This book revisits the American canon of novels, memoirs, and films about the war in Vietnam, in order to reassess critically the centrality of the discourse of American victimization in the country's imagination of the conflict, and to trace the strategies of representation that establish American soldiers and veterans as the most significant victims of the war. By investigating in detail the imagery of the Vietnamese landscape recreated by American authors and directors, the volume explores the proposition that Vietnam has been turned into an American myth, demonstrating that the process resulted in a dehistoricization and mystification of the conflict that obscured its historical and political realities. Against this background, representations of the war's victims-Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers-are then considered in light of their ideological meanings and uses. Ultimately, the book seeks to demonstrate how, in a relation of power, the question of victimhood can become ideologized, transforming into both a discourse and a strategy of representation-and in doing so, to demythologize something of the "Vietnam" of American cultural narrative.

Last Stand at Khe Sanh is a vivid, fast-paced account of the dramatic 1968 confrontation, when 6,000 US Marines held off 30,000 North Vietnamese Army regulars at a remote mountain stronghold. Based on extensive archival research and more than 100 interviews with participants, author Gregg Jones captures the courage and camaraderie of the defenders and delivers the fullest account yet of this epic battle.

Contents:
1. An introduction to Golf Course Wars
2. Construction of Canadian Myths of Identity
3. Displacing the Native in Canadian Histories
4. Cultural Displays: Inside the Canadian Museum of Civilisation
5. At the Barricades
6. Interventions
Conclusion: Myths of Disappearance and Alternative Remembrance

Like many other young men during the Vietnam War, Ed Corlew enlisted in hopes of having some influence regarding assignment-safety and training. Instead he found himself in the dangerous door gunner position and, soon after, the crew chief aboard a CH-47 Chinook, 15 miles from the DMZ in 1967 and 1968. Assigned to the famed 1st Cavalry Division, Corlew was shot down three times: in the Battle of Hue, the Battle of Quang Tri, and the A Shau Valley. This memoir began both as a journal and as counselor-recommended therapy for PTSD. He earned four bronze service stars for his service (an estimated 1000 flying hours) during the war's bloodiest year, enduring enemy mortar and rocket attacks. Engaging, frank, and full of action, Corlew describes his many combat experiences as well as the emotional effects-all through the lens of his Christian faith.

The "Silent Majority" Speech treats Richard Nixon's address of November 3, 1969, as a lens through which to examine the latter years of the Vietnam War and their significance to U.S. global power and American domestic life. The book uses Nixon's speech - which introduced the policy of "Vietnamization" and cited the so-called bloodbath theory as a justification for continued U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia - as a fascinating moment around which to build an analysis of the last years of the war. For Nixon's strategy to be successful, he requested the support of what he called the "great silent majority," a term that continues to resonate in American political culture. Scott Laderman moves beyond the war's final years to address the administration's hypocritical exploitation of moral rhetoric and its stoking of social divisiveness to achieve policy aims. Laderman explores the antiwar and pro-war movements, the shattering of the liberal consensus, and the stirrings of the right-wing resurgence that would come to define American politics. Supplemental primary sources make this book an ideal tool for introducing students to historical research. The "Silent Majority" Speech is critical reading for those studying American political history and U.S.-Asian/Southeast Asian relations.

"

A Companion to the Vietnam War "contains twenty-four definitive essays on America's longest and most divisive foreign conflict. It represents the best current scholarship on this controversial and influential episode in modern American history.
Highlights issues of nationalism, culture, gender, and race.
Covers the breadth of Vietnam War history, including American war policies, the Vietnamese perspective, the antiwar movement, and the American home front.
Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
Includes a select bibliography to guide further research.

"

A Companion to the Vietnam War "contains twenty-four definitive essays on America's longest and most divisive foreign conflict. It represents the best current scholarship on this controversial and influential episode in modern American history.
Highlights issues of nationalism, culture, gender, and race.
Covers the breadth of Vietnam War history, including American war policies, the Vietnamese perspective, the antiwar movement, and the American home front.
Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
Includes a select bibliography to guide further research.

