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.

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

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.

This new, extensively researched volume (volume two in the series) is a comprehensive guide to the history, development, wear, and use of uniforms and equipment during American military advisors involvement in the Vietnam War. Included are insignia, headgear, camouflage uniforms, modified items, Flak vests, boots, clothing accessories, paper items and personal items from the years 1957-1972, all examined in great detail. Using re-constructed and period photos, the author presents the look and appearance of American Army, Navy, and Marine Corps advisors in Vietnam. ARVN Ranger, Airborne, and ARVN infantry advisors, all have their own chapter, along with Junk Force, RAG Force, and South Vietnamese Naval and Marine Corps advisors.

On Sunday morning, July 9, 1950, the U.S. 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division received orders to deploy to Korea, where the North Koreans had crossed the 38th Parallel just two weeks earlier. In service in various forms since 1861, the 23rd Infantry Regiment - nicknamed the "Tomahawks" - was, like other army units following the downsizing of the military after World War II, short on radios, weapons, and men. Nevertheless, the regiment amassed volunteers to fill out its ranks and mobilised for the Far East. By the time the 23rd Infantry arrived in South Korea, American forces and their U.N. allies had been driven more than 100 miles down the Korean Penninsula by the communist Chinese. In February 1951, with his Eighth Army understrength and low on morale after weeks of retreat, Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridgway ordered the 23rd Infantry, under the command of Col. Paul Freeman, to hold the small town of Chipyong-ni, a vital road hub east of Seoul. Faced with several Chinese divisions totaling nearly 25,000 men, the 23rrd Infantry's 4,500 soldiers were outnumbered five to one. Trapped behind enemy lines, the 23rd Infantry's last stand of February 12-15 could have been one of the worst defeats in I.S. military history. Instead, the regiment's victory has been called the "Gettysburg of the Korean War" and altered the course of the remainder of the war. In High Tide in the Korean War, Leo Barron retells the Battle of Chipyong-ni from the point of view of thje commanders faced with a do-or-die defense and the soldiers fighting from the foxholes, outnumbered in unfamiliar territory in winter. Drawn from memoirs, interviews iuntelligence summaries, unit reports and personal research in South Kore, Barron's narrative is a gripping, page-turning history of one of the most important battles of the Korean War.

In late March 1975, as the Vietnam War raged, an Australian voluntary aid worker named Rosemary Taylor approached the Australian Embassy seeking assistance to fly 600 orphans out of Saigon to safety. Rosemary and Margaret Moses, two former nuns from Adelaide, had spent eight years in Vietnam during the war, building up a complex of nurseries to house war orphans and street waifs as the organisation that built up around them facilitated international adoptions for the children. As the North Vietnamese forces closed in on their nurseries, they needed a plan to evacuate the children, or all their work might count for little ... Based on extensive archival and historical research, and interviews of some of those directly involved in the events described, Operation Babylift details the last month of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the most vulnerable victims of that war: the orphans it created. Through the story of the attempt to save 600 children, we see how a small group of determined women refused to play political games as they tried to remake the lives of a forgotten generation, one child at a time.

All of Which I Saw captures the United States Marine Corps during some of the most dramatic and important moments of the Iraq War. The book takes the viewer across the Pacific aboard ship, into the Battle of Najaf and Second Battle of Fallujah-where Read took his now-iconic photograph of a wounded Sergeant Major Bradley Kasal-and beyond into the bloody streets of Ramadi and the darkness of the Haditha massacre . . . only to return to the light of homecoming. During the Iraq War, no other photojournalist spent more time with the Marines, and this is a singular, stunning, and indispensable record of the conflict and the Marine Corps at war. Throughout, the book also contains Read's own contemporaneous accounts that tell the stories behind the photos and capture the grim truths about the war in all its violence, tragedy, heroism, and sacrifice.

A BRACING ACCOUNT OF A WAR THAT IS EITHER MISUNDERSTOOD, FORGOTTEN, OR WILLFULLY IGNORED
For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953. But for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long struggle that still haunts contemporary events. With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Bruce Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its origin as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan's occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America's post-World War II occupation of Korea, reveals untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, exposing as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides.
Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, "The Korean War" is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential.

