An absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Secret War.

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.

Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.

No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.

Reprint of 1982 book from the US Army Center of Military History. An account of Army helicopter ambulances in Vietnam that evaluates leadership, procedures, and logistical support.

Philip D. Beidler, who served as an armored cavalry platoon leader in Vietnam, sees less and less of the hard-won perspective of the common soldier in what America has made of that war. Each passing year, he says, dulls our sense of immediacy about Vietnam's costs, opening wider the temptation to make it something more necessary, neatly contained, and justifiable than it should ever become. Here Beidler draws on deeply personal memories to reflect on the war's lingering aftereffects and the shallow, evasive ways we deal with them. Beidler brings back the war he knew in chapters on its vocabulary, music, literature, and film. His catalog of soldier slang reveals how finely a tour of Vietnam could hone one's sense of absurdity. His survey of the war's pop hits looks for meaning in the soundtrack many veterans still hear in their heads. Beidler also explains how ""Viet Pulp"" literature about snipers, tunnel rats, and other hard-core types has pushed aside masterpieces like Duong Thu Huong's Novel without a Name. Likewise we learn why the movie The Deer Hunter doesn't ""get it"" about Vietnam but why Platoon and We Were Soldiers sometimes nearly do. As Beidler takes measure of his own wartime politics and morals, he ponders the divergent careers of such figures as William Calley, the army lieutenant whose name is synonymous with the civilian massacre at My Lai, and an old friend, poet John Balaban, a conscientious objector who performed alternative duty in Vietnam as a schoolteacher and hospital worker. Beidler also looks at Vietnam alongside other conflicts--including the war on international terrorism. He once hoped, he says, that Vietnam had fractured our sense of providential destiny and geopolitical invincibility but now realizes, with dismay, that those myths are still with us. ""Americans have always wanted their apocalypses,"" writes Beidler, ""and they have always wanted them now.

Following the myths and legends about Nazis recruited by the French Foreign Legion to fight in Indochina, Eric Meyer's new book is based on the real story of one such former Waffen-SS man who lived to tell the tale. The Legion recruited widely from soldiers left unemployed and homeless by the defeat of Germany in 1945. They offered a new identity and passport to men who could bring their fighting abilities to the jungles and rice paddies of what was to become vietnam. These were ruthless, trained killers, brutalised by the war on the Eastern Front, their killing skills honed to a razor's edge. They found their true home in Indochina, where they fought and became a byword for brutal military efficiency.

A Conflict that Shaped A Generation
Four decades on, the legacy of American involvement in the Viet Nam War still looms large in the lives of the veterans who experienced it first hand. This new anthology of poems, stories, and essays looks at the war through the lens of both past and present perspectives.
Featuring the work of fifteen veteran writers, the scope of the book defines how modern warfare affects the lives of those who lived it and subsequently their own families after returning from the war. The men who have contributed to this volume each have played their own part whether medic, air cavalry, recon, forward observer, or just plain grunt. The pain they felt, witnessed, and buried can hopefully be released by the telling of their collective truths.
It is their hope that through this book you will be able to feel something of what they have felt and that it will inform you about the role that this conflict continues to play in the lives of those who served there. The words of William Faulkner still ring true: "The past is not dead, it's not even past."
Praise for "More Than A Memory"
Acclaim for More Than A Memory "For those old hands wanting to see and hear how others have made some sense of it in words--perhaps for inspiration to write some of their own--and for those newbies wanting to understand and relate as much as possible to that experience, I recommend this new volume wholeheartedly."
--Michael Gillen, PhD, Professor, Vietnam and Modern America, Pace University
"Poignant and heartrending as it is, More Than A Memory is a work of great courage and optimism, of triumph against all odds and amidst the horrors, of resurrection and renewal. It is nothing short of uplifting."
--Sam Vaknin, PhD, author of "Malignant Self-Love"
"There seems to be no end to the stories veterans of the Vietnam War need and want to tell and there should be no end to the readiness of the rest of us to read, to listen, and more importantly, to learn. More Than A Memory is a welcome addition to the literature of the war and its ongoing consequences."
--Marilyn B. Young, PhD, Dept. of History, NYU
"If you want to understand a conflict, look into the hearts of the men who fought it. More than a Memory does that and reveals a legacy that should stand as a warning to people who would remake the world in their own vision."
--Trish Wood, investigative journalist, and author of the critically acclaimed "What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It"
More from the contributors at www.ReflectionsOfVietnam.com
"More Than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam" is the newest book in the "Reflections of America" series from Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com

