"An important volume for students and professionals who wish to grasp the basic nature of the Civil Rights Movement and how it changed America in fundamental ways."—Aldon Morris, Northwestern Univ. The Eyes on the Prize Reader brings together the most comprehensive anthology of primary sources available, spanning the entire history of the Civil Rights Movement. "A remarkable collection...Indispensable."—William H. Harris, Texas Southern Univ.

In January 1966, navy nurse Lieutenant Kay Bauer stepped off a pan am airliner into the stifling heat of Saigon and was issued a camouflage uniform, boots, and a rifle. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she said of the weapon. "I'm a nurse."

Bauer was one of approximately six thousand military nurses who served in Vietnam. Historian Kim Heikkila here delves into the experiences of fifteen nurse veterans from Minnesota, exploring what drove them to enlist, what happened to them in-country, and how the war changed their lives.

Like Bauer, these women saw themselves as nurses first and foremost: their job was to heal rather than to kill. after the war, however, the very professional selflessness that had made them such committed military nurses also made it more difficult for them to address their own needs as veterans. Reaching out to each other, they began healing from the wounds of war, and they turned their energies to a new purpose: this group of Minnesotans launched the campaign to build the Vietnam Women's Memorial. In the process, a collection of individuals became a tight-knit group of veterans who share the bonds of a sisterhood forged in war.

Kim Heikkila is an adjunct instructor in the history department at St. Catherine University, where she teaches courses on U.S. history, U.S. women's history, the Vietnam War, and the 1960s.

At Easter 1972, North Vietnam invaded the South, and there were almost no US ground troops left to stop it. But air power reinforcements could be rushed to the theater. Operation Linebacker's objective was to destroy the invading forces from the air and cut North Vietnam's supply routes – and luckily in 1972, American air power was beginning a revolution in both technology and tactics.

Most crucial was the introduction of the first effective laser-guided bombs, but the campaign also involved the fearsome AC-130 gunship and saw the debut of helicopter-mounted TOW missiles. Thanks to the new Top Gun fighter school, US naval aviators now also had a real advantage over the MiGs.

This is the fascinating story of arguably the world's first “modern” air campaign. It explains how this complex operation – involving tactical aircraft, strategic bombers, close air support and airlift – defeated the invasion. It also explains the shortcomings of the campaign, the contrasting approaches of the USAF and Navy, and the impact that Linebacker had on modern air warfare.

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.

Now in its second edition, Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam provides a fresh approach to understanding the American combat soldier's experience in Vietnam by focusing on the day-to-day experiences of front-line troops. The book delves into the Vietnam combat soldier's experience, from the decision to join the army, life in training and combat, and readjusting to civilian life with memories of war. By utilizing letters, oral histories, and memoirs of actual veterans, Kyle Longley and Jacqueline Whitt offer a powerful insight into the minds and lives of the 870,000 "grunts" who endured the controversial war. Important topics such as class, race, and gender are examined, enabling students to better analyze the social dynamics during this divisive period of American history. In addition to an updated introduction and epilogue, the new edition includes expanded sections on military chaplains, medics, and the moral injury of war. A new timeline provides details of major events leading up to, during, and after the war. A truly comprehensive picture of the Vietnam experience for soldiers, this volume is a valuable and unique addition to military history courses and classes on the Vietnam War and 1960s America.

A decade—and a president—that transformed America. During the Reagan years, Americans witnessed an extraordinary array of changes, from major technological advances to sweeping revisions of the tax code to the deregulation of major industries and the advent of the culture wars. America emerged from the decade completely transformed: political and social arrangements derived from post–World War II liberalism had given way to the highly competitive, fast-changing, technology-driven society we know today. In The Eighties, John Ehrman tracks this transformation in the context of Ronald Reagan’s policies and convictions and examines the broader trends that enabled Reagan to achieve so much of his agenda. At a time when most Americans remained fairly centrist in their political commitments, Reagan was able to shift policy toward the right by building support for a few key policies. His gradualist approach met with little opposition from Democrats, who failed to mount a coherent response. Based on a broad range of primary source material, The Eighties offers an accessible and balanced account of a watershed decade in American history.

Eleven high school friends in idyllic North Adams, Massachusetts, enlisted to serve in Vietnam-one stayed behind to protest the war. All were from patriotic, working-class families, all members of the class of 1965 at Saint Joseph's School. Dennis Pregent was one of them. He and his classmates joined up-most right out of school, some before graduating-and endured the war's most vicious years. Seven served in the Army, three in the Marine Corps, and one in the Navy. After fighting in a faraway place, they saw the trajectories of their lives dramatically altered. One died in combat, another paralyzed, and several still suffer from debilitating conditions five decades later. Inspired by his 50th high school reunion, Pregent located his classmates, rekindled friendships, and-together, over hours of interviews-they remembered the war years.

