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.

"Matterhorn" author Karl Marlantes' nonfiction debut is a powerful book about the experience of combat and how inadequately we prepare our young men and women for the psychological and spiritual stresses of war. One of the most important and highly-praised books of 2011, Karl Marlantes' "What It Is Like to Go to War" is set to become just as much of a classic as his epic novel "Matterhorn". In 1968, at the age of twenty-two, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of a platoon of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat. He killed the enemy and he watched friends die. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his experiences. In "What It Is Like to Go to War", Marlantes takes a deeply personal and candid look at the experience and ordeal of combat, critically examining how we might better prepare our young soldiers for war. War is as old as humankind, but in the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion, and literature - which also helped bring them home. In a compelling narrative, Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination, and his readings - from Homer to the Mahabharata to Jung. He tells frankly about how he is haunted by the face of the young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters and explains how he finally found a way to make peace with his past. He makes it clear just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors - mainly men but increasingly women - are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of their journey.

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.

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 Vietnam War tends to conjure up images of American soldiers battling an elusive enemy in thick jungle, the thudding of helicopters overhead. But there were in fact several Vietnam wars - an anticolonial war with France, a cold war turned hot with the United States, a civil war between North and South Vietnam and among the southern Vietnamese, a revolutionary war of ideas over what should guide Vietnamese society into its postcolonial future, and finally a war of memories after the official end of hostilities with the fall of Saigon in 1975. This book looks at how the Vietnamese themselves experienced all of these conflicts, showing how the wars for Vietnam were rooted in fundamentally conflicting visions of what an independent Vietnam should mean that in many ways remain unresolved to this day. Drawing upon twenty years of research, Mark Philip Bradley examines the thinking and the behaviour of the key wartime decisionmakers in Hanoi and Saigon, while at the same time exploring how ordinary Vietnamese people, northerners and southerners, soldiers and civilians, urban elites and rural peasants, radicals and conservatives, came to understand the thirty years of bloody warfare that unfolded around them-and how they made sense of its aftermath.

The tragic, the comic, the terrifying, the poignant are all part of the story of the Black Pony pilots who distinguished themselves in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. Flying their turboprop Broncos"down and dirty, low and slow," they destroyed more enemies and saved more allied lives with close-air support than all the other naval squadrons combined during the three years they saw action. Author Kit Lavell was part of this squadron of"black sheep" given a chance to make something of themselves flying these dangerous missions. The U.S. Navy's only land-based attack squadron, Light Attack Squadron Four (VAL-4) flew support missions for the counter insurgency forces, SEALs, and allied units in borrowed, propeller-driven OV-10s. For fixed-wing aircraft they were dangerous, unorthodox missions, a fact readers will quickly come to appreciate. About the Author Kit Lavell flew 243 missions with the Black Ponies and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. He is now a screenwriter and playwright, living in California.

Despite French President Charles de Gaulle's persistent efforts to constructively share French experience and use his resources to help engineer an American exit from Vietnam, the Kennedy administration responded to de Gaulle's peace initiatives with bitter silence and inaction. The administration's response ignited a series of events that dealt a massive blow to American prestige across the globe, resulting in the deaths of over fifty-eight thousand American soldiers and turning hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese citizens into refugees. This history of Franco-American relations during the Kennedy presidency explores how and why France and the US disagreed over the proper western strategy for the Vietnam War. France clearly had more direct political experience in Vietnam, but France's postwar decolonization cemented Kennedy's perception that the French were characterized by a toxic mixture of short-sightedness, stubbornness, and indifference to the collective interests of the West. At no point did the Kennedy administration give serious consideration to de Gaulle's proposals or entertain the notion of using his services as an honest broker in order to disengage from a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control. Kennedy's Francophobia, the roots of which appear in a selection of private writings from Kennedy's undergraduate years at Harvard, biased his decision-making. The course of action Kennedy chose in 1963, a rejection of the French peace program, all but handcuffed Lyndon Johnson into formally entering a war he knew the United States had little chance of winning.

Through the Valley is the captivating memoir of the last U.S. Army soldier taken prisoner during the Vietnam War. A narrative of courage, hope, and survival, Through the Valley is more than just a war story. It also portrays the thrill and horror of combat, the fear and anxiety of captivity, and the stories of friendships forged and friends lost In 1971 William Reeder was a senior captain on his second tour in Vietnam. He had flown armed, fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks on secret missions deep into enemy territory in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam on his first tour. He returned as a helicopter pilot eager to experience a whole new perspective as a Cobra gunship pilot. Believing that Nixon's Vietnamization would soon end the war, Reeder was anxious to see combat action. To him, it appeared that the Americans had prevailed, beaten the Viet Cong, and were passing everything over to the South Vietnamese Army so that Americans could leave.