The Vietnam War was a defining event for a generation of Americans. But for years, misguided cliches about its veterans have proliferated. Philip F. Napoli's "Bringing It All Back Home" strips away the myths and reveals the complex individuals who served in Southeast Asia. Napoli helped to create Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, and in the spirit of that enterprise, his oral histories recast our understanding of a war and its legacy.
Napoli introduces a remarkable group of young New Yorkers who went abroad with high hopes only to find a bewildering conflict. We meet, for instance, a nurse who staged a hunger strike to promote peace while working at a field hospital and a black soldier who achieved an unexpected camaraderie with his fellow servicemen in racially tense times. Some of these soldiers became active opponents of the war; others did not. Tracing their journeys from the streets of Brooklyn and Queens to the banks of the Mekong, and back to the most glamorous corporations and meanest homeless shelters of New York City, Napoli uncovers the variety and surprising vibrancy of the ex-soldiers' experiences.

The Vietnam War was one of the most painful and divisive events in American history. The conflict, which ultimately took the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than three million Vietnamese, became a subject of bitter and impassioned debate. The most dramatic--and frequently the most enduring--efforts to define and articulate America's ill-fated involvement in Vietnam emerged from popular culture. American journalists, novelists, playwrights, poets, songwriters, and filmmakers--many of them eyewitnesses--have created powerful, heartfelt works documenting their thoughts and beliefs about the war. By examining those works, this book provides readers with a fascinating resource that explores America's ongoing struggle to assess the war and its legacies.

This encyclopedia includes 44 essays, each providing detailed information on an important film, song, or literary work about Vietnam. Each essay provides insights into the Vietnam-era experiences and views of the work's primary creative force, historical background on issues or events addressed in the work, discussion of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the work, and sources for further information. This book also includes an appendix listing of more than 275 films, songs, and literary works dealing with the war.

General William C. Westmoreland has long been derided for his failed strategy of "attrition" in the Vietnam War. Historians have argued that Westmoreland's strategy placed a premium on high "body counts" through a "big unit war" that relied almost solely on search and destroy missions. Many believe the U.S. Army failed in Vietnam because of Westmoreland's misguided and narrow strategy In a groundbreaking reassessment of American military strategy in Vietnam, Gregory Daddis overturns conventional wisdom and shows how Westmoreland did indeed develop a comprehensive campaign which included counterinsurgency, civic action, and the importance of gaining political support from the South Vietnamese population. Exploring the realities of a large, yet not wholly unconventional environment, Daddis reinterprets the complex political and military battlefields of Vietnam. Without searching for blame, he analyzes how American civil and military leaders developed strategy and how Westmoreland attempted to implement a sweeping strategic vision. Westmoreland's War is a landmark reinterpretation of one of America's most divisive wars, outlining the multiple, interconnected aspects of American military strategy in Vietnam-combat operations, pacification, nation building, and the training of the South Vietnamese armed forces. Daddis offers a critical reassessment of one of the defining moments in American history.

The Sins of the Father is the definitive new biography of Joseph P. Kennedy. Based on extensive research and interviews with Kennedy family members and their intimates speaking on the record for the first time, it offers an outstanding personal history - and provides shocking revelations about one of the most influential figures of our time. To the mythmakers of his day, Joseph P. Kennedy, like his glamorous and doomed presidential son Jack, led a charmed existence. He was celebrated as the son of an East Boston saloonkeeper who rose to become one of the richest men in the country. He served as the wartime ambassador to Great Britain, the chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and the chairman of the United States Maritime Commission. He was also a major legitimate liquor distributor, a moviemaker in Hollywood, and a master manipulator of the stock market. Yet his fortune, estimated at $100 million, traced its beginnings to his career as a bootlegger in partnership with organized crime during the Prohibition era. Even more disturbing, he was a documented anti-Semite and an appeaser of Adolf Hitler. The beaming family portraits and admiring newsmagazine prose never portrayed any of his many mistresses - or hinted at his seemingly unlimited corruption and duplicity.

