The combatants in the three Vietnam wars from 1945 to 1975 employed widely contrasting supply methods. This fascinating book reveals that basic traditional techniques proved superior to expensive state of the art systems. During the Indochina or French' war, France's initial use of wheeled transport and finally air supply proved vulnerable given the terrain, climate and communist adaptability . The colonial power gave up the unequal struggle after the catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu. To stem the advance of Communism throughout the region, the Americans stepped in to support the pro-Western South Vietnam regime and threw vast quantities of manpower and money at the problem. The cost became increasingly unpopular at home. General Giap's and Ho Chi Minh's ruthless use of coolies most famously on the Ho Chi Minh Trail proved resistant to carpet-bombing and Agent Orange defoliation. The outcome of the final war between the Communist North Vietnam and the corrupt Southern leadership, now with minimal US support, was almost a forgone conclusion. The Author is superbly qualified to examine these three wars from the logistic perspective. His conclusions make for compelling reading and will be instructive to acting practitioners and enquiring minds.

Western historians have long speculated about Chinese military intervention in the Vietnam War. It was not until recently, however, that newly available international archival materials, as well as documents from China, have indicated the true extent and level of Chinese participation in the conflict of Vietnam. For the first time in the English language, this book offers an overview of the operations and combat experience of more than 430,000 Chinese troops in Indochina from 1968-73. The Chinese Communist story from the "other side of the hill" explores one of the missing pieces to the historiography of the Vietnam War. The book covers the chronological development and Chinese decision-making by examining Beijing's intentions, security concerns, and major reasons for entering Vietnam to fight against the U.S. armed forces. It explains why China launched a nationwide movement, in Mao Zedong's words, to "assist Vietnam and resist America" in 1965-72. It details PLA foreign war preparation, training, battle planning and execution, tactical decisions, combat problem solving, political indoctrination, and performance evaluations through the Vietnam War. International Communist forces, technology, and logistics proved to be the decisive edge that enabled North Vietnam to survive the U.S. Rolling Thunder bombing campaign and helped the Viet Cong defeat South Vietnam. Chinese and Russian support prolonged the war, making it impossible for the United States to win. With Russian technology and massive Chinese intervention, the NVA and NLF could function on both conventional and unconventional levels, which the American military was not fully prepared to face. Nevertheless, the Vietnam War seriously tested the limits of the communist alliance. Rather than improving Sino-Soviet relations, aid to North Vietnam created a new competition as each communist power attempted to control Southeast Asian communist movement. China shifted its defense and national security concerns from the U.S. to the Soviet Union.

A poignantly written and heartfelt memoir that recounts the author's hair raising-and occasionally hilarious-experience as a young Marine artilleryman in Vietnam. Gritty, unvarnished and often disturbing at times, the book provides a unique window into the lasting physical and emotional wounds of war. Realistic and highly readable, the story is not the typical gung-ho narrative of a combat Marine eager to die for God and country. A somewhat different and interesting perspective and a must read for veterans, Marine Corps buffs, students of the 1960's culture as well as those seeking a better understanding of the influence and relevancy of America's long and indecisive misadventure in Vietnam.

Major John L. Plaster, a three-tour veteran of Vietnam tells the story of the most highly classified United States covert operatives to serve in the war: The Studies and Observations Group, code-named SOG. Comprised of volunteers from such elite military units as the Army's Green Berets, the USAF Air Commandos, and Navy SEALs, SOG agents answered directly to the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs, with some missions requiring approval from the White House. Now for the first time, the dangerous assignments of this top-secret unit can at last be revealed

When Bob Greene went home to central Ohio to be with his dying father, it set off a chain of events that led him to knowing his dad in a way he never had before -- thanks to a quiet man who lived just a few miles away, a man who had changed the history of the world.

Greene's father -- a soldier with an infantry division in World War II -- often spoke of seeing the man around town. All but anonymous even in his own city, carefully maintaining his privacy, this man, Greene's father would point out to him, had "won the war." He was Paul Tibbets. At the age of twenty-nine, at the request of his country, Tibbets assembled a secret team of 1,800 American soldiers to carry out the single most violent act in the history of mankind. In 1945 Tibbets piloted a plane -- which he called Enola Gay, after his mother -- to the Japanese city of Hiroshima, where he dropped the atomic bomb.

On the morning after the last meal he ever ate with his father, Greene went to meet Tibbets. What developed was an unlikely friendship that allowed Greene to discover things about his father, and his father's generation of soldiers, that he never fully understood before.

