J. William Fulbright was the longest serving and most powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Both an intellectual and an internationalist, he had great influence over the course of American foreign relations in the 1960s and 1970s. Fulbright was also the most prominent, and the most effective, of the first American critics of the Vietnam War. His criticism was particularly galling and damning to Lyndon Johnson because Fulbright was a principled internationalist who could not be dismissed as an ideologue. Fulbright used hearings by the Foreign Relations Committee as a forum in which to advance his powerful critique of the war, and his writings constitute an ongoing, comprehensive critique of American foreign policy. This abridgement of Woods' prize-winning biography of J. William Fulbright presents the full story of Fulbright's role as one of the leading congressional opponents of the Vietnam War.

"Air Cav: History of the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam 1965-1969 is the story of the small, close world of fighting men in action. This volume can be many things to many people a book of memories, a souvenir, a pictorial essay on airmobility, or simply a story of gallant men at war. It can be many things, but one thing it is not, nor does it pretend to be a complete history of the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam.

The task and burden of history must lie with the objectivity of future generations, far removed from current pressures and restraints. It is true, of course, that much research for this book has been done from available official records, the ultimate source of written history. But even more has been drawn from the vivid recollections of the Cavalrymen who fought, tasted the brassy bile of fear, shared the fierce exultation of victory, or were drenched in the dark despair of death.

This volume contains the memoirs of a fighting team the FIRST TEAM. It is a memory

Throughout the past decade, defenders of the U.S. role in Vietnam have argued that America's defeat was not the result of an illegitimate intervention or military shortcomings, but rather a failure of will because national leaders, principally Lyndon B. Johnson, forced the troops to "fight with one hand tied behind their backs." In this volume, Robert Buzzanco disproves this theory by demonstrating that political leaders, not the military brass, pressed for war; that American policymakers always understood the problems and peril of war in Indochina; and that civil-military acrimony and the political desire to defer responsibility for Vietnam helped lead the United States into the war. For the first time, these crucial issues of military dissent, interservice rivalries, and civil-military relations and politics have been tied together to provide a cogent and comprehensive analysis of the U.S. role in Vietnam.

More than a quarter of a century after the last Marine Corps Huey left the American embassy in Saigon, the lessons and legacies of the most divisive war in twentieth-century American history are as hotly debated as ever. Why did successive administrations choose little-known Vietnam as the "test case" of American commitment in the fight against communism? Why were the "best and brightest" apparently blind to the illegitimacy of the state of South Vietnam? Would Kennedy have pulled out had he lived? And what lessons regarding American foreign policy emerged from the war?

"The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War" helps readers understand this tragic and complex conflict. The book contains both interpretive information and a wealth of facts in easy-to-find form. Part I provides a lucid narrative overview of contested issues and interpretations in Vietnam scholarship. Part II is a mini-encyclopedia with descriptions and analysis of individuals, events, groups, and military operations. Arranged alphabetically, this section enables readers to look up isolated facts and specialized terms. Part III is a chronology of key events. Part IV is an annotated guide to resources, including films, documentaries, CD-ROMs, and reliable Web sites. Part V contains excerpts from historical documents and statistical data.

Throughout the past decade, defenders of the U.S. role in Vietnam have argued that America's defeat was not the result of an illegitimate intervention or military shortcomings, but rather a failure of will because national leaders, principally Lyndon B. Johnson, forced the troops to "fight with one hand tied behind their backs." In this volume, Robert Buzzanco disproves this theory by demonstrating that political leaders, not the military brass, pressed for war; that American policymakers always understood the problems and peril of war in Indochina; and that civil-military acrimony and the political desire to defer responsibility for Vietnam helped lead the United States into the war. For the first time, these crucial issues of military dissent, interservice rivalries, and civil-military relations and politics have been tied together to provide a cogent and comprehensive analysis of the U.S. role in Vietnam.

