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Books > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
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.
The year is 1970; the war in Vietnam is five years from over. The
women's movement is newly resurgent, and feminists are summarily
reviled as "libbers." Inette Miller is one year out of college-a
reporter for a small-town newspaper. Her boyfriend gets drafted and
is issued orders to Vietnam. Within their few remaining days
together, Inette marries her US Army private, determined to
accompany him to war. There are obstacles. All wives of US military
are prohibited in country. With the aid of her newspaper's editor,
Miller finagles a one-month work visa and becomes a war reporter.
Her newspaper cannot afford life insurance beyond that. After
thirty days, she is on her own. As one of the rare woman war
correspondents in Vietnam and the only one also married to an Army
soldier, Miller's experience was pathbreaking. Girls Don't shines a
light on the conflicting motives that drive an ambitious woman of
that era and illustrates the schizophrenic struggle between the
forces of powerful feminist ideology and the contrarian forces of
the world as it was. Girls Don't is the story of what happens when
a twenty-three-year-old feminist makes her way into the land of
machismo. This is a war story, a love story, and an open-hearted
confessional within the burgeoning women's movement, chronicling
its demands and its rewards.
A short accessible introduction to the origins of the Vietnam War, from the end of the Indochina War in 1954 to the full-scale war in 1965. Why did the US make a commitment to an independent South Vietnam? Could a major war have been averted? The war had a profound and lasting impact on the politics and society of Vietnam and the United States, and it also had a major impact on international relations. With this book, Frederik Logevall has provided a short, accessible introduction to the origins of the Vietnam War.
The Tet Offensive of January 1968 was the most important military
campaign of the Vietnam War. The ancient capital city of Hue, once
considered the jewel of Indochina's cities, was a key objective of
a surprise Communist offensive launched on Vietnam's most important
holiday. But when the North Vietnamese launched their massive
invasion of the city, instead of the general civilian uprising and
easy victory they had hoped for, they faced a devastating battle of
attrition with enormous casualties on both sides. In the end, the
battle for Hue was an unambiguous military and political victory
for South Vietnam and the United States. In Fire in the Streets,
the dramatic narrative of the battle unfolds on an hour-by-hour,
day-by-day basis. The focus is on the U.S. and South Vietnamese
soldiers and Marines-from the top commanders down to the frontline
infantrymen-and on the men and women who supported them. With
access to rare documents from both North and South Vietnam and
hundreds of hours of interviews, Eric Hammel, a renowned military
historian, expertly draws on first-hand accounts from the battle
participants in this engrossing mixture of action and commentary.
In addition, Hammel examines the tremendous strain the surprise
attack put on the South Vietnamese-U.S. alliance, the shocking
brutality of the Communist "liberators," and the lessons gained by
U.S. Marines forced to wage battle in a city-a task for which they
were utterly unprepared and which remains highly relevant today.
Re-issued in the fiftieth anniversary year of the battle, with an
updated photo section and maps this is the only complete and
authoritative account of this crucial landmark battle.
This memoir of the Vietnam War is structured as a series of short
stories that convey the emotional and physical landscape of the
Vietnam War. It is a window into the war from the perspective of
the author, who served in a rapid response assault force, as 'the
Marine'. The reader shares the Marine's experience through a year
of combat that tested his character and shaped his destiny. Small
joined the Marine Corps in 1969 at 19 years old, coming from a
small Vermont farming community. After boot camp and speciality
training he landed in Da Nang as a private first class. With three
battlefield promotions in 8 months, he soon became a platoon
sergeant. Small did not talk of his experiences in Vietnam over the
next forty years, but has now written this book, for veterans'
families, including his own, to understand what their loved ones
experienced. It is a unique and powerful text that is that it is
written in such a way it brings you inside the marine; you see what
he sees, feel what he feels. You know him; his back story; what he
is thinking; why he made the decisions he needed to make. No names
are mentioned throughout the book. Memories Unleashed is an
assemblage of memories, consisting of stories that stand alone to
create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It addresses the
warrior, the lives of innocent people caught up in the war, and the
American and Vietnamese families impacted by those who fought.
Moving from the White House to the B-52 cockpits to the missile
sites and POW camps of Hanoi, "The Eleven Days of Christmas" is a
gripping tale of heroism and incompetence in a battle whose
political and military legacy is still a matter of controversy.
The leader of one of the most successful U. S. Marine long range
reconnaissance teams during the Vietnam War, Andrew Finlayson
recounts his team's experiences in the pivotal period in the war,
the year leading up to the Tet Offensive of 1968. Using primary
sources, such as Marine Corps unit histories and his own weekly
letters home, he presents a highly personal account of the
dangerous missions conducted by this team of young Marines as they
searched for North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong units in such
dangerous locales as Elephant Valley, the Enchanted Forest, Charlie
Ridge, Happy Valley and the Que Son Mountains. Taking only six to
eight men on each patrol, Killer Kane searches for the enemy far
from friendly lines, often finding itself engaged in desperate fire
fights with enemy forces that vastly outnumber this small band of
brave Marines. In numerous close contacts with the enemy, Killer
Kane fights for its survival against desperate odds, narrowly
escaping death time and again. The book gives vivid descriptions of
the life of recon Marines when they are not on patrol, the beauty
of the landscape they traverse, and several of the author's
Vietnamese friends. It also explains in detail the preparations
for, and the conduct of, a successful long range reconnaissance
patrol.