Duty is the story of three lives connected by history, proximity, and blood; indeed, it is many stories, intimate and achingly personal as well as deeply historic. In one soldier's memory of a mission that transformed the world -- and in a son's last attempt to grasp his father's ingrained sense of honor and duty -- lies a powerful tribute to the ordinary heroes of an extraordinary time in American life.

What Greene came away with is found history and found poetry -- a profoundly moving work that offers a vividly new perspective on responsibility, empathy, and love. It is an exploration of and response to the concept of duty as it once was and always should be: quiet and from the heart. On every page you can hear the whisper of a generation and its children bidding each other farewell.

Charged with monitoring the huge civilian press corps that descended on Hue during the Vietnam War's Tet offensive, US Army Captain George W. Smith witnessed firsthand a vicious twenty-five day battle. Smith recounts in harrowing detail the separate, poorly coordinated wars that were fought in the retaking of the Hue. Notably, he documents the little-known contributions of the South Vietnamese forces, who prevented the Citadel portion of the city from being overrun, and who then assisted the US Marine Corps in evicting the North Vietnamese Army. He also tells of the social and political upheaval in the city, reporting the execution of nearly 3,000 civilians by the NVA and the Vietcong. The tenacity of the NVA forces in Hue earned the respect of the troops on the field and triggered a sequence of attitudinal changes in the United States. It was those changes, Smith suggests, that eventually led to the US abandonment of the war.

The year is 1970; the war in Vietnam is five years from over. The women's movement is newly resurgent, and feminists are summarily reviled as "libbers." Inette Miller is one year out of college-a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Her boyfriend gets drafted and is issued orders to Vietnam. Within their few remaining days together, Inette marries her US Army private, determined to accompany him to war. There are obstacles. All wives of US military are prohibited in country. With the aid of her newspaper's editor, Miller finagles a one-month work visa and becomes a war reporter. Her newspaper cannot afford life insurance beyond that. After thirty days, she is on her own. As one of the rare woman war correspondents in Vietnam and the only one also married to an Army soldier, Miller's experience was pathbreaking. Girls Don't shines a light on the conflicting motives that drive an ambitious woman of that era and illustrates the schizophrenic struggle between the forces of powerful feminist ideology and the contrarian forces of the world as it was. Girls Don't is the story of what happens when a twenty-three-year-old feminist makes her way into the land of machismo. This is a war story, a love story, and an open-hearted confessional within the burgeoning women's movement, chronicling its demands and its rewards.

A short accessible introduction to the origins of the Vietnam War, from the end of the Indochina War in 1954 to the full-scale war in 1965.

Why did the US make a commitment to an independent South Vietnam? Could a major war have been averted? The war had a profound and lasting impact on the politics and society of Vietnam and the United States, and it also had a major impact on international relations. With this book, Frederik Logevall has provided a short, accessible introduction to the origins of the Vietnam War.

A "better war." Over the last two decades, this term has become synonymous with US strategy during the Vietnam War's final years. The narrative is enticingly simple, appealing to many audiences. After the disastrous results of the 1968 Tet offensive, in which Hanoi's forces demonstrated the failures of American strategy, popular history tells of a new American military commander who emerged in South Vietnam and with inspired leadership and a new approach turned around a long stalemated conflict. In fact, so successful was General Creighton Abrams in commanding US forces that, according to the "better war" myth, the United States had actually achieved victory by mid-1970. A new general with a new strategy had delivered, only to see his victory abandoned by weak-kneed politicians in Washington, DC who turned their backs on the US armed forces and their South Vietnamese allies. In a bold new interpretation of America's final years in Vietnam, acclaimed historian Gregory A. Daddis disproves these longstanding myths. Withdrawal is a groundbreaking reassessment that tells a far different story of the Vietnam War. Daddis convincingly argues that the entire US effort in South Vietnam was incapable of reversing the downward trends of a complicated Vietnamese conflict that by 1968 had turned into a political-military stalemate. Despite a new articulation of strategy, Abrams's approach could not materially alter a war no longer vital to US national security or global dominance. Once the Nixon White House made the political decision to withdraw from Southeast Asia, Abrams's military strategy was unable to change either the course or outcome of a decades' long Vietnamese civil war. In a riveting sequel to his celebrated Westmoreland's War, Daddis demonstrates he is one of the nation's leading scholars on the Vietnam War. Withdrawal will be a standard work for years to come.

