Picking up where his acclaimed When Thunder Rolled left off, Palace Cobra is the story of Ed Rasimus's return to Vietnam to fight a war that many Americans tried to forget
When F-105 pilot Ed Rasimus completed his 100 missions over Vietnam, he returned stateside to a normal life: sitting at a desk and teaching student pilots. Two years later, he volunteered to go for a second tour of duty. Determined not to die in a losing cause, and relentlessly searching for that next adrenaline rush, Rasimus and the other F-4 Phantom pilots continued the ferocious air war in the North--dodging SAMs and gunning for MiGs--and routinely cheated death.
When America finally got serious about ending the war, Rasimus and the other pilots put it all on the line, pounding Hanoi with everything they had, and flying above POW camps to let the troops know they were not alone. Gripping, earnest, and unforgettable, Rasimus's combat memoir is, in the end, a heartfelt tribute to those who never made it back.

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

With words and photographs, Rain in Our Hearts takes readers into Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th LIB, Americal Division in 1969-1970. Jim Logue, a professional photographer, was drafted and served as an infantryman; he also carried a camera. "In order to take my mind off the war," he would say, "I took pictures." Logue's photos showcase the daily lives of infantrymen: setting up a night laager, chatting with local children, making supply drops, and "humping" rucksacks miles each day in search of the enemy. His camera records the individual experiences and daily lives of the men who fought the war. Accompanying Logue's over 100 photographs is the narrative written by Gary D. Ford. Wanting to reconstruct the story of Alpha Company during the time in which Logue served, Ford and Logue trekked across America to meet with and interview every surviving member whom they could locate and contact. Each chapter of Rain in Our Hearts focuses on the viewpoint and life of one member of Alpha Company, including aspects of life before and after Vietnam. The story of the Company's movements and missions over the year unfold as readers are introduced to one soldier at a time. Taken together, Rain in Our Hearts offers readers a window into the words and sights of Alpha Company's Vietnam War.

On March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed as many as five hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in a village near the South China Sea. In "My Lai" William Thomas Allison explores and evaluates the significance of this horrific event. How could such a thing have happened? Who (or what) should be held accountable? How do we remember this atrocity and try to apply its lessons, if any?

My Lai has fixed the attention of Americans of various political stripes for more than forty years. The breadth of writing on the massacre, from news reports to scholarly accounts, highlights the difficulty of establishing fact and motive in an incident during which confusion, prejudice, and self-preservation overwhelmed the troops.

Son of a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War--and aware that the generation who lived through the incident is aging--Allison seeks to ensure that our collective memory of this shameful episode does not fade.

Well written and accessible, Allison's book provides a clear narrative of this historic moment and offers suggestions for how to come to terms with its aftermath.

While the F 105 Thunderchief was the USAF's principal strike weapon during the Rolling Thunder campaign, the US Navy relied on the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk for the majority of its strikes on North Vietnam. The Skyhawk entered service in 1956 and remained in continuous production for 26 years. Throughout Operation Rolling Thunder it was the US Navy's principal day time light strike bomber, remaining in use after its replacement, the more sophisticated A-7 Corsair II, began to appear in December 1967. During the 1965-68 Rolling Thunder period, up to five attack carriers regularly launched A-4 strike formations against North Vietnam. These formations faced an ever-expanding and increasingly coordinated Soviet-style network of anti-aircraft artillery missiles and fighters. Skyhawk pilots were often given the hazardous task of attacking anti-aircraft defences and to improve accuracy, they initially dropped ordnance below 3000 ft in a 30-degree dive in order to bomb visually below the persistent low cloud over North Vietnam, putting the aircraft within range of small-arms fire. The defenders had the advantage of covering a relatively small target area, and the sheer weight of light, medium and heavy gunfire directed at an attacking force brought inevitable casualties, and a single rifle bullet could have the same effect as a larger shell. This illustrated title examines both the A-4 Skyhawk and the Vietnamese AAA defences in context, exploring their history and analysing their tactics and effectiveness during the conflict.

"The Dust of Life" is a collection of vivid and devastating oral histories of Vietnamese Amerasians. Abandoned during the war by their American fathers, discriminated against by the victorious Communists, and ignored for many years by the American government, they endured life in impoverished Vietnam. Their stories are sad, sometimes tragic, but they are also testimonials to the strength of human resiliency.

Robert S. McKelvey is a former marine who served in Vietnam in the late 1960s. Now a child psychiatrist, he returned to Vietnam in 1990 to begin the long series of interviews that resulted in this book. While allowing his subjects to speak for themselves, McKelvey has organized their narratives around themes common to their lives: early maternal loss, the experience of prejudice and discrimination, coping with adversity, dealing with shattered hopes for the future, and, for some, adapting to the alien environment of the United States.

While unique in many respects, the Vietnamese Amerasian story also illustrates themes that are tragically universal: neglect of the human by-products of war, the destructiveness of prejudice and racism, the pain of abandonment, and the horrors of life amidst extreme poverty, hostility, and neglect.

