Originally published in 1998 by the U.S. Army Center of Military History "Combat Operations: Taking the Offensive" chronicles the onset of offensive operations by the U.S. Army after eighteen months of building up a credible force on the ground in South Vietnam and taking the first steps toward bringing the war to the enemy. The compelling story by George L. MacGarrigle begins in October 1966, when General William C. Westmoreland believed that he had the arms and men to take the initiative from the enemy and that significant progress would be made on all fronts over the next twelve months. Aware of American intentions, North Vietnam undertook a prolonged war of attrition and stepped up the infiltration of its own troops into the South. While the insurgency in the South remained the cornerstone of Communist strategy, it was increasingly overshadowed by main-force military operations. These circumstances, according to MacGarrigle, set the stage for intensified combat. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units retained the advantage, fighting only when it suited their purposes and retreating with impunity into inviolate sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. With Westmoreland feeling hamstrung by political constraints on his ability to wage war in the vast hostile areas along the border, 1967 ended with a growing uncertainty in the struggle to secure the countryside. Relying on official American and enemy primary sources, MacGarrigle has crafted a well-balanced account of this year of intense combat. His volume is a tribute to those who sacrificed so much in a long and irresolute conflict, and soldiers engaged in military operations that place great demands on their initiative, skill, and devotion will find its thought-provoking lessons worthy of reflection.

Nearly 50 years after Japan's attack, this text takes a fresh look at the air raid that plunged America into World War II. Michael Slackman scrutinizes the decisions and attitudes that prompted the attack and left the US unprepared to mount a successful defence.

By 1969, the Sikorski H-34 was an older helicopter with severe limitations for combat duty in Vietnam. For pilots like U.S. Marine Lieutenant Rick Gehweiler, the good news was it could still take significant damage and keep flying. His vivid memoir narrates his harrowing, at times deadly flight missions under fire, as experienced in the cockpit, along with anecdotes of tragedy and humor from his 13-month tour through Da Nang and Phu Bai.

To grasp the complicated causes and consequences of the Vietnam War, one must understand the extraordinary life of Ho Chi Minh, the man generally recognized as the father of modern Vietnam. Duiker provides startling insights into Ho's true motivation, as well as into the Soviet and Chinese roles in the Vietnam War.

Wanted: Volunteers for Project Delta. Will guarantee you a medal. A body bag. Or both. When Charlie Beckwith issued this call to arms in Vietnam in 1965, he revolutionized American armed combat. This is the story of what would eventually come to be known as Delta Force, as only its maverick creator could tell it - from the bloody baptism of Vietnam to the top-secret training grounds of North Carolina to political battles in the upper levels of the Pentagon itself. This is the heart-pounding, first-person, insider's view of the missions that made Delta Force legendary. Through it all, the reader will become much better acquainted with America's deadliest weapon.

Originally issued in 1981 by the U.S. Office of Air Force History. Profusely illustrated with maps, charts and photographs throughout. An innovative adaptation of existing aircraft, the gunship was used to interdict enemy reinforcements and protect friendly villages, bases, and forces, especially at night. Ballard's book describes how the fixed-wing gunship evolved from a modified cargo aircraft to a sophisticated weapons system with considerable firepower. The author highlights the tactics, key decisions, and the constant need for adaptation.

The legacy and memory of wartime South Vietnam through the eyes of Vietnamese refugees In 1975, South Vietnam fell to communism, marking a stunning conclusion to the Vietnam War. Although this former ally of the United States has vanished from the world map, Long T. Bui maintains that its memory endures for refugees with a strong attachment to this ghost country. Blending ethnography with oral history, archival research, and cultural analysis, Returns of War considers Returns of War argues that Vietnamization--as Richard Nixon termed it in 1969--and the end of South Vietnam signals more than an example of flawed American military strategy, but a larger allegory of power, providing cover for U.S. imperial losses while denoting the inability of the (South) Vietnamese and other colonized nations to become independent, modern liberal subjects. Bui argues that the collapse of South Vietnam under Vietnamization complicates the already difficult memory of the Vietnam War, pushing for a critical understanding of South Vietnamese agency beyond their status as the war's ultimate "losers." Examining the lasting impact of Cold War military policy and culture upon the "Vietnamized" afterlife of war, this book weaves questions of national identity, sovereignty, and self-determination to consider the generative possibilities of theorizing South Vietnam as an incomplete, ongoing search for political and personal freedom.

Of all of the wars in which the U.S. has been engaged, none has been as divisive as the conflict in Vietnam. The repercussions of this unsettling episode in American history still resonate in our society. Although it ended more than 30 years ago, the Vietnam War continues to fascinate and trouble Americans. The third edition of Light at the End of the Tunnel gives a full overview of the conflict. Starting with Ho Chi Minh's revolt against the French, editor Andrew J. Rotter takes the reader through the succeeding years as scholars, government officials, journalists, and others recount the important events in the conflict and examine issues that developed during this tumultuous time. This book is essential reading for anyone who has an interest in understanding the Vietnam War. The readings in it will enlighten students about this turning point in the history of the United States and the world. The third edition includes greater coverage of the Vietnamese experience of the war and reflects the growing interest in understanding the war as an international event, not just a bilateral or trilateral conflict.

