The Vietnam War was one of America's longest, bloodiest, and most controversial wars. This volume examines the complexities of this protracted conflict and explains why the lessons learned in Vietnam are still highly relevant today. Vietnam War: The Essential Reference Guide provides a compendium of the key people, places, organizations, treaties, and events that make up the history of the war, explaining its causes, how it was conducted, and its far-reaching consequences. Written by recognized authorities, this ready-reference volume provides essential information all in one place and includes a comprehensive list of additional sources for further study. The work presents a detailed chronology that outlines the numerous battles and campaigns throughout the war, such as the Tet Offensive, the Battle of Hamburger Hill, Operation Rolling Thunder, and the Battle of Hue. Biographies on Lyndon Johnson, William Westmoreland, Robert McNamara, Ngo Dinh Diem, and other major political figures and military leaders provide insight into the individuals who played key roles in the conflict, while primary source documents such as President Nixon's speech on Vietnamization provide invaluable historical context. More than 45 contributors, including Robert K. Brigham, Cecil B. Currey, Arnold R. Isaacs, Lewis Sorley, Spencer C. Tucker, and David T. Zabecki Introductory essays provide a broad overview of the Vietnam War and help readers understand the causes and consequences of the conflict Maps depicting South Vietnam, infiltration routes, and key battles

Fire from the Sky is the first complete history of the most decorated Navy squadron of the Vietnam War. Richard C. Knott tells the dramatic history of the HAL-3 Seawolves, the U.S. Navy's first and only helicopter gunship squadron of the Vietnam War. The squadron was established "in country" to support the fast, pugnacious river patrol boats of the brown water navy. Flying combat-worn Hueys borrowed from the Army, the mission of the Seawolves quickly expanded to include rapid response air support to any friendly force in the Delta needing immediate assistance. The Seawolves inserted SEALs deep into enemy territory, and extracted them, often despite savage enemy opposition. They rescued friendly combatants from almost certain capture or death, and evacuated the wounded when Medevac helicopters were not available.

Frances FitzGerald's landmark history of Vietnam and the Vietnam War, "a compassionate and penetrating account of the collision of two societies that remain untranslatable to one another." (New York Times Book Review) This magisterial work, based on Frances FitzGerald's many years of research and travels, takes us inside the history of Vietnam -- the traditional, ancestor-worshiping villages, the conflicts between Communists and anti-Communists, Catholics and Buddhists, generals and monks, the disruption created by French colonialism, and America's ill-fated intervention -- and reveals the country as seen through Vietnamese eyes. Originally published in 1972, Fire in the Lake was the first history of Vietnam written by an American and won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award. With a clarity and insight unrivaled by any author before it or since, Frances FitzGerald illustrates how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam.

As the first book to call for an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, Howard Zinn's 'Vietnam' includes a powerful speech which he believed President Lyndon Johnson should have delivered to lay out the case for ending the war. Of the many books that challenged the Vietnam War, Howard Zinn's 'Vietnam' stands out as one of the greatest - and indeed the most influential. The writings in this book helped spark a national debate on the war; few aside from Zinn could reach so many with such passion and such conciseness.

The nationally recognized credit-by-exam DSST (R) program helps students earn college credits for learning acquired outside the traditional classroom such as; learning from on-the-job training, reading, or independent study. DSST (R) tests offer students a cost-effective, time-saving way to use the knowledge they've acquired outside of the classroom to accomplish their education goals. Peterson's (R) Master the (TM) DSST (R) A History of the Vietnam War Exam provides a general overview of the subjects students will encounter on the exam such as the roots of the Vietnam War, pre-War developments (1940-1955), American involvement in the War, Tet (1968), Cambodia, Laos and lessons following the War. This valuable resource includes: Diagnostic pre-test with detailed answer explanations Assessment Grid designed to help identify areas that need focus Subject Matter Review proving a general overview of the subjects, followed by a review of the relevant topics and terminology covered on the exam Post-test offering 60 questions all with detailed answer explanations Key information about the DSST (R) such as, what to expect on test day and how to register and prepare for the DSST (R)

History. Cartoons. Asian American Studies. Originally published in Japanese in San Francisco in 1931, "The Four Immigrants Manga" is Henry Kiyama's visual chronicle of his immigrant experience in the United States. Drawn in a classic gag-strip comic-book style, this heartfelt tale -- rediscovered, translated, and introduced by manga expert Frederick L. Schodt -- is a fascinating, entertaining depiction of early Asian American struggles.