The 'missile with a man in it' was known for its blistering speed and deadliness in air combat. The F-104C flew more than 14,000 combat hours in Vietnam as a bomber escort, a Wild Weasel escort and a close air support aircraft. Though many were sceptical of its ability to carry weapons, the Starfighter gave a fine account of itself in the close air support role. It was also well known that the enemy were especially reluctant to risk their valuable and scarce MiGs when the F-104 was escorting bombers over North Vietnam or flying combat air patrols nearby. The missions were not without risk, and 14 Starfighters were lost during the war over a two-year period. This was not insignificant considering that the USAF only had one wing of these valuable aircraft at the time, and wartime attrition and training accidents also took quite a bite from the inventory.
While the F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 Phantom got most of the glory and publicity during the war in Vietnam, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was not given much chance of surviving in a 'shooting war'. In the event, it did that and much more. Although built in small numbers for the USAF, the F-104C fought and survived for almost three years in Vietnam. Like its predecessor the F-100, the Starfighter was a mainstay of Tactical Air Command and Air Defence Command, with whom it served with distinction as an air superiority fighter and point defence interceptor. This small, tough and very fast fighter, dubbed 'The Missile with a Man in It', was called upon to do things it was not specifically designed for, and did them admirably. Among these were close air support and armed reconnaissance using bombs, rockets and other armaments hung from its tiny wings, as well as its 20 mm Vulcan cannon, firing 6000 rounds per minute. The jet participated in some of the most famous battles of the war, including the legendary Operation "Bolo," in which seven North Vietnamese MiGs went down in flames with no US losses. Even as it was fighting in Vietnam, the Starfighter was being adopted by no fewer than six NATO air forces as well as Japan and Nationalist China. It was later procured by Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan. The latter nation took the Starfighter to war with India twice in the 1960s, and it also saw combat with Taiwan.
The story of the Starfighter in Vietnam is one of tragedy and of ultimate vindication. For decades the F-104's contribution to the air war in Vietnam was downplayed and its role as a ground attack machine minimised. Only in recent years has that assessment been re-evaluated, and the facts prove the Starfighter to have been able to do its job as well or better than some of the other tactical aircraft sent to the theatre for just that purpose.

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.

A Guardian Best Book of the Year "A gripping study of white power...Explosive." -New York Times "Helps explain how we got to today's alt-right." -Terry Gross, Fresh Air The white power movement in America wants a revolution. Returning to a country ripped apart by a war they felt they were not allowed to win, a small group of Vietnam veterans and disgruntled civilians who shared their virulent anti-communism and potent sense of betrayal concluded that waging war on their own country was justified. The command structure of their covert movement gave women a prominent place. They operated with discipline, made tragic headlines in Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Oklahoma City, and are resurgent under President Trump. Based on a decade of deep immersion in previously classified FBI files and on extensive interviews, Bring the War Home tells the story of American paramilitarism and the birth of the alt-right. "A much-needed and troubling revelation... The power of Belew's book comes, in part, from the fact that it reveals a story about white-racist violence that we should all already know." -The Nation "Fascinating... Shows how hatred of the federal government, fears of communism, and racism all combined in white-power ideology and explains why our responses to the movement have long been woefully inadequate." -Slate "Superbly comprehensive...supplants all journalistic accounts of America's resurgent white supremacism." -Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian

The leader of one of the most successful U. S. Marine long range reconnaissance teams during the Vietnam War, Andrew Finlayson recounts his team's experiences in the pivotal period in the war, the year leading up to the Tet Offensive of 1968. Using primary sources, such as Marine Corps unit histories and his own weekly letters home, he presents a highly personal account of the dangerous missions conducted by this team of young Marines as they searched for North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong units in such dangerous locales as Elephant Valley, the Enchanted Forest, Charlie Ridge, Happy Valley and the Que Son Mountains. Taking only six to eight men on each patrol, Killer Kane searches for the enemy far from friendly lines, often finding itself engaged in desperate fire fights with enemy forces that vastly outnumber this small band of brave Marines. In numerous close contacts with the enemy, Killer Kane fights for its survival against desperate odds, narrowly escaping death time and again. The book gives vivid descriptions of the life of recon Marines when they are not on patrol, the beauty of the landscape they traverse, and several of the author's Vietnamese friends. It also explains in detail the preparations for, and the conduct of, a successful long range reconnaissance patrol.