Ho Chi Minh is one of the towering figures of the twentieth century, considered an icon and father of the nation by many Vietnamese. Pierre Brocheux's biography of Ho Chi Minh is a brilliant feat of historical engineering. In a concise and highly readable account, he negotiates the many twists and turns of Ho Chi Minh's life and his multiple identities, from impoverished beginnings as a communist revolutionary to his founding of the Indochina Communist Party and the League for the Independence of Vietnam and ultimately to his leadership of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and his death in 1969. Biographical events are adroitly placed within the broader historical canvas of colonization, decolonization, communism war, and nation building. Brocheux's vivid and convincing portrait of Ho Chi Minh goes further than any previous biography in explaining both the myth and the man, as well as the times in which he was situated.

This fourth volume of a five-part policy history of the U.S. government and the Vietnam War covers the core period of U.S. involvement, from July 1965, when the decision was made to send large-scale U.S. forces, to the beginning of 1968, just before the Tet offensive and the decision to seek a negotiated settlement. Using a wide variety of archival sources and interviews, the book examines in detail the decisions of the president, relations between the president and Congress, and the growth of public and congressional opposition to the war. Differences between U.S. military leaders on how the war should be fought are also included, as well as military planning and operations.

Among many other important subjects, the financial effects of the war and of raising taxes are considered, as well as the impact of a tax increase on congressional and public support for the war. Another major interest is the effort by Congress to influence the conduct of the war and to place various controls on U.S. goals and operations. The emphasis throughout this richly textured narrative is on providing a better understanding of the choices facing the United States and the way in which U.S. policymakers tried to find an effective politico-military strategy, while also probing for a diplomatic settlement.

Originally published in 1995.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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 searching analysis of what has been called America's longest war" was commissioned by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to achieve an improved understanding of American participation in the conflict. Part II covers the period from Kennedy's inauguration through Johnson's first year in office.

Originally published in 1986.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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 book examines the events that led up to the day--March 31, 1968--when Lyndon Johnson dramatically renounced any attempt to be reelected president of the United States. It offers one of the best descriptions of U.S. policy surrounding the Tet offensive of that fateful March--a historic turning point in the war in Vietnam that led directly to the end of American military intervention.

Originally published in 1983.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

Any time Vietnam veterans get together--whether it's two or twenty of them--war stories follow. The tales they relate about the paddies, the jungles, the highlands, the waterways, and the airways provide the vets a greater understanding of the war they survived and gives nonparticipants a glimpse into the dangerous intensity of firefights, the often hilarious responses to inexplicable situations, and the strong bonds only they can share. These stories from soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have never been captured or compiled in a meaningful way--until now. These stories are the "real meat" of the Vietnam experience. In brief narratives, the veterans themselves relate the valor, hardship, fear, and humor of the war in Vietnam.

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 the decades after World War II, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilian contractors across Asia and the Pacific found work through the U.S. military. Recently liberated from colonial rule, these workers were drawn to the opportunities the military offered and became active participants of the U.S. empire, most centrally during the U.S. war in Vietnam. Simeon Man uncovers the little-known histories of Filipinos, South Koreans, and Asian Americans who fought in Vietnam, revealing how U.S. empire was sustained through overlapping projects of colonialism and race making. Through their military deployments, Man argues, these soldiers took part in the making of a new Pacific world-a decolonizing Pacific-in which the imperatives of U.S. empire collided with insurgent calls for decolonization, producing often surprising political alliances, imperial tactics of suppression, and new visions of radical democracy.

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.

On March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed as many as five hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in a village near the South China Sea. In "My Lai" William Thomas Allison explores and evaluates the significance of this horrific event. How could such a thing have happened? Who (or what) should be held accountable? How do we remember this atrocity and try to apply its lessons, if any?

My Lai has fixed the attention of Americans of various political stripes for more than forty years. The breadth of writing on the massacre, from news reports to scholarly accounts, highlights the difficulty of establishing fact and motive in an incident during which confusion, prejudice, and self-preservation overwhelmed the troops.

Son of a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War--and aware that the generation who lived through the incident is aging--Allison seeks to ensure that our collective memory of this shameful episode does not fade.

Well written and accessible, Allison's book provides a clear narrative of this historic moment and offers suggestions for how to come to terms with its aftermath.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. What happens when refugees encounter Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their resettlement? From April to November 1975, the US military processed over 112,000 Vietnamese refugees on the unincorporated territory of Guam; from 1977 to 1979, the State of Israel granted asylum and citizenship to 366 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees. Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi analyzes these two cases to theorize what she calls the refugee settler condition: the fraught positionality of refugee subjects whose resettlement in a settler colonial state is predicated on the unjust dispossession of an Indigenous population. This groundbreaking book explores two forms of critical geography: first, archipelagos of empire, examining how the Vietnam War is linked to the US military buildup in Guam and unwavering support of Israel, and second, corresponding archipelagos of trans-Indigenous resistance, tracing how Chamorro decolonization efforts and Palestinian liberation struggles are connected through the Vietnamese refugee figure. Considering distinct yet overlapping modalities of refugee and Indigenous displacement, Gandhi offers tools for imagining emergent forms of decolonial solidarity between refugee settlers and Indigenous peoples.

Part III, which begins in January 1965 and ends in January 1967, treats the watershed period of U.S. involvement in the war, from President Johnson's decision to bomb North Vietnam and to send U.S. ground forces into South Vietnam, through the buildup of military forces and political cadres required by the new U.S. role in the war. This volume examines Johnson's policymaking, his interaction with military advisors and with Congressional critics such as Mike Mansfield, and his reactions as protests against the war began to grow.

Originally published in 1989.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

From 1966 to 1971 the First Australian Task Force was part of the counterinsurgency campaign in South Vietnam. Though considered a small component of the Free World effort in the war, these troops from Australia and New Zealand were in fact the best trained and prepared for counterinsurgency warfare. However, until now, their achievements have been largely overlooked by military historians. The Search for Tactical Success in Vietnam sheds new light on this campaign by examining the thousands of small-scale battles that the First Australian Task Force was engaged in. The book draws on statistical, spatial and temporal analysis, as well as primary data, to present a unique study of the tactics and achievements of the First Australian Task Force in Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam. Further, original maps throughout the text help to illustrate how the Task Force's tactics were employed.

In the 1970s, the United States faced challenges on a number of fronts. By nearly every measure, American power was no longer unrivalled. The task of managing America's relative decline fell to President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Gerald Ford. From 1969 to 1977, Nixon, Kissinger, and Ford reoriented U.S. foreign policy from its traditional poles of liberal interventionism and conservative isolationism into a policy of active but conservative engagement. In Nixon in the World, seventeen leading historians of the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy show how they did it, where they succeeded, and where they took their new strategy too far. Drawing on newly declassified materials, they provide authoritative and compelling analyses of issues such as Vietnam, d tente, arms control, and the U.S.-China rapprochement, creating the first comprehensive volume on American foreign policy in this pivotal era.