Pham Xuan An was one of the twentieth century's greatest spies. While working as a correspondent for Time during the Vietnam War, he sent intelligence reports - written in invisible ink or hidden inside spring rolls in film canisters - to Ho Chi Minh and his generals in North Vietnam. Only after Saigon fell in 1975 did An's colleagues learn that the affable raconteur in their midst, acclaimed as ""dean of the Vietnamese press corps,"" was actually a general in the North Vietnamese Army. In recognition of his tradecraft and his ability to spin military losses - such as the Tet Offensive of 1968 - into psychological gains, An was awarded sixteen military medals. After the book's original publication, WikiLeaks revealed that Thomas A. Bass's account of An's career was distributed to CIA agents as a primer in espionage. Now available in paper with a new preface, An's story remains one of the most gripping to emerge from the era.

In the fall of 1965, the North Vietnamese Army launched its first major campaign against American forces, targeting, with 4,000 men, the U.S. Special Forces camp at Plei Me in the Central Highlands, where about a dozen green berets were training a few hundred South Vietnamese troops. In response, the U.S. choppered in a relief force of elite soldiers from Project Delta under legendary Chargin' Charlie Beckwith and dropped an unprecedented million pounds of munitions just yards from the camp's perimeter. The camp held out, but operations in the area continued. Within weeks, the Battle of Ia Drang broke out, the first major battle between the U.S. Army and North Vietnamese regulars. Based on archival research and interviews with veterans, Saliba covers the battle for Plei Me camp in close, vivid, and very human detail. He also gives careful attention to the strategic picture and shows how this clash laid the groundwork for the Battle of Ia Drang.

From Andrew Wiest, the bestselling author of The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam and one of the leading scholars in the study of the Vietnam War, comes a frank exploration of the human experience during the conflict. Vietnam allows the reader a grunt's-eye-view of the conflict - from the steaming rice paddies and swamps of the Mekong Delta, to the triple-canopy rainforest of the Central Highlands and the forlorn Marine bases that dotted the DMZ. It is the definitive oral history of the Vietnam War told in the uncompromising, no-holds barred language of the soldiers themselves.

In 1963 Barry Peterson left Australia for Vietnam to train local tribes to defend their villages against the Vietcong. This is the story of those Truong Son, or "Tiger Men, " who became the most respected and feared native forces in South Vietnam. But it is also the sad story of the defeat and destruction of the Montagnard culture and way of life, as Vietnamese and American leadership ultimately turned its back on its loyal supporters.

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence from all sides, Triumph Forsaken, first published in 2007, overturns most of the historical orthodoxy on the Vietnam War. Through the analysis of international perceptions and power, it shows that South Vietnam was a vital interest of the United States. The book provides many insights into the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and demonstrates that the coup negated the South Vietnamese government's tremendous, and hitherto unappreciated, military and political gains between 1954 and 1963. After Diem's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson had at his disposal several aggressive policy options that could have enabled South Vietnam to continue the war without a massive US troop infusion, but he ruled out these options because of faulty assumptions and inadequate intelligence, making such an infusion the only means of saving the country.

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.

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence from all sides, Triumph Forsaken, first published in 2007, overturns most of the historical orthodoxy on the Vietnam War. Through the analysis of international perceptions and power, it shows that South Vietnam was a vital interest of the United States. The book provides many insights into the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and demonstrates that the coup negated the South Vietnamese government's tremendous, and hitherto unappreciated, military and political gains between 1954 and 1963. After Diem's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson had at his disposal several aggressive policy options that could have enabled South Vietnam to continue the war without a massive US troop infusion, but he ruled out these options because of faulty assumptions and inadequate intelligence, making such an infusion the only means of saving the country.

In the Tet Offensive of 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched a massive countrywide attack on South Vietnam. Though the Communists failed to achieve their tactical and operational objectives, James Willbanks claims Hanoi won a strategic victory. The offensive proved that America's progress was grossly overstated and caused many Americans and key presidential advisors to question the wisdom of prolonging combat.