Based on extensive research in the Russian archives, this book examines the Soviet approach to the Vietnam conflict between the 1954 Geneva conference on Indochina and late 1963, when the overthrow of the South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and the assassination of John F. Kennedy radically transformed the conflict.
The author finds that the USSR attributed no geostrategic importance to Indochina and did not want the crisis there to disrupt detente. The Russians had high hopes that the Geneva accords would bring years of peace in the region. Gradually disillusioned, they tried to strengthen North Vietnam, but would not support unification of North and South. By the early 1960s, however, they felt obliged to counter the American embrace of an aggressively anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam and the hostility of its former ally, the People's Republic of China. Finally, Moscow decided to disengage from Vietnam, disappointed that its efforts to avert an international crisis there had failed.

Featured in Stylist's guide to 2019's best non-fiction books The true story of the fierce band of women who battled Washington - and Hanoi - to bring their husbands home from the jungles of Vietnam. On 12 February, 1973, one hundred and sixteen men who, just six years earlier, had been high flying Navy and Air Force pilots, shuffled, limped, or were carried off a huge military transport plane at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. These American servicemen had endured years of brutal torture, kept shackled and starving in solitary confinement, in rat-infested, mosquito-laden prisons, the worst of which was The Hanoi Hilton. Months later, the first Vietnam POWs to return home would learn that their rescuers were their wives, a group of women that included Jane Denton, Sybil Stockdale, Louise Mulligan, Andrea Rander, Phyllis Galanti, and Helene Knapp. These women, who formed The National League of Families, would never have called themselves 'feminists', but they had become the POW and MIAs most fervent advocates, going to extraordinary lengths to facilitate their husbands' freedom - and to account for missing military men - by relentlessly lobbying government leaders, conducting a savvy media campaign, conducting covert meetings with antiwar activists, and most astonishingly, helping to code secret letters to their imprisoned husbands. In a page-turning work of narrative non-fiction, Heath Hardage Lee tells the story of these remarkable women for the first time. The League of Wives is certain to be on everyone's must-read list.

In this new collection of essays on the Vietnam War, eminent scholars of the Second Indochina conflict consider several key factors that led to the defeat of the United States and its allies. The book adopts a candid and critical look at the U.S.’s stance and policies in Vietnam, and refuses to condemn, excuse, or apologize for America’s actions in the conflict. Rather, the contributors think widely and creatively about the varied reasons that may have accounted for the U.S.’s failure to defeat the North Vietnamese Army, such as role played by economics in America’s defeat. Other fresh perspectives on the topic include American intelligence failure in Vietnam, the international dimensions of America’s defeat in Vietnam, and the foreign policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

A study of poetry written primarily by Vietnam veterans during and after the war. Drawing on a wealth of material often published in small presses and journals, the book highlights the horrors of war and the continuing traumas of veterans in a post-Vietnam America that has largely rewritten the Vietnam war to suit dominant national ideologies. The analysis dwells on poems of solidarity wherein American veterans reach out to their former enemy. The concluding chapter on Vietnamese poems in translation extends the circle of memory and trauma In its inclusion of Vietnamese perspectives Chattarji's study marks a departure from earlier works that have largely concentrated on Vietnam as a war rather than as a country. This is a significant addition to Vietnam studies and should be of interest to specialists in literature and culture studies, as well as those with a more general interest in the subject.

A groundbreaking new history of how the Vietnam War thwarted U.S. liberal ambitions in the developing world and at home in the 1960s At the start of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy and other American liberals expressed boundless optimism about the ability of the United States to promote democracy and development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. With U.S. power, resources, and expertise, almost anything seemed possible in the countries of the Cold War's "Third World"-developing, postcolonial nations unaligned with the United States or Soviet Union. Yet by the end of the decade, this vision lay in ruins. What happened? In The End of Ambition, Mark Atwood Lawrence offers a groundbreaking new history of America's most consequential decade. He reveals how the Vietnam War, combined with dizzying social and political changes in the United States, led to a collapse of American liberal ambition in the Third World-and how this transformation was connected to shrinking aspirations back home in America. By the middle and late 1960s, democracy had given way to dictatorship in many Third World countries, while poverty and inequality remained pervasive. As America's costly war in Vietnam dragged on and as the Kennedy years gave way to the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, America became increasingly risk averse and embraced a new policy of promoting mere stability in the Third World. Paying special attention to the U.S. relationships with Brazil, India, Iran, Indonesia, and southern Africa, The End of Ambition tells the story of this momentous change and of how international and U.S. events intertwined. The result is an original new perspective on a war that continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy today.