Set as deeply in his mind as in the depths of the Southeast-Asian jungle, a young American soldier embarks on an evocative journey to a war that, for him, will never be over. I am that American soldier. It's 1969. 18 and living in New York City the world was a playground for Mickey, a naive Irish-American kid bored with his life who felt he was ready for the adventures of war. His father served in World War II, his brother a Marine in Vietnam it was now his turn. His 365 days, in the hell that was Vietnam, builds in torment until an attack on a bunker complex in Cambodia where everything goes terribly wrong. Wounded, his friend captured, he becomes a tormented survivor knowing he is always just a heartbeat away from death. His adventure turned nightmare brings a visceral understanding of the words penned by Thoreau, those very same words with which his father imparted enduring wisdom throughout his youth: ""Most men live lives of quiet desperation,"" especially those at war. This emotional journey of self-realisation chronicles the key perspective-shaping experiences of a U.S. Army grunt fighting in Vietnam.

This book is a unique source of information about U.S. troop involvement in South Vietnam from 1965 to 1972. It stresses that Vietnam was a war without fronts or battle lines-a war different from any that the United States had previously fought.

Originally published in 1998 by the U.S. Army Center of Military History "Combat Operations: Taking the Offensive" chronicles the onset of offensive operations by the U.S. Army after eighteen months of building up a credible force on the ground in South Vietnam and taking the first steps toward bringing the war to the enemy. The compelling story by George L. MacGarrigle begins in October 1966, when General William C. Westmoreland believed that he had the arms and men to take the initiative from the enemy and that significant progress would be made on all fronts over the next twelve months. Aware of American intentions, North Vietnam undertook a prolonged war of attrition and stepped up the infiltration of its own troops into the South. While the insurgency in the South remained the cornerstone of Communist strategy, it was increasingly overshadowed by main-force military operations. These circumstances, according to MacGarrigle, set the stage for intensified combat. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units retained the advantage, fighting only when it suited their purposes and retreating with impunity into inviolate sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. With Westmoreland feeling hamstrung by political constraints on his ability to wage war in the vast hostile areas along the border, 1967 ended with a growing uncertainty in the struggle to secure the countryside. Relying on official American and enemy primary sources, MacGarrigle has crafted a well-balanced account of this year of intense combat. His volume is a tribute to those who sacrificed so much in a long and irresolute conflict, and soldiers engaged in military operations that place great demands on their initiative, skill, and devotion will find its thought-provoking lessons worthy of reflection.

T his BOOK EXAMINES the world confronted by the men of an American combat division during the Vietnam War. Although the unit in question is the 25th Infantry Division, this is not a unit history or standard military chronology. Instead, I try to view all of the major parts of the soldiers' world-including subjects as diverse as climate, living conditions, deadly combat, and morale. The world inhabited by the soldiers of the 25th Division was not theirs alone; the men and women who served with other frontline units in Vietnam will immediately recognize the major landmarks. Using the 25th Division as a focal point, I hope to help the people of today better understand what the Vietnam War was like in fact, not fiction. This work is based on a variety of sources. The documentary foundations come from a great number of 25th Division records generated during the war; the most important of which are the large quarterly Division reports. They, in turn, are complemented by the quarterly reports that came from II Field Force, Vietnam, the Army headquarters for the units operating in the provinces near Saigon. The Center of Military History, Department of the Army, provided these documents to me while I was doing research on the village war in a Vietnamese province. I used this research to write The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province (Westview Press, 1991), which deals with the political and military struggle waged by both sides in an important part of the 25th Division's area of operations.

Existing studies of the Vietnam War have been written mostly from an American perspective, using western sources, and viewing the conflict through western eyes. This book, based on extensive original research, including Vietnamese, Chinese and former Soviet sources, presents a history of the war from the perspective of the Vietnamese communists. It charts relations with Moscow and Beijing, showing how the involvement of the two major communist powers changed over time, and how the Vietnamese, despite their huge dependence on the Chinese and the Soviets, were most definitely in charge of their own decision making. Overall, it provides an important corrective to the many one-sided studies of the war, and presents a very interesting new perspective.

