the relationship between the constitutional structure of the United States and the way in which the war was conducted, while the final section presents the major documents pertaining to the end of American combat involvement in Indochina. A supplement takes account of the surrender of South Vietnam in spring 1975. Contributors to the volume--lawyers, scholars, and government officials--include Dean Rusk, Eugene V. Rostow, Richard A. Falk, John Norton Moore, and Richard Wasserstrom. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In the tradition of his Silent Night and Pearl Harbor Christmas , historian Stanley Weintraub presents another gripping narrative of a wartime Christmas season- the epic story of the 1950 holiday season in Korea, when American troops faced extreme cold, a determined enemy, and long odds. A Military Book Club main selection

Under the blazing Iraqi sun in the summer of 2007, Shannon Meehan, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, ordered a strike that would take the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was protecting his men. He thought that he would only kill the enemy, but in the ruins of the strike, he discovers his mistake and uncovers a tragedy.

For most of his deployment in Iraq, Lt. Meehan felt that he had been made for a life in the military. A tank commander, he worked in the violent Diyala Province, successfully fighting the insurgency by various Sunni and Shia factions. He was celebrated by his senior officers and decorated with medals. But when the U.S. surge to retake Iraq in 2006 and 2007 finally pushed into Baqubah, a town virtually entirely controlled by al Qaida, Meehan would make the decision that would change his life. This is the true story of one soldier's attempt to reconcile what he has done with what he felt he had to do. Stark and devastating, it recounts first-hand the reality of a new type of warfare that remains largely unspoken and forgotten on the frontlines of Iraq.

Owen W. Gilman Jr. stresses the US experience of war in the twenty-first century and argues that wherever and whenever there is war, there will be imaginative responses to it, especially the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since the trauma of September 11, the experience of Americans at war has been rendered honestly and fully in a wide range of texts--creative nonfiction and journalism, film, poetry, and fiction. These responses, Gilman contends, have packed a lot of power and measure up even to World War II's literature and film. Like few other books, Gilman's volume studies these new texts-- among them Kevin Powers's debut novel The Yellow Birds and Phil Klay's short stories Redeployment, along with the films The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. For perspective, Gilman also looks at some touchstones from the Vietnam War. Compared to a few of the big Vietnam books and films, this new material has mostly been read and watched by small audiences and generated less discussion. Gilman exposes the circumstances in American culture currently preventing literature and film of our recent wars from making a significant impact. He contends that Americans' inclination to demand distraction limits learning from these compelling responses to war in the past decade. According to Gilman, where there should be clarity and depth of knowledge, we instead face misunderstanding and the anguish endured by veterans betrayed by war and our lack of understanding.

Drawing on a wide range of Vietnamese-language sources, the author presents a detailed account of the continuing efforts of North Vietnam to invade the South, enlivened by a large number of previously unpublished photographs, and colour profiles for modellers. A year after the Paris peace accord had been signed, on 17 January 1973, peace had not been settled in Vietnam. During that period, the North Vietnamese continued their attacks now that the United States had pulled out completely their forces, with the definitive conquest of South Vietnam as the goal. The South Vietnamese forces' erosion on the field increased in face of a series of concerted North Vietnamese offensives at Corps level. The drastic American aid reduction began to impact heavily on the South Vietnamese ability to wage war. Equally, Saigon could not respond to a Chinese invasion of the Paracel Islands after a brief naval battle, and if Hanoi had been bolstered by massive deliveries of equipment from Peking and Moscow, both the Chinese and the Soviet had withheld the delivery of sufficient ammunitions for the artillery and the tanks, to deter the North Vietnamese from attempting a new widescale offensive against the South. It was with these constraints that the North Vietnamese leadership planned their new campaign, initially expecting it to take 2 to 3 years. A last test had to be done in order to assess the American intentions in case of an all-out North Vietnamese offensive against the South - if a South Vietnamese provincial capital was taken without American reaction, then Hanoi would begin the last campaign of the war. After the fall of Phuoc Long, the North Vietnamese decided to attack the strategic Central Highlands area where they hoped to destroy the greater part of an ARVN Corps. The battle of Ban Me Thuout would be the pivotal event leading to the rapid collapse of South Vietnam. While the battle was going on, without taking advices from his generals, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam decided to take radical measures by redeploying his forces. That meant abandoning no less than half of the country, in order to shorter his logistic communication lines and to concentrate his remaining depleted forces around Saigon and the Mekong Delta area. He probably also hoped that by aggravating the military situation he would force Washington to fulfil its promise that "in case of massive violation of the cease-fire", the Americans would resume their military aid and would send back the B-52s.