Willbanks also maintains that the Communists laid siege to a Marine combat base two weeks prior to the Tet Offensive-known as the Battle of Khe Sanh--to distract the United States. It is his belief that these two events are intimately linked, and in his concise and compelling history, he presents an engaging portrait of the conflicts and singles out key problems of interpretation.

Willbanks divides his study into six sections, beginning with a historical overview of the events leading up to the offensive, the attack itself, and the consequent battles of Saigon, Hue, and Khe Sahn. He continues with a critical assessment of the main themes and issues surrounding the offensive, and concludes with excerpts from American and Vietnamese documents, maps and chronologies, an annotated list of resources, and a short encyclopedia of key people, places, and events.

An experienced military historian and scholar of the Vietnam War, Willbanks has written a unique critical reference and guide that enlarges the debate surrounding this important turning point in America's longest war.

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.

The book describes my first seven months in Viet Nam, as a platoon leader in Bravo Company of the Third Battalion, 187th Infantry. I wanted to make it about the men I led and served with, and in some measure my reaction to the events of those seven months. The first part of the book deals with the routine tactics, unending work, misery and occasional hilarity of infantry life. The bulk of the book, however, deals with two events, within three weeks of each other: The battle of Dong Ngai and the battle of Dong Ap Bia - Hamburger Hill. The Rakkasans - the 3/187th - are the most highly decorated unit in the history of the United States Army, and two of those decorations were awarded for those two battles. By happenstance, I was in the middle of both. These are truly historical events. I wanted to convey the real face of war, both its mindless carnage and its nobility of spirit. Above all, I want to convey what happened to both the casual reader and the military historian and make them aware of the extraordinary spirit of the men of First Platoon, Bravo Company. They were ordinary men doing extraordinary things.

On 30 March 1972 the South Vietnamese positions along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separated the North from South Vietnam were suddenly shelled by hundreds of heavy guns and multiple rocket launchers. Caught in a series of outposts of what was the former 'McNamara Line', the shocked defenders had just enough time to emerge from their bunkers at the end of the barrage before they were attacked by regular North Vietnamese Army divisions, supported by hundreds of armoured vehicles that crashed though their defensive lines along the border. Thus began one of the fiercest campaigns of the Vietnam War but also one of the less well documented because by then most of the American ground forces had been withdrawn. Following on from the details of the downsizing of American forces and the setting up of the'Vietnamization' policy, the build up of both the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in the South and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) in the North is discussed at length. A special emphasis is devoted to the study of the development the North Vietnamese armoured corps that would spearhead the coming offensive. Consequently, the nature of the war changed dramatically, evolving from a guerrilla one into a conventional conflict. The South Vietnamese resistance shuddered, and then crumbled under the communist onslaught, putting Hue the ancient imperial capital at risk. It was only thanks to US airpower, directed by a small group of courageous American advisers, which helped to turn the tide. Under the command of a new capable commander, the South Vietnamese then methodically counterattacked to retake some of the lost ground. This culminated in the ferocious street fighting for Quang Tri. This first volume describes the combat taking place in the northern part of South Vietnam, and uses not only American archives but also Vietnamese sources, from both sides. The book contains 130 photos, five maps and 18 colour profiles. Asia@War - following on from our highly-successful Africa@War series, Asia@War replicates the same format - concise, incisive text, rare images and high quality colour artwork providing fresh accounts of both well-known and more esoteric aspects of conflict in this part of the world since 1945.

Speaking to an advisor in 1966 about America's escalation of forces in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara confessed: 'We've made mistakes in Vietnam ... I've made mistakes. But the mistakes I made are not the ones they say I made'. In 'I Made Mistakes', Aurelie Basha i Novosejt provides a fresh and controversial examination of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's decisions during the Vietnam War. Although McNamara is remembered as the architect of the Vietnam War, Novosejt draws on new sources - including the diaries of his advisor and confidant John T. McNaughton - to reveal a man who resisted the war more than most. As Secretary of Defense, he did not want the costs of the war associated with a new international commitment in Vietnam, but he sacrificed these misgivings to instead become the public face of the war out of a sense of loyalty to the President.