This volume offers a dispassionate strategic examination of the Vietnam conflict that challenges the conventional wisdom that South Vietnam could not survive as an independent non-communist entity over the long term regardless of how the United States conducted its military-political effort in Indochina. In reality, the Vietnam War was far from an "unwinnable" war for the United States: the latter possessed enormous military, financial, and other advantages over its foes. However, US officials made a multitude of predictable, avoidable strategic mistakes over a long period of time and certain key figures displayed an inability even to understand the significance of their errors and learn from them. The book considers US strategic decision-making at a number of levels and shows how American errors created the military and political conditions that made North Vietnamese victory possible. If the United States had conducted its political-military effort in a fashion that did not negate its advantages - indeed, ifit had avoided only a small number of many strategic errors - the outcome of the Indochina conflict would likely have been very different.

In Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, accomplished foreign relations historian David F. Shmitz provides students of US history and the Vietnam era with an up-to-date analysis of Nixon's Vietnam policy in a brief and accessible book that addresses the main controversies of the Nixon years. President Richard Nixon's first presidential term oversaw the definitive crucible of the Vietnam War. Nixon came into office seeking the kind of decisive victory that had eluded President Johnson, and went about expanding the war, overtly and covertly, in order to uphold a policy of "containment," protect America's credibility, and defy the left's antiwar movement at home. Tactically, politically, Nixon's moves made sense. However, by 1971 the president was forced to significantly de-escalate the American presence and seek a negotiated end to the war, which is now accepted as an American defeat, and a resounding failure of American foreign relations. Schmitz addresses the main controversies of Nixon's Vietnam strategy, and in so doing manages to trace back the ways in which this most calculating and perceptive politician wound up resigning from office a fraud and failure. Finally, the book seeks to place the impact of Nixon's policies and decisions in the larger context of post-World War II American society, and analyzes the full costs of the Vietnam War that the nation feels to this day.

Accidental Soldier depicts Richard B. Schwartz's military experiences, first as an ROTC cadet at the University of Notre Dame and finally as an Army veteran teaching in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1959, Vietnam was little more than a word on a map; within ten years, Americans saw the Tet Offensive and their campuses in flames. Schwartz was at the ground zeroes of that time, teaching at the United States Military Academy from 1967-69 and then going to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, just after the Dow riots and before the bombing of Sterling Hall. The central portion of the book focuses upon Schwartz's experience at West Point, its cadets, officer corps and system of education. A sequel to his award-winning memoir, The Biggest City in America, Accidental Soldier reflects upon his military and academic experience through the perspective of an over forty-year teaching career, twenty-nine of which were spent as a dean at Wisconsin, Georgetown and the University of Missouri, Columbia.

The Vietnam War was a traumatic event for America and a lesson for Americans on the limits of power. For the Vietnamese, however, it was but one in a series of struggles against foreign domination. This fascinating study puts all of this in perspective by providing a comprehensive overview of warfare throughout Vietnamese history, from the early efforts of the Vietnamese to establish their own state and free themselves from Chinese domination, down through the Indo-China and Vietnam Wars, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, to the present.

Vietnam provides an overview of the causes, course, and effects of the numerous wars in Vietnamese history, many of them not generally known to Westerners, such as the Black Flag/Tonkin Wars and the Franco-Thai War. Concentrating on the period after the Second World War, it treats matters from the Vietnamese perspective as much as from the French and American, and seeks to clarify the missed opportunities and false perceptions that led to warfare. Encompassing overviews of socio-political, economic, diplomatic, and cultural issues, Vietnam provides an excellent introduction to Vietnamese history as well as an in-depth look at the long record of warfare in that country. It will prove essential reading for all students of twentieth-century American and Asian history.