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.

The years following 1945 witnessed a massive change in American intellectual thought and in the life of American universities. The effort to mobilize intellectual talent during the war established new links between the government and the academy. After the war, many of those who had worked with the military or the Office of Strategic Studies took jobs in the burgeoning post-war structure of university-based military research and intelligence agencies, bringing large infusions of government money into many fields. The essays in this text explore what happened to the university in these years and why. They show the many ways existing disciplines, such as anthropology, were affected by the Cold War ethos, and discuss the rise of new fields, such as area studies, and the changing nature of dissent and academic freedom during and since the Cold War.

Hoping to stay out of Vietnam, David Lyman joined the U.S. Naval Reserve to avoid the draft. By the summer of 1967 he found himself with a SeaBee unit on a beach in Chu Lai. A reporter in civilian life, he was assigned to Military Construction Battalion 71 as a photojournalist, documenting the lives of the hard-working and harder-drinking U.S. Navy SeaBees as they engineered the infrastucture of war-roads, runways, heliports and base camps for troops on the edges of the conflict. He was also shot at, almost blown up by a road mine, spent nights in a mortar pit as rockets bombarded a nearby Marine runway, and rode along on convoys through Viet Cong territory to photograph villages outside "The Wire." The stories and photographs Lyman published as editor of the battalion's newspaper, The Transit, form the basis of his memoir.

Now, for the first time, Fox News political analyst and former Clinton adviser Dick Morris turns his sharp-eyed gaze on Hillary, the longtime First Lady, current New York senator, and bestselling author. For, as he argues, no politician in America today is better aligned to become president in 2008 -- and none would bring more baggage to the White House -- than Mrs. Clinton. In Rewriting History, Morris draws on his own long working relationship with the Clintons, as well as his trademark deep research and candid, nonpartisan analysis, to create a rebuttal to Hillary's bestselling autobiography, Living History. Morris documents how Hillary hides her true self behind a "HILLARY" brand that is chatty, charming, giggly, and warm -- but is far from her true personality. In Rewriting History, Morris pierces the mask to get at the truth behind the distortions and omissions of Hillary's memoir. Here we meet the real Hillary, both good and bad: the manager who makes the trains run on time, but also the paranoid who sees all those who disagree with her as personal enemies; the idealist, but also the "advice addict" easily misled by the guru of the moment. Morris describes Hillary's sense of entitlement, and warns that it may lead deep into financial scandal. And he demonstrates how Hillary dodges criticism by pretending that every attack is directed not just at her, but at every working woman in America. Ultimately, Morris argues, the Hillary Clinton of today is marketing a false front, obscuring both her wants and her assets behind the phoney facade of a domestic Everywoman. But as she pursues higher office, she also faces a choice. Will she, like Bobby Kennedy, see the error of her ruthless ways, and embrace the sincere idealism she professes? Or, like Richard Nixon, will she allow the darker angels of her nature to overcome her, jeopardizing herself and the country in the process? As Rewriting History suggests, we can only hope that Hillary Clinton's past performance is no guarantee of future results.

After the failed April 1972 invasion of South Vietnam and the heavy US tactical bombing raids in the Hanoi area, the North Vietnamese agreed to return to the Paris peace talks, yet very quickly these negotiations stalled.

In an attempt to end the war quickly and 'persuade' the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiating table, President Nixon ordered the Air Force to send the US' ultimate conventional weapon, the B-52 bomber, against their capital, Hanoi. Bristling with the latest Soviet air defence missiles, it was the most heavily defended target in Vietnam. Taking place in late December, this campaign was soon dubbed the 'Christmas Bombings'.

Using specially commissioned artwork and maps, ex-USAF fighter colonel Marshall Michel describes Linebacker II, the climax of the air war over Vietnam, and history's only example of how America's best Cold War bombers performed against contemporary Soviet air defences.

In That Time tells the story of the American experience in Vietnam through the life of Michael O'Donnell, a promising young poet who became a soldier and helicopter pilot in Vietnam. O'Donnell wrote with great sensitivity and poetic force about his world and especially the war that was slowly engulfing him and his most well-known poem is still frequently cited and reproduced. Nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honour, O'Donnell never fired a shot in Vietnam. During an ill-fated attempt to rescue fellow soldiers, O'Donnell's helicopter was shot down in the jungles of Cambodia where he and his crew remained missing for almost 30 years. In telling O'Donnell's story, In That Time also tells the stories of those around him, both famous and ordinary, who helped to shape the events of the time and who were themselves shaped by them. The book is both a powerful personal story and a compelling, universal one about how America lost its way in the 1960s.

