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Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
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 Women's War is the gripping true story of a Danish female
soldier's tours to the Helmand Province in Afghanistan between 2007
and 2009. There she comes into contact with the Afghan women who
are fighting against oppression, domestic violence and the horror
regime of the Taliban, and together they initiate a covert
collaboration. The women receive the necessary aid to establish
dressmaking rooms, beauty salons, chicken farms and other projects
while being aware of the fact that the international military
forces are their only chance to get rid of the Taliban. The Women's
War emerged out of the friendships built by a soldier with Afghan
women who helped the international military forces in unexpected
ways. It is a book by a woman in the armed forces about what war
does to women, about the looming risk of taking chances in wartime
and about grief over fallen friends, but more importantly, it is
about how women in one instance found the will to not only survive
but to make something out of the terrible conditions that war
brings.
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.
From October 2006 to December 2007, Daniel A. Sjursen - then a U.S.
Army lieutenant - led a light scout platoon across Baghdad. The
experiences of Ghost Rider platoon provide a soldier's-eye view of
the incredible complexities of warfare, peacekeeping, and
counterinsurgency in one of the world's most ancient cities.
Sjursen reflects broadly and critically on the prevailing narrative
of the surge as savior of America's longest war, on the overall
military strategy in Iraq, and on U.S. relations with ordinary
Iraqis. And at a time when just a handful of U.S. senators and
representatives have a family member in combat, Sjursen writes
movingly on questions of America's patterns of national service.
Who now serves and why? What connection does America's professional
army have to the broader society and culture? What is the price we
pay for abandoning the model of the citizen soldier? With the
bloody emergence of ISIS in 2014, Iraq and its beleaguered,
battle-scarred people are again much in the news. Unlike other
books on the U.S. war in Iraq, Ghost Riders of Baghdad is part
battlefield chronicle, part critique of American military strategy
and policy, and part appreciation of Iraq and its people. At once a
military memoir, synthetic history, and cultural commentary, Ghost
Riders of Bahdad delivers a compelling story and a deep
appreciation of both those who serve and the civilians they strive
to protect. Sjursen provides a riveting addition to our
understanding of modern warfare and its human costs.
In this instant New York Times bestseller, the celebrated author of
Make Your Bed shares amazing adventure stories from his career as a
Navy SEAL and commander of America's Special Operations Forces.
Admiral William H. McRaven is a part of American military history,
having been involved in some of the most famous missions in recent
memory, including the capture of Saddam Hussein, the rescue of
Captain Richard Phillips, and the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. Sea
Stories begins in 1960 at the American Officers' Club in France,
where Allied officers and their wives gathered to have drinks and
tell stories about their adventures during World War II -- the
place where a young Bill McRaven learned the value of a good story.
Sea Stories is an unforgettable look back on one man's incredible
life, from childhood days sneaking into high-security military
sites to a day job of hunting terrorists and rescuing hostages.
Action-packed, inspiring, and full of thrilling stories from life
in the special operations world, Sea Stories is a remarkable memoir
from one of America's most accomplished leaders.
The main premise "The Vietnam Wars" is that Vietnam experienced not
one but several over-lapping and often inter-dependent wars. This
lively new source book chronicles the history of one of the
bloodiest and most controversial conflicts of the twentieth
century, beginning with the birth of the Vietnamese communist party
in 1930 and ending with the triumph of the Vietnamese revolution in
1975. Through a series of short essays, but most especially through
the documents themselves, the book illustrates and illuminates both
the conflict and the main historical debates about its origins,
course and consequences.
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