This book recounts the experiences of a young US Marine officer during the Vietnam War as he fights that war over a nineteen month period in three different geographical areas of South Vietnam. He graphically explains to the reader what it was like to perform three distinct combat missions: long-range ground reconnaissance in the Annamite Mountains of I Corps, infantry operations in the rice paddies and mountains of Quang Nam Province, and special police operations for the CIA in Tay Ninh Province. The author describes in rich detail each of these distinct military activities and provides powerful and explicit examples of each. Using primary sources, such has US Marine Corps official unit histories, CIA documents, and his weekly letters home to his parents, the author relies almost exclusively on primary sources to convey to the reader a story that is devoid of hyperbole and focused on providing an accurate and honest account of combat at the small unit level. Of particular interest to students of the war is his description of his assignment to the CIA as a Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) advisor in Tay Ninh Province, where he participated in several secret missions as part of the controversial Phoenix Program. He also reveals the name and contribution of the CIA's most valuable spy during the war, the famous "Tay Ninh Source".

In 2012, President Obama announced that the United States would spend the next thirteen years - through November 11, 2025 - commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, and the American soldiers, "more than 58,000 patriots," who died in Vietnam. The fact that at least 2.1 million Vietnamese - soldiers, parents, grandparents, children - also died in that war will be largely unknown and entirely uncommemorated. And U.S. history barely stops to record the millions of Vietnamese who lived on after being displaced, tortured, maimed, raped, or born with birth defects, the result of devastating chemicals wreaked on the land by the U.S. military. The reason for this appalling disconnect of consciousness lies in an unremitting public relations campaign waged by top American politicians, military leaders, business people, and scholars who have spent the last sixty years justifying the U.S. presence in Vietnam. It is a campaign of patriotic conceit superbly chronicled by John Marciano in The American War in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration?A devastating follow-up to Marciano's 1979 classic Teaching the Vietnam War (written with William L. Griffen), Marciano's book seeks not to commemorate the Vietnam War, but to stop the ongoing U.S. war on actual history. Marciano reveals the grandiose flag-waving that stems from the "Noble Cause principle," the notion that America is "chosen by God" to bring democracy to the world. Marciano writes of the Noble Cause being invoked unsparingly by presidents - from Jimmy Carter, in his observation that, regarding Vietnam, "the destruction was mutual," to Barack Obama, who continues the flow of romantic media propaganda: "The United States of America ...will remain the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known."The result is critical writing and teaching at its best. This book will find a home in classrooms where teachers seek to do more than repeat the trite glorifications of U.S. empire. It will provide students everywhere with insights that can prepare them to change the world.

Speaking to an advisor in 1966 about America's escalation of forces in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara confessed: 'We've made mistakes in Vietnam ... I've made mistakes. But the mistakes I made are not the ones they say I made'. In 'I Made Mistakes', Aurelie Basha i Novosejt provides a fresh and controversial examination of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's decisions during the Vietnam War. Although McNamara is remembered as the architect of the Vietnam War, Novosejt draws on new sources - including the diaries of his advisor and confidant John T. McNaughton - to reveal a man who resisted the war more than most. As Secretary of Defense, he did not want the costs of the war associated with a new international commitment in Vietnam, but he sacrificed these misgivings to instead become the public face of the war out of a sense of loyalty to the President.

North and South Vietnamese youths had very different experiences of growing up during the Vietnamese War. The book gives a unique perspective on the conflict through the prism of adult-youth relations. By studying these relations, including educational systems, social organizations, and texts created by and for children during the war, Olga Dror analyzes how the two societies dealt with their wartime experience and strove to shape their futures. She examines the socialization and politicization of Vietnamese children and teenagers, contrasting the North's highly centralized agenda of indoctrination with the South, which had no such policy, and explores the results of these varied approaches. By considering the influence of Western culture on the youth of the South and of socialist culture on the youth of the North, we learn how the youth cultures of both Vietnams diverged from their prewar paths and from each other.