On his second combat tour, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. This unit was part of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group), or Studies and Observations Group as it was innocuously called. The small recon companies that were the center of its activities conducted some of the most dangerous missions of the war, infiltrating areas controlled by the North Vietnamese in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The companies never exceeded more than 30 Americans, yet they were the best source for the enemy's disposition and were key to the US military being able to take the war to the enemy. This was accomplished by utilizing both new and innovative technology, and tactics dating back to the French and Indian Wars. This small unit racked up one of the most impressive records of awards for valor of any unit in the history of the United States Army. It came at a terrible price, however; the number of wounded and killed in action was incredibly high. Those missions today seem suicidal. In 1970 they seemed equally so, yet these men went out day after day with their indigenous allies - Montagnard tribesmen, Vietnamese, and Chinese Nungs - and faced the challenges with courage and resolve. Whispers in the Tall Grass is the second volume of Nick's riveting memoir of his time with MACV-SOG. Written in the same irreverent, immediate style that made We Few a cult classic, this book continues Nick's hair-raising adventures behind enemy lines, and movingly conveys the bonds that war creates between soldiers.

Friendly Fire, in this instance, refers not merely to a tragic error of war, witnessed at least as much in Vietnam as in American wars before and since - it also refers, metaphorically, to America's war with itself during the Vietnam years. Starting from this point, Kinney's book considers the concept of 'friendly fire' from multiple vantage points, and portrays the Vietnam age as a crucible where America's cohesive image of itself shattered - pitting soldiers against superiors, doves against hawks, feminism against patriarchy, racial fear against racial tolerance. Through the use of extensive evidence from the film and popular fiction of Vietnam (e.g Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, Didion's Democracy, O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, Rabe's Sticks and Stones and Streamers), Kinney draws a powerful picture of a nation politically, culturally, and socially divided, and a war that has been memorialized as a contested site for art, media, politics, and ideology.

In 1963, a frustrated President Kennedy turned to the Pentagon for help in carrying out subversive operations against North Vietnam- a job the CIA had not managed to handle effectively. Thus was born the Pentagon's Special Operations Group(SOG). Under the cover name"Studies and Observation Group," SOG would, over the next eight years, dispatch numerous spies to North Vietnam, create a triple-cross deception program, wage psychological warfare by manipulating North Vietnamese POW's and kidnapped citizens, and stage deadly assaults on enemy soldiers traveling the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Written by the country's leading expert on SOG, here is the story of that covert war-one that would have both spectacular and disastrous results.

Combat helicopter pilots in the Vietnam War flew each mission in the face of imminent death. Begun as a series of letters to Department of Veterans Affairs, this compelling memoir of an aircraft commander in the 116th Assault Helicopter Company-""The Hornets""-relates his experience of the war in frank detail. From supporting the 25th Infantry Division's invasion of Cambodia, to flying the lead aircraft in the 101st Airmobile Division's pivotal invasion of Laos, the author recounts the traumatic events of his service from March 1970 to March 1971.