Why everything you think you know about Australia's Vietnam War is wrong. When Mark Dapin first interviewed Vietnam veterans and wrote about the war, he swallowed (and regurgitated) every misconception. He wasn't alone. In Australia's Vietnam, Dapin reveals that every stage of Australia's commitment to the Vietnam War has been misunderstood, misinterpreted and shrouded in myth. From army claims that every national serviceman was a volunteer; and the level of atrocities committed by Australian troops; to the belief there no welcome home parades until the late 1980s and returned soldiers were met by angry protesters. Australia's Vietnam is a major contribution to the understanding of Australia's experience of the war and will change the way we think about memory and military history. Acclaimed journalist and bestselling military historian Mark Dapin busts long-held and highly charged myths about the Vietnam War Dapin reveals his own mistakes and regrets as a journalist and military historian and his growing realisation that the stereotypes of the Vietnam War are far from the truth This book will change the way military history is researched and written

The Vietnam War generated controversy long after the guns went silent in Southeast Asia. At first, a consensus emerged that the war had been a tragic 'mistake' in US foreign policy. But with the revival of the Cold War under President Ronald Reagan, who proclaimed that the Vietnam conflict had been a 'noble cause', revisionists began to reinterpret the history and meaning of the war. As a new conflict emerged in Central America, some argued that the lesson of Vietnam was to avoid direct involvement in such struggles, while others insisted that the US could not afford to be paralyzed by a 'Vietnam syndrome' equating all intervention with failure. Among the additional lessons and legacies of the war was its impact on the men who fought in Vietnam. For complex reasons, explored by authors in this volume, powerful myths about Vietnam veterans emerged in postwar American culture.

Contents:
1. Small, Melvin The Impact of the Antiwar Movement on Lyndon Johnson, 1965-1968: A Preliminary Report, Peace and Change 10 [1984]
2. Harrison, Benjamin T Roots of the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 16
3. DeBenedetti, Charles On the Significance of Citizen Peace Activism: America, 1961-1975, Peace and Change 9 [1983]
4. Katz, Milton S Peace Liberals and Vietnam:SANE and the Politics of 'Responsible' Protest, Peace and Change 9 [1983]
5. Shapiro, Herbert The Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights Movement, Journal of Ethnic Studies 16 [1989]
6. Harrison, Benjamin T Impact of the Vietnam War on the Civil Rights Movement in the Midsixties, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 19
7. DeBenedetti, Charles A CIA Analysis of the Anti-Vietnam War Movement: October 1967, Peace and Change 9 [1983]
8. Schuman, Howard Two Sources of Antiwar Sentiment in America, American Journal of Sociology 78 [1972]
9. Johnson, Robert David The Origins of Dissent: Senate Liberals and Vietnam, 1959-1964, Pacific Historical Review 65 [1996]
10. Garfinkle, Adam No Discharge from that War: Aftermyths of the Antiwar Movement, Orbis 39 [1995]
11. Gartner, Scott, Gary Segura and Michael Wilkenning All Polititcs are Local: Local Losses and Individual Attitudes toward the Vietnam War, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 [1997]
12. Hall, Mitchell Unsell the War: Vietnam and Antiwar Advertising, The Historian 58 [1995]
13. Buzzanco, Robert Prologue to Tragedy: US Military Opposition to Intervention in Vietnam, 1950-1954, Diplomatic History 17 [1993]
14. Gibson, James L The Policy Consequences of Political Intolerance: Political Repression During the Vietnam Era, Journal of Politics 51 [1989]
15. Katz, Andrew Z Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The Nixon Administration and the Pursuit of Peace with Honour in Vietnam, Presidential Studies Quarterly 27 [1997]
16.Kahin, George McT The Pentagon Papers: A Critical Evaluation, American Political Science Review 69 [1975]
17. Sweet, Barry Legal Challenges to Presidential Policies on the Use of Military Force, Policy Studies Journal 24 [1996]

This six-volume collection of essential articles on the American involvement in the Vietnam Wa encompasses the political, social, and military aspects of the war.

This six-volume collection of essential articles on the American involvement in the Vietnam Wa encompasses the political, social, and military aspects of the war.

