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Books > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
In 1961, the U.S. government established the first formalized
provisions for intercountry adoption just as it was expanding
America's involvement with Vietnam. Adoption became an increasingly
important portal of entry into American society for Vietnamese and
Amerasian children, raising questions about the United States'
obligations to refugees and the nature of the family during an era
of heightened anxiety about U.S. global interventions. Whether
adopting or favoring the migration of multiracial individuals,
Americans believed their norms and material comforts would salve
the wounds of a divisive war. However, Vietnamese migrants
challenged these efforts of reconciliation. As Allison Varzally
details in this book, a desire to redeem defeat in Vietnam, faith
in the nuclear family, and commitment to capitalism guided American
efforts on behalf of Vietnamese youths. By tracing the stories of
Vietnamese migrants, however, Varzally reveals that while many had
accepted separations as a painful strategy for survival in the
midst of war, most sought, and some eventually found, reunion with
their kin. This book makes clear the role of adult adoptees in
Vietnamese and American debates about the forms, privileges, and
duties of families, and places Vietnamese children at the center of
American and Vietnamese efforts to assign responsibility and find
peace in the aftermath of conflict.
An absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Secret War.
Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.
Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.
No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
In 2012, President Obama announced that the United States would
spend the next thirteen years - through November 11, 2025 -
commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, and the
American soldiers, "more than 58,000 patriots," who died in
Vietnam. The fact that at least 2.1 million Vietnamese - soldiers,
parents, grandparents, children - also died in that war will be
largely unknown and entirely uncommemorated. And U.S. history
barely stops to record the millions of Vietnamese who lived on
after being displaced, tortured, maimed, raped, or born with birth
defects, the result of devastating chemicals wreaked on the land by
the U.S. military. The reason for this appalling disconnect of
consciousness lies in an unremitting public relations campaign
waged by top American politicians, military leaders, business
people, and scholars who have spent the last sixty years justifying
the U.S. presence in Vietnam. It is a campaign of patriotic conceit
superbly chronicled by John Marciano in The American War in
Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration?A devastating follow-up to
Marciano's 1979 classic Teaching the Vietnam War (written with
William L. Griffen), Marciano's book seeks not to commemorate the
Vietnam War, but to stop the ongoing U.S. war on actual history.
Marciano reveals the grandiose flag-waving that stems from the
"Noble Cause principle," the notion that America is "chosen by God"
to bring democracy to the world. Marciano writes of the Noble Cause
being invoked unsparingly by presidents - from Jimmy Carter, in his
observation that, regarding Vietnam, "the destruction was mutual,"
to Barack Obama, who continues the flow of romantic media
propaganda: "The United States of America ...will remain the
greatest force for freedom the world has ever known."The result is
critical writing and teaching at its best. This book will find a
home in classrooms where teachers seek to do more than repeat the
trite glorifications of U.S. empire. It will provide students
everywhere with insights that can prepare them to change the world.
A secret mission sends the author to Vietnam's Mekong Delta, the
bread basket of old Indo - China. He uncovers a sophisticated enemy
supply network unknown to our military hierarchy.
Using intelligence data covertly gathered in Cambodia and
analyzed at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Virginia
they discover and destroy Vietcong forces and interdict VC supply
lines with a mixture of intrigue and romance.
A U. S. Naval story never told, complete with declassified maps
from the Office of Naval Intelligence, and illuminating pictures of
Saigon and archaic areas of the Delta taken by the author forty -
six years ago, a depiction of "old Saigon" and real relationships
between North and South Vietnam are related.
Headquartered in Saigon, the true interaction between our Navy
and Army ( MACV ) brass couched in the background of wartime
Saigon, often referred to as the "Paris of the Orient," and
Washington, D. C. is insightfully told.
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