Every war has its "bridge"--Old North Bridge at Concord, Burnside's Bridge at Antietam, the railway bridge over Burma's River Kwai, the bridge over Germany's Rhine River at Remagen, and the bridges over Korea's Toko Ri. In Vietnam it was the bridge at Thanh Hoa, called Dragon's Jaw. For seven long years hundreds of young US airmen flew sortie after sortie against North Vietnam's formidable and strategically important bridge, dodging a heavy concentration of anti-aircraft fire and enemy MiG planes. Many American airmen were shot down, killed, or captured and taken to the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" POW camp. But after each air attack, when the smoke cleared and the debris settled, the bridge stubbornly remained standing. For the North Vietnamese it became a symbol of their invincibility; for US war planners an obsession; for US airmen a testament to American mettle and valor. Using after-action reports, official records, and interviews with surviving pilots, as well as untapped Vietnamese sources, Dragon's Jaw chronicles American efforts to destroy the bridge, strike by bloody strike, putting readers into the cockpits, under fire. The story of the Dragon's Jaw is a story rich in bravery, courage, audacity, and sometimes luck, sometimes tragedy. The "bridge" story of Vietnam is an epic tale of war against a determined foe.

At the beginning of the Vietnam War, the Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF) were equipped with slow, old Korean War generation fighters - a combination of MiG-17s and MiG-19s - types that should have offered little opposition to the cutting-edge fighter-bombers such as the F-4 Phantom II, F-105 Thunderchief and the F-8 Crusader. Yet when the USAF and US Navy unleashed their aircraft on North Vietnam in 1965 the inexperienced pilots of the VPAF were able to shatter the illusion of US air superiority. Taking advantage of their jet's unequalled low-speed maneuverability, small size and powerful cannon armament they were able to take the fight to their missile-guided opponents, with a number of Vietnamese pilots racking up ace scores. Packed with information previously unavailable in the west and only recently released from archives in Vietnam, this is the first major analysis of the exploits of Vietnamese pilots in the David and Goliath contest with the US over the skies of Vietnam.

A major revision of our understanding of JFK's commitment to Vietnam, revealing that his administration's plan to withdraw was a political device, the effect of which was to manage public opinion while preserving US military assistance. In October 1963, the White House publicly proposed the removal of US troops from Vietnam, earning President Kennedy an enduring reputation as a skeptic on the war. In fact, Kennedy was ambivalent about withdrawal and was largely detached from its planning. Drawing on secret presidential tapes, Marc J. Selverstone reveals that the withdrawal statement gave Kennedy political cover, allowing him to sustain support for US military assistance. Its details were the handiwork of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, whose ownership of the plan distanced it from the president. Selverstone's use of the presidential tapes, alongside declassified documents, memoirs, and oral histories, lifts the veil on this legend of Camelot. Withdrawal planning was never just about Vietnam as it evolved over the course of fifteen months. For McNamara, it injected greater discipline into the US assistance program. For others, it was a form of leverage over South Vietnam. For the military, it was largely an unwelcome exercise. And for JFK, it allowed him to preserve the US commitment while ostensibly limiting it. The Kennedy Withdrawal offers an inside look at presidential decisionmaking in this liminal period of the Vietnam War and makes clear that portrayals of Kennedy as a dove are overdrawn. His proposed withdrawal was in fact a cagey strategy for keeping the United States involved in the fight-a strategy the country adopted decades later in Afghanistan.

During the Vietnam War, the United States embarked on an unusual crusade on behalf of the government of South Vietnam. Known as the pacification program, it sought to help South Vietnam's government take root and survive as an independent, legitimate entity by defeating communist insurgents and promoting economic development and political reforms. In this book, Richard Hunt provides the first comprehensive history of America's "battle for hearts and minds," the distinctive blending of military and political approaches that took aim at the essence of the struggle between North and South Vietnam. Hunt concentrates on the American role, setting pacification in the larger political context of nation building. He describes the search for the best combination of military and political action, incorporating analysis of the controversial Phoenix program, and illuminates the difficulties the Americans encountered with their sometimes reluctant ally. The author explains how hard it was to get the U.S. Army involved in pacification and shows the struggle to yoke divergent organizations (military, civilian, and intelligence agencies) to serve one common goal. The greatest challenge of all was to persuade a surrogate-the Saigon government-to carry out programs and to make reforms conceived of by American officials. The book concludes with a careful assessment of pacification's successes and failures. Would the Saigon government have flourished if there had been more time to consolidate the gains of pacification? Or was the regime so fundamentally flawed that its demise was preordained by its internal contradictions? This pathbreaking book offers startling and provocative answers to these and other important questions about our Vietnam experience.