History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II.

This is the first history of the legendary US Army's HAWK missile system, the world's first mobile air-defense missile system, which saw service and combat around the world. Designed to counteract the threat posed by advanced 1950s Soviet-built aircraft, the first HAWK unit became operational in 1959. At its peak, it saw frontline service in the Far East, Panama, Europe, and in the Middle East. Units were also used during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War. In the hands of other nations, HAWK proved its efficacy in combat during the Arab-Israeli Wars, Iran-Iraq War, Chadian-Libyan War, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Credited with shooting down more than 100 aircraft during its combat career, the HAWK system was respected for its lethality. Such was Soviet concern, that the USSR developed electronic jammers, anti-radiation missiles, and other countermeasures specifically to degrade its effectiveness. The US retired its HAWK systems soon after the Cold War ended in 1991 when air defense priorities shifted from aircraft to ballistic missile defense, yet a modernized version of the system remains in service to this day in many nations. Packed with archive photos and original artwork, this is the first book about the HAWK system. Featuring research from HAWK technical and field manuals, interviews with HAWK veterans, and detailing the authors' personal experiences with HAWK missile units, it provides a comprehensive study of one of the most lethal and effective air missile systems of all time.

Here is the epic story of Vietnam and the sixties told through the events of a few gripping, passionate days of war and peace in October 1967. "They Marched Into Sunlight" brings that tumultuous time back to life while exploring questions about the meaning of dissent and the official manipulation of truth, issues as relevant today as they were decades ago.
In a seamless narrative, Maraniss weaves together the stories of three very different worlds: the death and heroism of soldiers in Vietnam, the anger and anxiety of antiwar students back home, and the confusion and obfuscating behavior of officials in Washington. To understand what happens to the people in these interconnected stories is to understand America's anguish. Based on thousands of primary documents and 180 on-the-record interviews, the book describes the battles that evoked cultural and political conflicts that still reverberate.

This is the story of the friendships that defined one of America's most beloved Presidents. Chris Matthews, who has been following and studying the Kennedys most of his life, has interviewed President Kennedy's closest confidants - family, friends, and those who served with him--to create a moving portrait of a man many loved but few really understood. These friends were with Jack Kennedy as he took surprising risks, struggled with chronic illness, and repeatedly confronted "the thin membrane between life and death." As Matthews describes it, Jack Kennedy was a rebel, an adventurer, and a great enjoyer of life precisely because he understood its fragility. Being with Jack Kennedy was great fun for his friends. Now readers will share in that experience.

An army, Lewis Mumford once observed, 'is a body of pure consumers' and it is logistics that feeds this body's insatiable appetite for men and materiel. Successful logistics - the transportation of supplies and combatants to battle - cannot guarantee victory, but poor logistics portends defeat. In Feeding Victory, Jobie Turner asks how technical innovation has affected this connection over time and whether advances in technology, from the railroad and the airplane to the nuclear weapon and the computer, have altered both the critical relationship between logistics and warfare and, ultimately, geopolitical dynamics. Covering a span of three hundred years, Feeding Victory focuses on five distinct periods of technological change, from the preindustrial era to the information age. For each era Turner presents a case study: the campaign for Lake George from 1755 to 1759, the Western Front in 1917, the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad from 1942 to 1943, and the Battle of Khe Sanh in 1968. In each of these cases the logistics of the belligerents were at their limit because of geography or the vast material needs of war. With such limits, the case studies both give a clear accounting of the logistics of the period, particularly with respect to the mode of transportation - whether air, land, or sea - and reveal the inflection points between success and failure. What are the continuities between eras, Turner asks, and what can these campaigns tell us about the relationship of technology to logistics and logistics to geopolitics? In doing so, Turner discovers just how critical the biological needs of the soldiers on the battlefield prove to be; in fact, they overwhelm firepower in their importance, even in the modern era. His work shows how logistics aptly represents technological shifts from the enlightenment to the dawn of the twenty-first century and how, in our time, ideas have come to trump the material forces of war.