How does the US Army mold a video-game generation with its thumbs on the joystick into a proud fighting force with its fingers on the trigger-and lives on the line-in America's War on Terror? Michael J. MacLeod, already an accomplished professional photographer and journalist, decided to find out the hard way: by enlisting in the armed forces at age forty-one. What he observed and experienced as an embedded reporter and a serving soldier makes for an unflinching and inspiring portrait of endurance, sacrifice, discipline, and courage. From the trials of basic training on the home front to the ranks of the legendary 82nd Airborne Division to taking fire in the hot zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, MacLeod chronicles the soldier's evolution as only one who's been in those boots can. Candid, wise, and powerful, his memoir takes readers on an unforgettable journey through war and allows them to witness bravery firsthand.

Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War opens in 1954 with the signing of the Geneva accords that ended the eight-year-long Franco-Indochinese War and created two Vietnams. In agreeing to the accords, Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam anticipated a new period of peace leading to national reunification under their rule; they never imagined that within a decade they would be engaged in an even bigger feud with the United States. Basing his work on new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese materials as well as French, British, Canadian, and American documents, Pierre Asselin explores the communist path to war. Specifically, he examines the internal debates and other elements that shaped Hanoi's revolutionary strategy in the decade preceding U.S. military intervention, and resulting domestic and foreign programs. Without exonerating Washington for its role in the advent of hostilities in 1965, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War demonstrates that those who directed the effort against the United States and its allies in Saigon were at least equally responsible for creating the circumstances that culminated in arguably the most tragic conflict of the Cold War era.

In March 2003, the United States and Great Britain invaded Iraq to put an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein. The war was launched without a United Nations mandate and was based on the erroneous claim that Iraq had retained weapons of mass destruction. France, under President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, spectacularly opposed the United States and British invasion, leading a global coalition against the war that also included Germany and Russia. The diplomatic crisis leading up to the war shook both French and American perceptions of each other and revealed cracks in the transatlantic relationship that had been building since the end of the Cold War. Based on exclusive French archival sources and numerous interviews with former officials in both France and the United States, A History of the Iraq Crisis retraces the international exchange that culminated in the 2003 Iraq conflict. It shows how and why the Iraq crisis led to a confrontation between two longtime allies unprecedented since the time of Charles de Gaulle, and it exposes the deep and ongoing divisions within Europe, the Atlantic alliance, and the international community as a whole. The Franco-American narrative offers a unique prism through which the American road to war can be better understood.

Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern spent more than seven years traveling in Laos, talking to farmers, scrap-metal hunters, people who make and use tools from UXO, people who hunt for death beneath the earth and render it harmless. With their words and photographs, they reveal the beauty of Laos, the strength of Laotians, and the commitment of bomb-disposal teams. People take precedence in this account, which is deeply personal without ever becoming a polemic.

The Author sets the scene with action on a 2004 tour in Iraq where hard lessons were learnt. Next stop Helmand District, Afghanistan, after rigorous training. By now he had been a Sniper Instructor for eight years and his depth of knowledge makes this almost a sniper's manual. This, combined with his descriptions of the sniper engagements experienced during his Battalion's action packed tour, make this a thrilling and instructive read. He describes not just the operational background moves and tactics but his emotions - taking life even from distances of a kilometre is traumatic. Intense though the action was, there were long periods of watching and waiting. Snipers work in pairs so relationship and trust are all important. Snipers are elite soldiers and clearly the Author is among the best of the best. This is a superb description of professional soldiering at the sharp end. Extract: I could make out the head and shoulders of the insurgent as he was firing in the prone position. I aimed for the centre area - removed the safety catch and held that point of aim. Then I slowly and deliberately operated my trigger squeezing it gently to the rear. The round impacted into the target just below the shoulder. The target seemed to slide down disappearing out of sight, the rifle muzzle remained pointing uppermost in the air.

In March 2003, M Squadron was sent 1,000 kilometres behind enemy lines on a true mission impossible, to take the surrender of the 100,000-strong Iraqi Army 5th Corps. From the very start their tasking earned the nickname 'Operation No Return'. Caught in a ferocious ambush M Squadron launched a desperate bid to escape; the elite operators destroyed sensitive kit and prepared for death or capture as the Iraqis closed their deadly trap.