Contents:
1. Haines, Harry W Disputing the Wreckage: Ideological Struggle at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Vietnam Generation 1 [1989]
2. Wagner-Pacifici, Robin and Barry Schwartz The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating A Difficult Past, American Journal of Sociology 97 [1991]
3. Sturken, Marita The Wall, the Screen, and the Image: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Representations 35 [1991]
4. Jeffords, Susan Women, Gender and the War, Critical Studies in Mass Communication 6 [1989]
5. Smith, Lorrie Back Against the Wall: Anti-Feminist Backlist in Vietnam War Literature, Vietnam Generation 1 [1989]
6. Mithers, Carol Lynn Missing in Action: Women Warriors in Vietnam, Cultural Critique 3 [1986]
7. Marling, Carol Ann The Statute Near the Wall, Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1 [1987]
8. Bellhouse, Mary L and Lawrence Litchfield Vietnam and Loss of Innocence: An Analysis of the Political Implications of the Popular Literature of the Vietnam War, Journal of Popular Culture 16 [1982]
9. Uchmanowicz, Pauline Vanishing Vietnam: Whiteness and the Technology of Memory, Literature and Psychology 41 [1995]
10. Charlot, John Vietnamese Cinema: First Views, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 22 [1991]
11. Katzman, Jason From Outcast to Cliche: How Film Shaped, Warped and Developed the Image of the Vietnam Veteran, 1967-1990, Journal of American Culture 16 [1993]
12. Clark, Michael Remembering Vietnam, Cultural Critique 3 [1986]
13. Berg, Rick Losing Vietnam: Covering the War in an Age of Technology, Cultural Critique 3 [1986]
14. Rowe, John Carlos From Documentary to Docudrama: Vietnam on Television in the 1980s, Genre 21 [1988]
15. Auster, Albert Reflections of the Way Life Used to Be: Tour of Duty, China Beach, and the memory of the Sixties, Television Quarterly 24 [1990]
16. Ballard-Reisch, Deborah China Beach and Tour of Duty: American Television and Revisionist History of The Vietnam War, Journal of Popular Culture 25 [1991]
17. Jason, Philip K The Noise is Always in My Head: Auditory Images in the Literature of the Vietnam War, Midwest Quarterly 37 [1996]

From Melos to My Lai presents an erudite, provocative and moving analysis of the accounts of violence in the literature and history of ancient Greece and in the film literature and veterans' accounts of the Vietnam War. This comparative investigation examines the nature of violence, its impact on society and culture, especially as reflected from the perspective of the survivors. The survivors include not only actual combatants, but those with whom they interact: their comrades, their wives and children, families and society as a whole.
From Melos to My Lai provides a unique contribution to the study of the impact of violence on its participants and its audience which combines an examination of the artistic representations of violence and the real-life accounts of those involved in it.

Did Ajax and Achilles ever suffer from Post-traumatic stress syndrome?

In this absorbing account, Vietnam veteran and classics scholar Lawrence A Tritle offers an incisive analysis of war and its impact upon the soldier and civilian from the classical age to the present day.
Tritle discusses the links between battlefield experiences that affect the participants and victims of war in every age, drawing examples from sources as diverse as the Iliad, Michael Herr's Dispatches, Thucydides' account of the Pelopenesian Wars, and the Oliver Stone film Platoon. Each instance sheds light on some of the most puzzling phemonena of war and shows how the heroes of epic responded to battle with their own forms of "shellshock," battle-madness and bonding. Tritle examines such issues as:

How can ordinarily decent men can commit acts of extraordinary savagery?

Attitudes toward the "enemy"

The impact of war on waiting wives, lovers and civilian bystanders

Remembering the fallen soldier: from the classic Athenian funeral speech to the Vietnam Wall

How veterans live with physical and psychological injury

This memorable book is for readers who wonder about the meaning and experience of battle, about the impact of war and violence on our culture, and for anyone interested in the culture of ancient Greece.

This book explores the international leadership of the AFL-CIO, the UAW and UAW Local 600, the world's largest union local, and reveals that overall, working-class response to the Vietnam War mirrored that of the American society as a whole.