In the spring of 1966 the Vietnam War was intensifying, driven by the US military build up, under which the 9th Infantry Division was reactivated. Charlie Company was part of the 9th and representative of the melting pot of America. But, unlike the vast majority of other companies in the US Army, the men of Charlie Company were a close-knit family. They joined up together, trained together, and were deployed together. This is their story. From the joker who roller-skated into the Company First Sergeant's office wearing a dress, to the nerdy guy with two left feet who would rather be off somewhere inventing computers, and the everyman who just wanted to keep his head down and get through un-noticed and preferably unscathed. Written by leading Vietnam expert Dr Andrew Wiest, The Boys of '67 tells the unvarnished truth about the war in Vietnam, recounting the fear of death and the horrors of battle through the recollections of the young men themselves. America doesn't know their names or their story, the story of the boys of Charlie, young draftees who had done everything that their nation had asked of them and received so little in return - lost faces and silent voices of a distant war.

This volume tells the story of the American civil rights movement through the rousing and often wrenching photographs that recorded, promoted and protected it. After an introduction explaining the vital importance of photography to the movement, the book proceeds from the Montgomery bus boycott through the student, local and national movements; the big marches in Washington and Selma; Freedom Summer; Malcolm X and Black Power; and the death of Martin Luther King. Each chapter begins with a fast-paced narrative of a crucial event in the movement, complemented by a portfolio of effective and evocative photographs of the subject. Ranging from the well-known to the rare, these images were shot by photographers including Richard Avedon, Danny Lyon, Charles Moore, Gordon Parks, Dan Weiner, and over 50 others. Many of the pictures are accompanied by remembrances and analysis by various photographers and participants. The book also features a concise chronology of the major civil rights events of the period and suggestions for additional reading.

The Vietnam War examines this conflict from its origins up until North Vietnam's victory in 1975. Historian Mitchell K. Hall's lucid account is an ideal introduction to the key debates surrounding a war that remains controversial and disputed in American scholarship and collective memory. The new edition has been fully updated and expanded to include additional material on the preceding French Indochina War, the American antiwar movement, North Vietnamese perspectives and motivations, and the postwar scholarly debate. The text is supported by a documents section and a wide range of study tools, including a timeline of events, glossaries of key figures and terms, and a rich "further reading" section accompanied by a new bibliographical essay. Concise yet comprehensive, The Vietnam War remains the most accessible and stimulating introduction to this crucial 20th-century conflict.

On the last hot day of summer in 1992, gunfire cracked over a rocky knob in northern Idaho, just south of the Canadian border. By the next day three people were dead, and a small war was joined, pitting the full might of federal law enforcement against one well-armed family. Drawing on extensive interviews with Randy Weaver's family, government insiders, and others, Jess Walter traces the paths that led the Weavers to their confrontation with federal agents and led the government to treat a family like a gang of criminals.

This is the story of what happened on Ruby Ridge: the tragic and unlikely series of events that destroyed a family, brought down the number-two man in the FBI, and left in its wake a nation increasingly attuned to the dangers of unchecked federal power.