Early in the morning of 2 August 1990, aircraft of the Iraqi Air Force bombed Kuwaiti air bases, and then the Iraqi Republican Guards stormed into the country. Thus began what would be called the 'Gulf War' - also the 'II Gulf War', and sometimes the 'II Persian Gulf War' - fought between January and March 1991. Although encountering some problems, the Iraqi forces occupied Kuwait in a matter of few days. However, when President Saddam Hussein of Iraq unleashed his military upon Kuwait, little did he know what kind of reaction he would provoke from the Western superpowers, and what kind of devastation his country would suffer in return. Concerned about the possibility of Iraq continuing its advance into Saudi Arabia, the USA - in coordination with Great Britain, France, and several local allies - reacted by deploying large contingents of their air-, land- and naval forces to the Middle East. Months of fruitless negotiations and the continuous military build-up - Operation Desert Shield - followed, as tensions continued to increase. Determined to retain Kuwait, and despite multiple warnings from his own generals, Saddam Hussein rejected all demands to withdraw. The USA and its allies, 'the Coalition', were as determined to drive out the invader and restore Kuwaiti independence. Gradually, they agreed this would have to be by force. Following an authorisation from the United Nations, the Coalition launched the Operation Desert Storm, on 17 January 1991, opening one of the most intensive air campaigns in history. The last conventional war of the 20th Century saw the large, but essentially traditional, Iraqi Army overwhelmed by forces trained and equipped to exploit the latest technologies. Desert Storm reveals the whole war fought between Iraq and an international coalition, from the start of this campaign to its very end. Largely based on data released from official archives, spiced with numerous interviews, and illustrated with over 100 photographs, 18 colour profiles and maps, it offers a refreshing insight into this unique conflict.

Designed to counter the threat of a massed Soviet armored assault, the M50 Ontos showed its merit in the jungles and streets of Vietnam. Ontos grew out of Project Vista, the secret study of possible improvements to NATO defenses. Project Vista identified the need for an inexpensive, heavily armed "something" to thwart waves of Soviet armor. Armed with six powerful recoilless rifles, the diminutive M50 was given the name "Ontos," an Army mistranslation of Greek for "the Thing." Initially, the Army felt that the Allis-Chalmers T165E1 (later standardized as the M50) was the thing to fill the recommendation of Project Vista. Ultimately, and after some controversy, the Army lost interest in the vehicle, but the United States Marine Corps believed in the vehicle, and in 1955 the M50 entered production. While the Corps first used the Ontos in Santo Domingo in 1965, it would rise to fame in Vietnam, where the M50, as well as the modernized M50A1, saw considerable use as antipersonnel weapons and in perimeter defense. On the streets of Hue, Marines made considerable use of the Ontos, blasting open walls and using antipersonnel rounds to create faux smoke screens. Over 270 photos, many in color, chronicle the development, production, combat use, and details of this famed vehicle and the men who used them.

The indistinct status of the Zainichi has meant that, since the late 1940s, two ethnic Korean associations, the Chongryun (pro-North) and the Mindan (pro-South) have been vying for political loyalty from the Zainichi, with both groups initially opposing their assimilation in Japan. Unlike the Korean diasporas living in Russia, China or the US, the Zainichi have become sharply divided along political lines as a result. Myung Ja Kim examines Japan's changing national policies towards the Zainichi in order to understand why this group has not been fully integrated into Japan. Through the prism of this ethnically Korean community, the book reveals the dynamics of alliances and alignments in East Asia, including the rise of China as an economic superpower, the security threat posed by North Korea and the diminishing alliance between Japan and the US. Taking a post-war historical perspective, the research reveals why the Zainichi are vital to Japan's state policy revisionist aims to increase its power internationally and how they were used to increase the country's geopolitical leverage.With a focus on International Relations, this book provides an important analysis of the mechanisms that lie behind nation-building policy, showing the conditions controlling a host state's treatment of diasporic groups.

This is the story of modern Britain, focusing on twelve formative days in the history of the United Kingdom over the last five decades. By describing what happened on those days and the subsequent consequences, Andrew Hindmoor paints a suggestive - and to some perhaps provocative - portrait of what we have become and how we got here. Everyone will have their own list of the truly formative moments in British history over the last five decades. The twelve days selected for this book are: - The 28th of September 1976. The day Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan renounced Keynesian economics. - The 4th of May 1979. The day Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister. - The 3rd of March 1985. The day the miners' strike ended. - The 20th of September 1988. The day of Margaret Thatcher's 'Bruges speech'. - The 18th of May 1992. The day the television rights for the Premier League were sold to BskyB. - The 22nd of April 1993. The day that young black teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racist thugs. - The 10th April 1998. The day of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. - The 11th of September 2001. The day of the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. - The 5th of December 2004. The day Chris Cramp and Matthew Roche became the first gay couple in the UK to become civil partners under the Civil Partnership Act. - The 13th of September 2007. The day the BBC reported that the Northern Rock bank was in trouble. - The 8th of May 2009. The day The Daily Telegraph began to publish details of MPs' expense claims. - The 1st of February 2017. The day the House of Commons voted to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union.