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Books > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
The six-month siege of Khe Sanh in 1968 was the largest, most
intense battle of the Vietnam War. For six thousand trapped U.S.
Marines, it was a nightmare; for President Johnson, an obsession.
For General Westmoreland, it was to be the final vindication of
technological weaponry; for General Giap, architect of the French
defeat at Dien Bien Phu, it was a spectacular ruse masking troops
moving south for the Tet offensive. With a new introduction by Mark
Bowden-best-selling author of Hu? 1968-Robert Pisor's immersive
narrative of the action at Khe Sanh is a timely reminder of the
human cost of war, and a visceral portrait of Vietnam's fiercest
and most epic close-quarters battle. Readers may find the politics
and the tactics of the Vietnam War, as they played out at Khe Sahn
fifty years ago, echoed in our nation's global incursions today.
Robert Pisor sets forth the history, the politics, the strategies,
and, above all, the desperate reality of the battle that became the
turning point of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under
a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at
dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud
along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one
of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone. When
Joann Puffer Kotcher left for Vietnam in 1966, she was fresh out of
the University of Michigan with a year of teaching, and a year as
an American Red Cross Donut Dolly in Korea. All she wanted was to
go someplace exciting. In Vietnam, she visited troops from the
Central Highlands to the Mekong Delta, from the South China Sea to
the Cambodian border. At four duty stations, she set up recreation
centers and made mobile visits wherever commanders requested. That
included Special Forces Teams in remote combat zone jungles. She
brought reminders of home, thoughts of a sister or the girl next
door. Officers asked her to take risks because they believed her
visits to the front lines were important to the men. Every Vietnam
veteran who meets her thinks of her as a brother-at-arms. Donut
Dolly is Kotcher's personal view of the war, recorded in a journal
kept during her tour, day by day as she experienced it. It is a
faithful representation of the twists and turns of the turbulent,
controversial time. While in Vietnam, Kotcher was once abducted;
dodged an ambush in the Delta; talked with a true war hero in a
hospital who had charged a machine gun; and had a conversation with
a prostitute. A rare account of an American Red Cross volunteer in
Vietnam, Donut Dolly will appeal to those interested in the Vietnam
War, to those who have interest in the military, and to women
aspiring to go beyond the ordinary.
BLOODY MAMA BLUES captures the war behind the war in Vietnam.
Corruption, black market dealings, prostitution, drugs, and easy
money proved seductive to countless American soldiers. Lieutenant
Mike Hardy expects to serve an honorable tour of duty as an
infantry officer. Instead, he is thrown into a cauldron of evil.
BLOODY MAMA BLUES explores the underside of the Vietnam experience,
and the irreparable damage suffered by a generation of young men
and women.
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