How Barack Obama Won--by one of the most lauded political journalists of our time, and one of the most respected pollsters in the business--gives us not only the inside state-by-state guide to how Obama achieved his victory, but also the essential toolbox for understanding the political implications of the 2008 presidential election--where the country stands vis-a-vis Red and Blue states, where it currently is and is headed politically, and whether a political realignment has taken place.
The book features an introduction by Chuck Todd, putting the 2008 presidential election in political and demographic perspective, even as it reveals national trends. The final electoral map will appear in the front matter, as will unexpected "fun facts." The book is divided into four parts, each of which proceeds alphabetically state by state: Battleground States (e.g., Colorado, Florida, Idaho); Emerging Battleground States (e.g., Arizona, Georgia, Montana); Receding Battleground States (e.g., Michigan, Pennsylvania); Red and Blue States (e.g., Idaho and Mississippi, California and New York).
The votes in each state for Obama and McCain are broken down by percentage according to gender, age, race, party, religious affiliation, education, household income, size of city, and according to views about the most important issue (the economy, terrorism, Iraq, energy, healthcare), the future of the economy (worried, not worried) and the war in Iraq (approve, disapprove). Comparative figures for the 2004 Bush-Kerry election are provided. Each state profile is comprised of a table of numbers--with crucial lines highlighted--and analysis. From the book's treasury of facts you will learn about:
First Time Voters: The ratio of first-time to previous voters was identical to the 2004 split. Eleven percent (11%) of the electorate voted for the first time in 2004 and 2008. In 2008 70% voted for Obama whereas in 2004 only 53% voted for Kerry.
White Voters: Obama won the white vote in 18 states and the District of Columbia: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, IA, ME, MA, MI, MN, NH, NY, OR, RI, WA, WI and VT. Obama received less than 35% of the white vote in 13 states, with Louisiana (14%), Mississippi (11%) and Alabama (10%) picking up the rear.
The Bush Factor: With the exception of Missouri (which barely went to McCain), Obama won every state where Bush's approval rating was below 35% in the exit polls; he lost every state where Bush's approval rating was above 35%. Bush's approval rating was highest in Utah (47%), which supported McCain by a 29 point margin, and lowest in Washington, D.C. (8%), where McCain received only 7% of the vote.
Florida: Votes for McCain were 25,000 fewer than for Bush in 2004; Obama's exceeded Kerry's by 540,000.
Ohio: Votes for Obama were 34,000 fewer than for Kerry in 2004; McCain's, however, were 350,000 short of Bush's.
By the way, since 1928 there has not been a winning Republican presidential/vice-presidential ticket without a Bush or Nixon.

The most thorough account yet available of a revolution that saw the first true agrarian reform in Central America, this book is also a penetrating analysis of the tragic destruction of that revolution. In no other Central American country was U.S. intervention so decisive and so ruinous, charges Piero Gleijeses. Yet he shows that the intervention can be blamed on no single "convenient villain." "Extensively researched and written with conviction and passion, this study analyzes the history and downfall of what seems in retrospect to have been Guatemala's best government, the short-lived regime of Jacobo Arbenz, overthrown in 1954, by a CIA-orchestrated coup."--Foreign Affairs "Piero Gleijeses offers a historical road map that may serve as a guide for future generations. . . . Readers] will come away with an understanding of the foundation of a great historical tragedy."--Saul Landau, The Progressive " Gleijeses's] academic rigor does not prevent him from creating an accessible, lucid, almost journalistic account of an episode whose tragic consequences still reverberate."--Paul Kantz, Commonweal

The latest entry in Stackpole's Battle Briefings Series covers the Vietnam War, from its roots in the French war through the evacuation of the embassy. In between is the American Vietnam experience: the draft, the combat, the politics, and everything else. Here, in 176 pages, is the Vietnam War.

A hard-hitting history of the U.S. airborne unit who made a name for themselves in the unforgiving jungles of South Vietnam. "It was easier killing than living." Third Battalion 506th Airborne veteran Drawing on interviews with veterans, many of whom have never gone on the record before, Ian Gardner follows up his epic trilogy about the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II with the story of the unit's reactivation at the height of the Vietnam War. This is the dramatic history of a band of brothers who served together in Vietnam and who against the odds lived up to the reputation of their World War II forefathers. Brigadier General Salve Matheson's idea was to create an 800-strong battalion of airborne volunteers in the same legendary "Currahee" spirit that had defined the volunteers of 1942. The man he chose to lead them was John Geraci, who would mold this young brotherhood into a highly cohesive and motivated force. In December 1967, the battalion was sent into the Central Highlands of Lam Dong Province. Geraci and his men began their Search and Destroy patrols, which coincided with the North Vietnamese build-up to the Tet Offensive and was a brutal introduction to the reality of a dirty, bloody war. Gardner reveals how it was here that the tenacious volunteers made their mark, just like their predecessors had done in Normandy, and the battalion was ultimately awarded a Valorous Unit Citation. This book shows how and why this unit was deserving of that award, recounting their daily sanguinary struggle in the face of a hostile environment and a determined enemy. Through countless interviews and rare personal photographs, Sign Here for Sacrifice shows the action, leadership, humor and bravery displayed by these airborne warriors.

Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War opens in 1954 with the signing of the Geneva accords that ended the eight-year-long Franco-Indochinese War and created two Vietnams. In agreeing to the accords, Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam anticipated a new period of peace leading to national reunification under their rule; they never imagined that within a decade they would be engaged in an even bigger feud with the United States. Basing his work on new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese materials as well as French, British, Canadian, and American documents, Pierre Asselin explores the communist path to war. Specifically, he examines the internal debates and other elements that shaped Hanoi's revolutionary strategy in the decade preceding US military intervention, and resulting domestic and foreign programs. Without exonerating Washington for its role in the advent of hostilities in 1965, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War demonstrates that those who directed the effort against the United States and its allies in Saigon were at least equally responsible for creating the circumstances that culminated in arguably the most tragic conflict of the Cold War era.

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.

Counterinsurgency will be the prominent style of American warfare in the 21st century: This has long been a common prediction regarding United States foreign policy and has thus far proven true. Written for those who study counterinsurgency from a policy perspective as well as for those who do counterinsurgency in the field, this book demonstrates that the U.S. has had difficulty meeting the challenges of this special form of warfare because it has not properly processed important lessons from the past. Based on the author's wartime experiences, a broad range of topics are covered - from factors to be considered in accepting a counterinsurgency partner, to "rules" for advisors in the field - with points illustrated by real-life examples.

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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.

This searching analysis of what has been called America's longest war" was commissioned by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to achieve an improved understanding of American participation in the conflict. Part I begins with Truman's decision at the end of World War II to accept French reoccupation of Indochina, rather than to seek the international trusteeship favored earlier by Roosevelt. It then discusses U.S. support of the French role and U.S. determination to curtail Communist expansion in Asia.

Originally published in 1986.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

Winner of the 2020 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing Nearly 1,600 Americans are still unaccounted for and presumed dead from the Vietnam War. These are the stories of those who mourn and continue to search for them. For many families the Vietnam War remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans-and more than 300,000 Vietnamese-involved in the conflict are still unaccounted for. In What Remains, Sarah E. Wagner tells the stories of America's missing service members and the families and communities that continue to search for them. From the scientists who work to identify the dead using bits of bone unearthed in Vietnamese jungles to the relatives who press government officials to find the remains of their loved ones, Wagner introduces us to the men and women who seek to bring the missing back home. Through their experiences she examines the ongoing toll of America's most fraught war. Every generation has known the uncertainties of war. Collective memorials, such as the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, testify to the many service members who never return, their fates still unresolved. But advances in forensic science have provided new and powerful tools to identify the remains of the missing, often from the merest trace-a tooth or other fragment. These new techniques have enabled military experts to recover, repatriate, identify, and return the remains of lost service members. So promising are these scientific developments that they have raised the expectations of military families hoping to locate their missing. As Wagner shows, the possibility of such homecomings compels Americans to wrestle anew with their memories, as with the weight of their loved ones' sacrifices, and to reevaluate what it means to wage war and die on behalf of the nation.

In 1968, at the age of 22, Karl Marlantes abandoned his Oxford University scholarship to sign up for active service with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam. Pitched into a war that had no defined military objective other than kill ratios and body counts, what he experienced over the next thirteen months in the jungles of South East Asia shook him to the core. But what happened when he came home covered with medals was almost worse. It took Karl four decades to come to terms with what had really happened, during the course of which he painstakingly constructed a fictionalized version of his war, MATTERHORN, which has subsequently been hailed as the definitive Vietnam novel.

WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR takes us back to Vietnam, but this time there is no fictional veil. Here are the hard-won truths that underpin MATTERHORN: the author's real-life experiences behind the book's indelible scenes. But it is much more than this. It is part exorcism of Karl's own experiences of combat, part confession, part philosophical primer for the young man about to enter combat. It It is also a devastatingly frank answer to the questions '"What is it like to be a soldier?"' "What is it like to face death?"' and "'What is it like to kill someone?"'

The F-105D Thunderchief was originally designed as a low-altitude nuclear strike aircraft, but the outbreak of the Vietnam War led to it being used instead as the USAF's primary conventional striker against the exceptionally well-defended targets in North Vietnam and Laos. F-105 crews conducted long-distance missions from bases in Thailand, refuelling in flight several times and carrying heavy external bombloads.

The MiG-17 was the lightweight, highly manoeuvrable defending fighter it encountered most often in 1965-68 during Operation Rolling Thunder. A development of the MiG-15, which shocked UN forces during the Korean War, its emphasis was on simplicity and ease of maintenance in potentially primitive conditions.

Fully illustrated with stunning artwork, this book shows how these two aircraft, totally different in design and purpose, fought in a series of duels that cost both sides dearly.