The true story of the fierce band of women who battled Washington - and Hanoi - to bring their husbands home from the jungles of Vietnam. On 12 February, 1973, one hundred and sixteen men who, just six years earlier, had been high flying Navy and Air Force pilots, shuffled, limped, or were carried off a huge military transport plane at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. These American servicemen had endured years of brutal torture, kept shackled and starving in solitary confinement, in rat-infested, mosquito-laden prisons, the worst of which was The Hanoi Hilton. Months later, the first Vietnam POWs to return home would learn that their rescuers were their wives, a group of women that included Jane Denton, Sybil Stockdale, Louise Mulligan, Andrea Rander, Phyllis Galanti, and Helene Knapp. These women, who formed The National League of Families, would never have called themselves 'feminists', but they had become the POW and MIAs most fervent advocates, going to extraordinary lengths to facilitate their husbands' freedom - and to account for missing military men - by relentlessly lobbying government leaders, conducting a savvy media campaign, conducting covert meetings with antiwar activists, and most astonishingly, helping to code secret letters to their imprisoned husbands. In a page-turning work of narrative non-fiction, Heath Hardage Lee tells the story of these remarkable women for the first time. The League of Wives is certain to be on everyone's must-read list.

In Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, accomplished foreign relations historian David F. Shmitz provides students of US history and the Vietnam era with an up-to-date analysis of Nixon's Vietnam policy in a brief and accessible book that addresses the main controversies of the Nixon years. President Richard Nixon's first presidential term oversaw the definitive crucible of the Vietnam War. Nixon came into office seeking the kind of decisive victory that had eluded President Johnson, and went about expanding the war, overtly and covertly, in order to uphold a policy of "containment," protect America's credibility, and defy the left's antiwar movement at home. Tactically, politically, Nixon's moves made sense. However, by 1971 the president was forced to significantly de-escalate the American presence and seek a negotiated end to the war, which is now accepted as an American defeat, and a resounding failure of American foreign relations. Schmitz addresses the main controversies of Nixon's Vietnam strategy, and in so doing manages to trace back the ways in which this most calculating and perceptive politician wound up resigning from office a fraud and failure. Finally, the book seeks to place the impact of Nixon's policies and decisions in the larger context of post-World War II American society, and analyzes the full costs of the Vietnam War that the nation feels to this day.

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A Companion to the Vietnam War "contains twenty-four definitive essays on America's longest and most divisive foreign conflict. It represents the best current scholarship on this controversial and influential episode in modern American history.
Highlights issues of nationalism, culture, gender, and race.
Covers the breadth of Vietnam War history, including American war policies, the Vietnamese perspective, the antiwar movement, and the American home front.
Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
Includes a select bibliography to guide further research.

A New York Times bestseller, The Conquerors reveals how Franklin Roosevelt's and Harry Truman's private struggles with their aides and Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin affected the unfolding of the Holocaust and the fate of vanquished Nazi Germany.

With monumental fairness and balance, The Conquerors shows how Roosevelt privately refused desperate pleas to speak out directly against the Holocaust, to save Jewish refugees and to explore the possible bombing of Auschwitz to stop the killing. The book also shows FDR's fierce will to ensure that Germany would never threaten the world again. Near the end of World War II, he abruptly endorsed the secret plan of his friend, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, to reduce the Germans to a primitive existence -- despite Churchill's fear that crushing postwar Germany would let the Soviets conquer the continent. The book finally shows how, after FDR's death, President Truman rebelled against Roosevelt's tough approach and adopted the Marshall Plan and other more conciliatory policies that culminated in today's democratic, united Europe.

He was Born in New Jersey in 1933 and only dreamed of being a military man. Marrying shortly after high school, he joined the army in 1956 and was dispatched to Vietnam in 1963 when America still seemed innocent. Jim Thompson would have led a perfectly ordinary, undistinguished life had he not been captured four months later, becoming the first American prisoner in Vietnam and, ultimately, the longest-held prisoner of war in American history. Forgotten Soldier is Thompson's epic story, a remarkable reconstruction of one man's life and a searing account that questions who is a real American hero. Examining the lives of Thompson's family on the home front, as well as his brutal treatment and five escape attempts in Vietnam, military journalist Tom Philpott weaves an extraordinary tale, showing how the American government intentionally suppressed Thompson's story.

An intimate portrait of the first president of the 20th century
The American century opened with the election of that quintessentially American adventurer, Theodore Roosevelt. Louis Auchincloss's warm and knowing biography introduces us to the man behind the many myths of Theodore Roosevelt. From his early involvement in the politics of New York City and then New York State, we trace his celebrated military career and finally his ascent to the national political stage. Caricatured through history as the "bull moose," Roosevelt was in fact a man of extraordinary discipline whose refined and literate tastes actually helped spawn his fascination with the rough-and-ready worlds of war and wilderness.
Bringing all his novelist's skills to the task, Auchincloss briskly recounts the significant contributions of Roosevelt's career and administration. This biography is as thorough as it is readable, as clear-eyed as it is touching and personal.

The Air War in Vietnam is a deep dive into the effectiveness of air power during the Vietnam War, offering particular evaluation of the extent to which air operations fulfilled national policy objectives. Built from exhaustive research into previously classified and little-known archival sources, Michael Weaver insightfully blends new sources with material from the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States Series. While Air Force sources from the lion's share of the documentary evidence, Weaver also makes heavy use of Navy and Marine materials. Breaking air power into six different mission sets--air superiority, aerial refueling, airlift, close air support, reconnaissance, and coercion & interdiction--Weaver assesses the effectiveness of each of these endeavors from the tactical level of war and adherence to US policy goals. Critically, The Air War in Vietnam perceives of the air campaign as a siege of North Vietnam. While American air forces completed most of their air campaigns successfully on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, what resulted was not a failure in air power, but a failure in the waging of war as a whole. The Air War in Vietnam tackles controversies and unearths new evidence, rendering verdicts both critical and positive, arguing that war, however it is waged, is ultimately effective only when it achieves a country's policy objectives.

This book examines the critical role of desertion in the international Vietnam War debate. Paul Benedikt Glatz traces American deserters' odyssey of exile and activism in Europe, Japan, and North America to demonstrate how unprecedented levels of desertion in the US military changed the traditional image of the deserter.