Even if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW coming home stories. What had gone on behind these prison walls? Along with legends of lionized heroes who endured torture rather than reveal sensitive military information, there were news leaks suggesting that others had denounced the war in return for favorable treatment. What wasn't acknowledged, however, is that U.S. troop opposition to the war was vast and reached well into Hoa Loa Prison. Half a century after the fact, Dissenting POWs emerges to recover this history, and to discover what drove the factionalism in Hoa Lo. Looking into the underlying factional divide between prowar "hardliners" and antiwar "dissidents" among the POWs, authors Wilber and Lembcke delve into the postwar American culture that created the myths of the HeroPOW and the dissidents blamed for the loss of the war. What they found was surprising: It wasn't simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officers versus enlisted men standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their precaptive experience that drew the lines. After the war, the hardcore hero holdouts-like John McCain-moved on to careers in politics and business, while the dissidents faded from view as the antiwar movement, that might otherwise have championed them, disbanded. Today, Dissenting POWs is a necessary myth buster, disabusing us of the revisionism that has replaced actual GI resistance with images of suffering POWs - ennobled victims that serve to suppress the fundamental questions of America's drift to endless war.

International lawyers and distinguished scholars consider the question: Is it legally justifiable to treat the Vietnam War as a civil war or as a peculiar modern species of international law? Originally published in 1968. 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 editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover 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.

Jerry Rose, a young journalist and photographer in Vietnam, exposed the secret beginnings of America's Vietnam War in the early 1960s. Putting his life in danger, he interviewed Vietnamese villagers in a countryside riddled by a war of terror and intimidation and embedded himself with soldiers on the ground, experiences that he distilled into the first major article to be written about American troops fighting in Vietnam. His writing was acclaimed as "war reporting that ranks with the best of Ernest Hemingway and Ernie Pyle," and in the years to follow, Time, The New York Times, The Reporter, New Republic, and The Saturday Evening Post regularly published his stories and photographs. In spring 1965, Jerry's friend and former doctor, Phan Huy Quat, became the new Prime Minister of Vietnam, and he invited Jerry to become an advisor to his government. Jerry agreed, hoping to use his deep knowledge of the country to help Vietnam. In September 1965, while on a trip to investigate corruption in the provinces of Vietnam, he died in a plane crash in Vietnam, leaving behind a treasure trove of journals, letters, stories, and a partially completed novel. The Journalist is the result of his sister, Lucy Rose Fischer, taking those writings and crafting a memoir in "collaboration" with her late brother-giving the term "ghostwritten" a whole new meaning.

From the defeat of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam at Ap Bac to the battles of the Ia Drang Valley, Khe Sanh, and more, Storms over the Mekong offers a reassessment of key turning points in the Vietnam War. Award-winning historian William P. Head not only reexamines these pivotal battles but also provides a new interpretation on the course of the war in Southeast Asia. In considering Operation Rolling Thunder, for example-which Head dubs as "too much rolling and not enough thunder"-readers will grasp the full scope of the campaign, from specifically targeted bridges in North Vietnam to the challenges of measuring success or failure, the domestic political situation, and how over time, Head argues, "slowly, but surely, Rolling Thunder dug itself into a hole." Likewise, Head shows how the battles for Saigon and Hue during the Tet Offensive of 1968 were tactical defeats for the Communist forces with as many as 40,000 killed and no real gains. At the same time, however, Tet made it clear to many in Washington that victory in Vietnam would require a still greater commitment of men and resources, far more than the American people were willing to invest. Storms over the Mekong is a blow-by-blow account of the key military events, to be sure. But beyond that, it is also a measured reconsideration of the battles and moments that Americans thought they already knew, adding up to a new history of the Vietnam War.