In the summer of 1967, the Marines in I Corps, South Vietnam's
northernmost military region, were doing everything they could to
lighten the pressure on the besieged Con Thien Combat Base. Still
fresh after months of relatively light action around Khe Sanh, the
3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was sent to the Con Thien region to
secure the combat bases' endangered main supply route. On 7
September 1967, its first full day in the new area of operations,
separate elements of the battalion were attacked by at least two
battalions of North Vietnamese infantry, and both were nearly
overrun in night-long battles. On 10 September, while advancing to
a new sector near Con Thien, the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was
attacked by at least a full North Vietnamese regiment, the same NVA
unit that had attacked it two days earlier. Divided into two
separate defensive perimeters, the Marines battled through the
afternoon and evening against repeated assaults by waves of NVA
regulars intent upon achieving a major victory. In a battle
described as 'Custer's Last Stand-With Air Support', the Americans
prevailed by the narrowest of margins. Ambush Valley is an
unforgettable account of bravery and survival under impossible
conditions. It is told entirely in the words of the men who faced
the ordeal together - an unprecedented mosaic of action and emotion
woven into an incredibly clear and vivid combat narrative by one of
today's most effective military historians. Ambush Valley achieves
a new standard for oral history. It is a war story not to be
missed.
The American war in Vietnam was concluded in 1973 under the terms
of a truce that were effectively identical to what was offered to
the Nixon administration four years earlier. Those four years cost
America billions of dollars and over 35,000 war deaths and
casualties, and resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 Vietnamese.
And those years were the direct result of the supposed master plan
of the most important voice in the Nixon White House on American
foreign policy: Henry Kissinger. Using newly available archival
material from the Nixon Presidential Library and Kissinger's
personal papers, Robert K. Brigham shows how Kissinger's approach
to Vietnam was driven by personal political rivalries and strategic
confusion, while domestic politics played an outsized influence on
Kissinger's so-called strategy. There was no great master plan or
Bismarckian theory that supported how the US continued the war or
conducted peace negotiations. As a result, a distant tragedy was
perpetuated, forever changing both countries. Now, perhaps for the
first time, we can see the full scale of that tragedy and the
machinations that fed it.
Abandoned In Hell is a searing piece of combat literature for readers with an interest in military history, from William Albracht and Marvin J. Wolf. In October 1969, William Albracht, the youngest Green Beret captain in Vietnam, took command of a remote hilltop outpost called Firebase Kate held by only 27 American soldiers and 156 Montagnard militiamen. At dawn the next morning, three North Vietnamese Army regiments attacked. After five days, Kate's defenders were out of ammo and water. Albracht led his troops on a daring night march, an outstaning feat.
'A remarkable story of subterfuge and brainwashing that few Hollywood scriptwriters could have made up' Simon Heffer, author of The Age of Decadence
In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, an exodus begins. A thousand American deserters and draft-resisters escape the brutal fighting for the calm shores of Stockholm. These defectors are young, radical and want to start a revolution. The Swedes treat their new guests like rock stars - but the CIA is going to put a stop to that.
It's a job for the deep-cover men of Operation Chaos and their allies - agents who know how to invade radical organizations and crush them from the inside. And within a few months, the GIs have turned on each other - and the interrogations and recriminations begin.
A gripping espionage story filled with a host of extraordinary and unbelievable plays, Operation Chaos is the incredible but true account of the men who left the war, how they betrayed each other and how they became lost in a world where anything seemed possible - even the idea that the CIA had secretly programmed them to kill their friends.
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
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.
More than a quarter of a century after the last Marine Corps
Huey left the American embassy in Saigon, the lessons and legacies
of the most divisive war in twentieth-century American history are
as hotly debated as ever. Why did successive administrations choose
little-known Vietnam as the "test case" of American commitment in
the fight against communism? Why were the "best and brightest"
apparently blind to the illegitimacy of the state of South Vietnam?
Would Kennedy have pulled out had he lived? And what lessons
regarding American foreign policy emerged from the war?
"The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War" helps readers
understand this tragic and complex conflict. The book contains both
interpretive information and a wealth of facts in easy-to-find
form. Part I provides a lucid narrative overview of contested
issues and interpretations in Vietnam scholarship. Part II is a
mini-encyclopedia with descriptions and analysis of individuals,
events, groups, and military operations. Arranged alphabetically,
this section enables readers to look up isolated facts and
specialized terms. Part III is a chronology of key events. Part IV
is an annotated guide to resources, including films, documentaries,
CD-ROMs, and reliable Web sites. Part V contains excerpts from
historical documents and statistical data.
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