Brave Men, Gentle Heroes presents the honest, touching, and harrowing stories of men who served in World War II and of their sons who served in Vietnam -- fathers and sons bonded as deeply by their experience in war as by blood.

Though World War II and Vietnam were vastly different -- the clear aims of World War II, the muddled goals of Vietnam; the hero's welcome accorded World War II veterans, the scorn heaped upon their sons -- each defined a generation. In these pages you will find war's carnage and heroism, purpose and futility, meaning and tragic meaninglessness. Molded by the awful crucible of war, these seemingly ordinary men offer extraordinary insights into what it means to be a warrior, an American, a father, and a son.

Elbridge Durbrow served as the third United States ambassador to the Republic of Vietnam from 1957 to 1961. His relationships with Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and members of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Saigon helped to shape his tenure in office, which ultimately concluded with his decision to end his support for the Vietnamese leader as well as turn away from the American military representatives who had earned Ngo Dinh Diem's trust. This triangular relationship between three competing entities was mired in clashes of ego and personality that often interfered with the American decision making process. Durbrow and his embassy staff, rather than work with the Vietnamese leadership, chose to focus on the negative and reported to Washington only those items that reinforced this perspective. They created an atmosphere of distrust and anxiety that neither the Americans nor Vietnamese could overcome in the 1960s and helped to create the conditions for greater United States involvement in Southeast Asia.

Presenting new perspectives on the Vietnam War, its global repercussions, and its role in modern history, this volume reveals "America's War" as an international event that reverberated worldwide. The essays address political, military, and diplomatic issues and the cultural and intellectual consequences of "Vietnam." They compare the Vietnam War to other major conflicts in world history. "America's War" is depicted as a global event whose origins and characteristics deserve an interdisciplinary treatment.

In this amazing and at times ribald story, Laton McCartney tells how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding, an obscure Ohio senator, to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his "oil cabinet" made it possible for cronies to secure vast fuel reserves that had been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy. In exchange, the oilmen paid off senior government officials, bribed newspaper publishers, and covered the GOP campaign debt. When news of the scandal finally emerged, the consequences were disastrous. Drawing on contemporary records newly made available to McCartney, "The Teapot Dome Scandal" reveals a shocking, revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was, how high the stakes, and how powerful the conspirators-all told in a dazzling narrative style.

Many came to see cold war liberals during the Vietnam War as willing to invoke the democratic ideal, while at the same time tolerating dictatorships in the cause of anticommunism. This volume of essays demonstrates how opposition to the war, the military-industrial complex, and the national security state crystallized in a variety of different and often divergent political traditions. Indeed, for many of the individuals discussed, dissent was a decidedly conservative act in that they felt the war threatened traditional values, mores, and institutions.

Many came to see cold war liberals during the Vietnam War as willing to invoke the democratic ideal, while at the same time tolerating dictatorships in the cause of anticommunism. This volume of essays demonstrates how opposition to the war, the military-industrial complex, and the national security state crystallized in a variety of different and often divergent political traditions. Indeed, for many of the individuals discussed, dissent was a decidedly conservative act in that they felt the war threatened traditional values, mores, and institutions.

The men of the U.S. Navy's brown-water force played a vital but often overlooked role in the Vietnam War. Known for their black berets and limitless courage, they maneuvered their aging, makeshift craft along shallow coastal waters and twisting inland waterways to search out the enemy. In this moving tribute to their contributions and sacrifices, Tom Cutler records their dramatic story as only a participant could. His own Vietnam experience enables him to add a striking human dimension to the account. The terror of firefights along the jungle-lined rivers, the rigors of camp life, and the sudden perils of guerrilla warfare are conveyed with authenticity. At the same time, the author's training as a historian allows him to objectively describe the scope of the navy's operations and evaluate their effectiveness.
Winner of the Navy League's Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement in 1988 when the book was first published, Cutler is credited with having written the definitive history of the brown-water sailors, an effort that has helped readers better understand the nature of U.S. involvement in the war.