In 1985 Thomas C. Thayer's War Without Fronts offered a wealth of data and analysis on U.S. military operations in the Vietnam War and provided a fresh and provocative take on the infamous conflict. When first published, reviewers agreed it was an invaluable text; Vietnam War historians still cite Thayer in modern studies. Long out-of-print, this new edition should facilitate the ongoing conversation about how the American war in Vietnam continues to serve as a comparison for more recent U.S. overseas military campaigns. Thomas Thayer worked as a systems analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the late 1960s and early 1970s, compiling data to better understand the war and find trends that might help improve U.S. civil and military operations. His work thus offers an insider's view of American military strategy during the Vietnam War and of how military operations affected the Vietnamese people.

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force," was commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967. In June of 1971, small portions of the report were leaked to the press and widely distributed. However, the publications of the report that resulted from these leaks were incomplete and suffered from many quality issues.

On the 40th anniversary of the leak to the press, the National Archives, along with the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Presidential Libraries, has released the complete report. The 48 boxes in this series contain a complete copy of the 7,000 page report along with numerous copies of different volumes of the report, all declassified. Approximately 34% of the report is available for the first time.

What is unique about this, compared to other versions, is that:

* The complete Report is now available with no redactions compared to previous releases

* The Report is presented as Leslie Gelb presented it to then Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford on January 15, 1969

* All the supplemental back-documentation is included. In the Gravel Edition, 80% of the documents in Part V.B. were not included

This release includes the complete account of peace negotiations, significant portions of which were not previously available either in the House Armed Services Committee redacted copy of the Report or in the Gravel Edition.

This facsimiile edition includes:

* Part V. B. 3. a. Justification of the War. Internal Documents. The Eisenhower Administration. Volume I: 1953

* Part V. B. 3. b. Justification of the War. Internal Documents. The Eisenhower Administration. Volume II: 1954 - Geneva

American military advisors in South Vietnam came to know their allies personally - as few American soldiers could. In addition to fighting the Viet Cong, advisors engaged in community building projects and local government initiatives. They dealt firsthand with corrupt American and South Vietnamese bureaucracies and not many would have been surprised to learn that 105mm artillery shells were being sold on the black market to the Viet Cong. Not many were surprised by the Communist victory in 1975. This memoir of a U.S. Army intelligence officer focuses on the province advisors who worked with local militias that were often disparaged by American units. The author describes his year (1969-1970) as a U.S. advisor to the South Vietnamese Regional and Popular Forces in the Mekong Delta.

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force," was commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967. In June of 1971, small portions of the report were leaked to the press and widely distributed. However, the publications of the report that resulted from these leaks were incomplete and suffered from many quality issues.

On the 40th anniversary of the leak to the press, the National Archives, along with the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Presidential Libraries, has released the complete report. The 48 boxes in this series contain a complete copy of the 7,000 page report along with numerous copies of different volumes of the report, all declassified. Approximately 34% of the report is available for the first time.

What is unique about this, compared to other versions, is that:

* The complete Report is now available with no redactions compared to previous releases

* The Report is presented as Leslie Gelb presented it to then Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford on January 15, 1969

* All the supplemental back-documentation is included. In the Gravel Edition, 80% of the documents in Part V.B. were not included

This release includes the complete account of peace negotiations, significant portions of which were not previously available either in the House Armed Services Committee redacted copy of the Report or in the Gravel Edition.

This facsimiile edition includes:

Part V. B. 3. a. Justification of the War. Internal Documents. The Eisenhower Administration. Volume I: 1953

Part V. B. 3. b Justification of the War. Internal Documents. The Eisenhower Administration. Volume II: 1954 - Geneva