And Bring the Darkness Home is a haunting exploration of how the mental scars of war destroyed an international cricket career, tore a family apart and left destitute a man who seemed to have it all. Tony Dell was the only Test cricketer to fight in the Vietnam War. His journey to the summit of the game, playing for Australia against England in the Ashes, was as unlikely and meteoric as any in cricket history. His descent was painful and harrowing. It was in his mid-60s, living in his mother's garage, that he learned the truth about what had led him on a path of self-destruction. A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder allowed him to piece together the ruins of his life and also to search for answers, for himself and the thousands of other sufferers. The restlessness and urgency that once drove him to the top of the game was turned on authorities who refused to learn the lessons from history. PTSD robbed Tony Dell of memories of his playing career and left a palpable sense of loss. It also gave him a life-changing mission.

By 1969, following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, over 500,000 US troops were 'in country' in Vietnam. Before America's longest war had ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, 450,000 Vietnamese had died, along with 36,000 Americans. The Vietnam War was the first rock 'n' roll war, the first helicopter war with its doctrine of 'airmobility', and the first television war; it made napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange infamous, and gave us the New Journalism of Michael Herr and others. It also saw the establishment of the Navy SEALs and Delta Force. At home, America fractured, with the peace movement protesting against the war; at Kent State University, Ohio National Guardsmen fired on unarmed students, killing four and injuring nine. Lewis's compelling selection of the best writing to come out of a war covered by some truly outstanding writers, both journalists and combatants, includes an eyewitness account of the first major battle between the US Army and the People's Army of Vietnam at Ia Drang; a selection of letters home; Nicholas Tomalin's famous 'The General Goes Zapping Charlie Cong'; Robert Mason's 'R&R', Studs Terkel's account of the police breaking up an anti-war protest; John Kifner on the shootings at Kent State; Ron Kovic's 'Born on the Fourth of July'; John T. Wheeler's 'Khe Sanh: Live in the V Ring'; Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh on the massacre at My Lai; Michael Herr's 'It Made You Feel Omni'; Viet Cong Truong Nhu Tang's memoir; naval nurse Maureen Walsh's memoir, 'Burning Flesh'; John Pilger on the fall of Saigon; and Tim O'Brien's 'If I Die in a Combat Zone'.

Outspoken, professional and fearless, Lt.Col.John Paul Vann went to Vietnam in 1962, full of confidence in America's might and right to prevail. He was soon appalled by the South Vietnamese troops' unwillingness to fight, by their random slaughter of civilians and by the arrogance and corruption of the US military. He flouted his supervisors and leaked his sharply pessimistic - and, as it turned out, accurate - assessments to the US press corps in Saigon. Among them was Sheehan, who became fascinated by the angry Vann, befriended him and followed his tragic and reckless career.

In the Cambodian proverb, "when broken glass floats" is the time when evil triumphs over good. That time began in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia and the Him family began their trek through the hell of the "killing fields." In a mesmerizing story, Him vividly recounts a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps are the norm and technology, such as cars and electricity, no longer exists. Death becomes a companion at the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, Chanrithy's family remains loyal to one another despite the Khmer Rouge's demand of loyalty only to itself. Moments of inexpressible sacrifice and love lead them to bring what little food they have to the others, even at the risk of their own lives. In 1979, "broken glass" finally sinks. From a family of twelve, only five of the Him children survive. Sponsored by an uncle in Oregon, they begin their new lives in a land that promises welcome to those starved for freedom.