How American soldiers opposed and resisted the war in Vietnam While mainstream narratives of the Vietnam War all but marginalize anti-war activity of soldiers, opposition and resistance from within the three branches of the military made a real difference to the course of America's engagement in Vietnam. By 1968, every major peace march in the United States was led by active duty GIs and Vietnam War veterans. By 1970, thousands of active duty soldiers and marines were marching in protest in US cities. Hundreds of soldiers and marines in Vietnam were refusing to fight; tens of thousands were deserting to Canada, France and Sweden. Eventually the US Armed Forces were no longer able to sustain large-scale offensive operations and ceased to be effective. Yet this history is largely unknown and has been glossed over in much of the written and visual remembrances produced in recent years. Waging Peace in Vietnam shows how the GI movement unfolded, from the numerous anti-war coffee houses springing up outside military bases, to the hundreds of GI newspapers giving an independent voice to active soldiers, to the stockade revolts and the strikes and near-mutinies on naval vessels and in the air force. The book presents first-hand accounts, oral histories, and a wealth of underground newspapers, posters, flyers, and photographs documenting the actions of GIs and veterans who took part in the resistance. In addition, the book features fourteen original essays by leading scholars and activists. Notable contributors include Vietnam War scholar and author, Christian Appy, and Mme Nguyen Thi Binh, who played a major role in the Paris Peace Accord. The book originates from the exhibition Waging Peace, which has been shown in Vietnam and the University of Notre Dame, and will be touring the eastern United States in conjunction with book launches in Boston, Amherst, and New York.

On 21 March 1933, the National Socialists celebrated their alliance with the old Wilhelmine elites on the Day of Potsdam. Eighty years following 1933, the great year of upheaval, this volume more closely reexamines the historical context of the Day of Potsdam as a critical moment on the road to dictatorship. Nine scholarly articles reconstruct the events on the Day of Potsdam and analyze its importance in the culture of commemoration."

Each year, the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps selects one book that he believes is both relevant and timeless for reading by all Marines. The Commandant's choice for 1993 was We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.""
In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War.
How these men persevered--sacrificed themselves for their comrades and never gave up--makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating. General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, have interviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders. This devastating account rises above the specific ordeal it chronicles to present a picture of men facing the ultimate challenge, dealing with it in ways they would have found unimaginable only a few hours earlier. It reveals to us, as rarely before, man's most heroic and horrendous endeavor.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Western historians have long speculated about Chinese military intervention in the Vietnam War. It was not until recently, however, that newly available international archival materials, as well as documents from China, have indicated the true extent and level of Chinese participation in the conflict of Vietnam. For the first time in the English language, this book offers an overview of the operations and combat experience of more than 430,000 Chinese troops in Indochina from 1968-73. The Chinese Communist story from the "other side of the hill" explores one of the missing pieces to the historiography of the Vietnam War. The book covers the chronological development and Chinese decision-making by examining Beijing's intentions, security concerns, and major reasons for entering Vietnam to fight against the U.S. armed forces. It explains why China launched a nationwide movement, in Mao Zedong's words, to "assist Vietnam and resist America" in 1965-72. It details PLA foreign war preparation, training, battle planning and execution, tactical decisions, combat problem solving, political indoctrination, and performance evaluations through the Vietnam War. International Communist forces, technology, and logistics proved to be the decisive edge that enabled North Vietnam to survive the U.S. Rolling Thunder bombing campaign and helped the Viet Cong defeat South Vietnam. Chinese and Russian support prolonged the war, making it impossible for the United States to win. With Russian technology and massive Chinese intervention, the NVA and NLF could function on both conventional and unconventional levels, which the American military was not fully prepared to face. Nevertheless, the Vietnam War seriously tested the limits of the communist alliance. Rather than improving Sino-Soviet relations, aid to North Vietnam created a new competition as each communist power attempted to control Southeast Asian communist movement. China shifted its defense and national security concerns from the U.S. to the Soviet Union.

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.

A poignantly written and heartfelt memoir that recounts the author's hair raising-and occasionally hilarious-experience as a young Marine artilleryman in Vietnam. Gritty, unvarnished and often disturbing at times, the book provides a unique window into the lasting physical and emotional wounds of war. Realistic and highly readable, the story is not the typical gung-ho narrative of a combat Marine eager to die for God and country. A somewhat different and interesting perspective and a must read for veterans, Marine Corps buffs, students of the 1960's culture as well as those seeking a better understanding of the influence and relevancy of America's long and indecisive misadventure in Vietnam.