The Vietnam War left wounds that have taken three decades to heal-indeed some scars remain even today. In A Time for Peace, prominent American historian Robert D. Schulzinger sheds light on how deeply etched memories of this devastating conflict have altered America's political, social, and cultural landscape. Schulzinger examines the impact of the war from many angles. He traces the long, twisted, and painful path of reconciliation with Vietnam, the heated controversy over soldiers who were missing in action and how it resulted in years of false hope for military families, and the outcry over Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. In addition, the book examines the influx of over a million Vietnam refugees and Amerasian children into the US and describes the plight of Vietnam veterans, many of whom returned home alienated, unhappy, and unappreciated, though some led productive post-war lives. Schulzinger looks at how the controversies of the war have continued to be fought in books and films, ranging from novels such as Going After Cacciato and Paco's Story to such movies as The Green Berets (directed by and starring John Wayne), The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Rambo. Perhaps most important, the author explores the power of the Vietnam metaphor on foreign policy, particularly in Central America, Somalia, the Gulf War, and the war in Iraq. We see how the "lessons" of the war have been reinterpreted by different ends of the political spectrum.

""Winter Soldiers "is an immensely valuable contribution to the history of the Vietnam War. It brings to life, through the words of the veterans themselves, the journey each individual made, through the crucible of combat, from warrior to protester."--Howard Zinn

"Stacewicz has captured the simple, rough-hewn elegance of the voices of Vietnam veterans. As in other wars, the ordinary soldier always has the most extraordinary words for history."--Stanley Kutler, editor of "The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War"

"By turns irreverent and painfully sincere, "Winter Soldiers "will transform stereotyped views of both veterans and the antiwar movement."--Marilyn Young

The Vietnam War left an indelible mark on those who took part in it and spawned an antiwar movement more popular than any other in US history. In all that has been written about the war, rarely do the worlds of the Vietnam veteran and the antiwar demonstrator come together. Yet in a small but articulate organization known as the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the two made common cause.

"Winter Soldiers "recovers this moving chapter in the history of the Vietnam War era. Bringing together the voices of more than thirty former and current members of the VVAW, oral historian Richard Stacewicz offers an eloquent account of the impact of the war on the lives of individuals and the nation.

Richard Stacewicz teaches history at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Illinois.

The author was born in 1940 and spent his childhood in two small villages, the paternal and the maternal, in southern Vietnam: Binh Chuan and Tuy An (An Phu). The villages were deeply affected by the powerful political events of the next fifty years. In this memoir (first sentence: ""I was born as the Japanese Troops were invading northern Vietnam""), the author writes of what he saw, heard and knew, providing an invaluable social history of the country.Readers will learn about people who have endured separation, dictatorship, carnage, persistent suffering and poverty, all the while yearning for independence and prosperity. Included are many stories - some funny, some heartbreaking - that reveal how the Vietnamese people lived, as well as their thoughts on war, on the French, Japanese and Americans, on the Nationalist and Communist governments, and on escape. The result is a heartfelt ""social painting"" of the nation.

The American war in Vietnam was concluded in 1973 under the terms of a truce that were effectively identical to what was offered to the Nixon administration four years earlier. Those four years cost America billions of dollars and over 35,000 war deaths and casualties, and resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 Vietnamese. And those years were the direct result of the supposed master plan of the most important voice in the Nixon White House on American foreign policy: Henry Kissinger. Using newly available archival material from the Nixon Presidential Library and Kissinger's personal papers, Robert K. Brigham shows how Kissinger's approach to Vietnam was driven by personal political rivalries and strategic confusion, while domestic politics played an outsized influence on Kissinger's so-called strategy. There was no great master plan or Bismarckian theory that supported how the US continued the war or conducted peace negotiations. As a result, a distant tragedy was perpetuated, forever changing both countries. Now, perhaps for the first time, we can see the full scale of that tragedy and the machinations that fed it.

The Vietnam War actually began in December 1946 with a struggle between the communists and the French for possession of the country. Vietnam's strategic position in Southeast Asia along with veiled economic concerns and a political agenda led to the involvement of other countries, including the United States. Written by an officer in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces, this poignant memoir seeks to clarify the nuances of South Vietnam's defeat. From the age of 12, Van Nguyen Duong watched as the conflict affected his home, family, village and friends. He discusses not only the day-to-day hardships he endured from forced relocation and eventual imprisonment but also the anguish caused by the illusive reality of Vietnamese independence.The various political forces at work in Vietnam, the hardships suffered by RVNAF soldiers after the 1975 U.S. withdrawal from Saigon, and the effect of reunification on the Vietnamese people are also discussed. An appendix contains a summary of the Eleven Point Program Accords of January 1962.