On his second tour to Vietnam, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. This unit was part of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group), or Studies and Observations Group as it was innocuously called. The small recon companies that were the center of its activities conducted some of the most dangerous missions of the war, infiltrating areas controlled by the North Vietnamese in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The companies never exceeded more than 30 Americans, yet they were the best source for the enemy's disposition and were key to the US military being able to take the war to the enemy. This was accomplished by utilizing both new and innovative technology, and tactics dating back to the French and Indian Wars. This small unit racked up one of the most impressive records of awards for valor of any unit in the history of the United States Army. It came at a terrible price, however; the number of wounded and killed in action was incredibly high. Those missions today seem suicidal. In 1970 they seemed equally so, yet these men went out day after day with their indigenous allies - Montagnard tribesmen, Vietnamese, and Chinese Nungs - and faced the challenges with courage and resolve. This riveting memoir details the actions and experiences of a small group of Americans and their allies who were the backbone of ground reconnaissance in the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It became a cult classic among the Special Forces community when first published over a decade ago.

"A GRIPPING CLASSIC. Exhaustively researched, The Hunter Killers puts you directly into a Wild Weasel fighter cockpit during the Vietnam War. Dan Hampton lets you feel it for yourself as no one else could."--Colonel LEO THORSNESS, Wild Weasel pilot and Medal of Honor recipient At the height of the Cold War, America's most elite aviators bravely volunteered for a covert program aimed at eliminating an impossible new threat. Half never returned. All became legends. From New York Times bestselling author Dan Hampton comes one of the most extraordinary untold stories of aviation history. Vietnam, 1965: On July 24 a USAF F-4 Phantom jet was suddenly blown from the sky by a mysterious and lethal weapon-a Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM), launched by Russian "advisors" to North Vietnam. Three days later, six F-105 Thunderchiefs were brought down trying to avenge the Phantom. More tragic losses followed, establishing the enemy's SAMs as the deadliest anti-aircraft threat in history and dramatically turning the tables of Cold War air superiority in favor of Soviet technology. Stunned and desperately searching for answers, the Pentagon ordered a top secret program called Wild Weasel I to counter the SAM problem-fast. So it came to be that a small group of maverick fighter pilots and Electronic Warfare Officers volunteered to fly behind enemy lines and into the teeth of the threat. To most it seemed a suicide mission-but they beat the door down to join. Those who survived the 50 percent casualty rate would revolutionize warfare forever. "You gotta be sh*#@ing me!" This immortal phrase was uttered by Captain Jack Donovan when the Wild Weasel concept was first explained to him. "You want me to fly in the back of a little tiny fighter aircraft with a crazy fighter pilot who thinks he's invincible, home in on a SAM site in North Vietnam, and shoot it before it shoots me?" Based on unprecedented firsthand interviews with Wild Weasel veterans and previously unseen personal papers and declassified documents from both sides of the conflict, as well as Dan Hampton's own experience as a highly decorated F-16 Wild Weasel pilot, The Hunter Killers is a gripping, cockpit-level chronicle of the first-generation Weasels, the remarkable band of aviators who faced head-on the advanced Soviet missile technology that was decimating fellow American pilots over the skies of Vietnam.

Sheehan's tragic biography of John Paul Vann is also a sweeping history of America's seduction, entrapment and disillusionment in Vietnam.

This study explains how the armies of North and South Vietnam, newly equipped with the most modern Soviet and US tanks and weaponry, fought the decisive armored battles of the Easter Offensive. Wearied by years of fighting against Viet Cong guerillas and North Vietnamese regulars, the United States had almost completely withdrawn its forces from Vietnam by early 1972. Determined to halt the expansion and improvement of South Vietnamese forces under the U.S. "Vietnamization" program, North Vietnam launched a major fourteen-division attack in March 1972 against the South that became known as the "Easter Offensive." Hanoi's assault was spearheaded by 1,200 tanks and was counteracted on the opposite side by Saigon's newly equipped armored force using U.S. medium tanks. The result was ferocious fighting between major Cold War-era U.S. and Soviet tanks and mechanized equipment, pitting M-48 medium and M-41 light tanks against their T- 54 and PT-76 rivals in a variety of combat environments ranging from dense jungle to urban terrain. Both sides employed cutting-edge weaponry for the first time, including the U.S. TOW and Soviet 9M14 Malyutk wire-guided anti-tank missiles. This volume examines the tanks, armored forces and weapons that clashed in this little-known campaign in detail, using after-action reports from the battlefield and other primary sources to analyze the technical and organizational factors that shaped the outcome. Despite the ARVN's defensive success in October 1972, North Vietnam massively expanded its armor forces over the next two years while U.S. support waned. This imbalance with key strategic misjudgments by the South Vietnamese President led to the stunning defeat of the South in 1975 when T54 tanks crashed through the fence surrounding the Presidential palace and took Saigon on 30 April 1975.

From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Order of the Day and The War of the Poor comes a searing account of a conflict that dealt a fatal blow to French colonialism 'Absolutely spectacular' - France Info 'Scathing and clever' - Le Temps 19 October 1950. The war is not going to plan. In Paris, politicians gather to discuss what to do about Indochina. The conflict is unpopular back home in France: too expensive, and too far away for the public to care. Withdrawal is not an option - a global power cannot surrender to an army of peasants - but victory is impossible without more soldiers and more money. The soldiers can be sourced from the colonies, but the money is out of the question. A solution needs to be found. In this gripping and shocking novel, Eric Vuillard exposes the tangled web of politicians, bankers and titans of industry who all had a vested interest in France's prolonged presence in lands far from Paris. Skilfully skewering the guilty, Vuillard shows us how key players in conflicts throughout history often have a motivation even deeper and darker than nationalism and political ideology-greed. As well as bringing scenes from the battlefields to life, Vuillard looks beyond this visceral reality on the ground to the cold calculations of the boardroom elite with the power to turn a military win or loss into their financial gain. Short, sharp and brutal, An Honourable Exit is a journey behind closed doors to witness how history is really made.

Toczek provides the first description of the entire battle of Ap Bac and places it in the larger context of the Vietnam War. The study thoroughly examines the January 1963 battle, complete with detailed supporting maps. Ironically, Ap Bac's great importance lies in American policymakers' perception of the battle as unimportant; for all their intelligence and drive, senior American government officials missed the early warning signs of a flawed policy in Southeast Asia by ignoring the lessons of the defeat of the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) on 2 January 1963. The outcome of Ap Bac was a direct reflection of how the U.S. Army organized, equipped, and trained the ARVN. With all the ARVN officer corps's shortcomings, the South Vietnamese Army could not successfully conduct an American combined arms operations against a smaller, less well-equipped enemy. American leadership, both military and civilian, failed to draw any connection between ARVN's dismal performance and American policies toward South Vietnam. Although certain tactical changes resulted from the battle, the larger issue of American policy remained unchanged, including the structure of the advisory system.

North and South Vietnamese youths had very different experiences of growing up during the Vietnamese War. The book gives a unique perspective on the conflict through the prism of adult-youth relations. By studying these relations, including educational systems, social organizations, and texts created by and for children during the war, Olga Dror analyzes how the two societies dealt with their wartime experience and strove to shape their futures. She examines the socialization and politicization of Vietnamese children and teenagers, contrasting the North's highly centralized agenda of indoctrination with the South, which had no such policy, and explores the results of these varied approaches. By considering the influence of Western culture on the youth of the South and of socialist culture on the youth of the North, we learn how the youth cultures of both Vietnams diverged from their prewar paths and from each other.

No Wider War is the second volume of a two-part exploration of America's involvement in Indochina from the end of World War II to the Fall of Saigon. Following on from the first volume, In Good Faith, which told the story from the Japanese surrender in 1945 through America's involvement in the French Indochina War and the initial advisory missions that followed, it traces the story of America's involvement in the Vietnam War from the first Marines landing at Da Nang in 1965, through the traumatic Tet Offensive of 1968 and the gradual Vietnamisation of the war that followed, to the withdrawal of American forces and the final loss of the South in 1975. Drawing on the latest research, unavailable to the authors of the classic Vietnam histories, including recently declassified top secret National Security Agency material, Sergio Miller examines in depth both the events and the key figures of the conflict to present a masterful narrative of America's most divisive war.