The aeroscouts of the 1st Infantry Division had three words emblazoned on their unit patch: Low Level Hell. It was then and continues today as the perfect, concise definition of what these intrepid aviators experienced as they ranged the skies of Vietnam from the Cambodian border to the Iron Triangle. The Outcasts, as they were known, flew low and slow, aerial eyes of the division in search of the enemy. Too often for longevity's sake they found the Viet Cong and the fight was on. These young pilots (19-22 years-old) literally "invented" the book as they went along.

Thud Pilot is the personal account of a combat fighter pilot who flew the Air Force's premier fighter-bomber in the most dangerous skies over North Vietnam. In the first five years of the Vietnam War, the F-105 Thunderchief conducted 75 percent of the Air Force bombing missions over North Vietnam. Thud Pilot tells the story of the courageous men who flew the F-105 from its earliest combat deployment in 1964, and on through 1966, the year of its heaviest losses. The author's more significant missions, including his ejection and rescue over North Vietnam are described in detail and are accompanied by map drawings depicting the mission routes from take-off to refueling orbits, the target, and return. The book is full of several `firsts' in the expanding air war over North Vietnam, including `Operation Spring High,' the first counter Surface-to-Air-Missile (SAM) strike in the history of aerial warfare. The personal perspective from years of combat experience reveals just how the political mismanagement and inane Rules of Engagement made them as much the hunted as they were the hunters. Thud Pilot goes beyond the battle air space and shares the emotional impact on the families left behind.

In Four Decades On, historians, anthropologists, and literary critics examine the legacies of the Second Indochina War, or what most Americans call the Vietnam War, nearly forty years after the United States finally left Vietnam. They address matters such as the daunting tasks facing the Vietnamese at the war's end-including rebuilding a nation and consolidating a socialist revolution while fending off China and the Khmer Rouge-and "the Vietnam syndrome," the cynical, frustrated, and pessimistic sense that colored America's views of the rest of the world after its humiliating defeat in Vietnam. The contributors provide unexpected perspectives on Agent Orange, the POW/MIA controversies, the commercial trade relationship between the United States and Vietnam, and representations of the war and its aftermath produced by artists, particularly writers. They show how the war has continued to affect not only international relations but also the everyday lives of millions of people around the world. Most of the contributors take up matters in the United States, Vietnam, or both nations, while several utilize transnational analytic frameworks, recognizing that the war's legacies shape and are shaped by dynamics that transcend the two countries. Contributors. Alex Bloom, Diane Niblack Fox, H. Bruce Franklin, Walter Hixson, Heonik Kwon, Scott Laderman, Mariam B. Lam, Ngo Vinh Long, Edwin A. Martini, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Christina Schwenkel, Charles Waugh

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.

A great white angel spreading her wings across the Moreno Valley: this is how one visitor described the memorial standing atop a windswept prominence in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos, New Mexico. A de-facto national Vietnam veterans memorial, built by one family more than a decade before the Wall in Washington, DC, and without aid or recognition from the US government, the chapel at Angel Fire is a testament to one young American's sacrifice - but also to the profound determination of his family to find meaning in their loss. In The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire, Steven Trout tells the story of Marine Lieutenant David Westphall, who was killed near Con Thien on May 22, 1968, and of the Westphall family's subsequent struggle to create and maintain a one-of-a-kind memorial chapel dedicated to the memory of all Americans lost in the Vietnam War and to the cause of world peace. Focused primarily on a life lost amid our nation's most controversial conflict and on the Westphalls' desperate battle to keep their chapel open between 1971 and 1982, the book's brisk and moving narrative traces the memorial's evolution from a personal act of family remembrance to its emergence as an iconic pilgrimage destination for thousands of Vietnam veterans. Documenting the chapel's shifting messages over time, which include a momentary (and controversial) recognition of the dead on both sides of the war, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire spotlights one American soldier's tragic story and the monument to hope and peace that it inspired.

Despite all that has been written about Vietnam, the story of the 1-A-O conscientious objector, who agreed to put on a uni-form and serve in the field without weapons rather than accept alternative service outside the military, has received scarce atten-tion. This joint memoir by two 1-A-O combat medics, James C. Kearney and William H. Clamurro, represents a unique approach to the subject. It is a blend of their personal narratives—with select Vietnam poems by Clamurro—to illustrate noncombatant objection as a unique and relatively unknown form of Vietnam War protest. Both men initially met during training and then served as frontline medics in separate units “outside the wire� in Vietnam. Clamurro was assigned to a tank company in Tay Ninh province next to the Cambodian border, before reassignment to an aid station with the 1st Air Cavalry. Kearney served first as a medic with an artillery battery in the 1st Infantry Division, then as a convoy medic during the Cambodian invasion with the 25th Infantry Division, and finally as a Medevac medic with the 1st Air Cavalry. In this capacity Kearney was seriously wounded during a “hot hoist� in February 1971 and ended up being treated by his friend Clamurro back at base. Because of their status as “a new breed of conscientious objector�—i.e., more political than religious in their convictions—the authors’ experience of the Vietnam War differed fundamentally from that of their fellow draftees and contrasted even with the great majority of their fellow 1-A-O medics, whose conscientious objector status was largely or entirely faith-based.

This extraordinary memoir tells the story of one man's experience of the wars of Viet Nam from the time he was old enough to be aware of war in the 1940s until his departure for America 15 years after the collapse of South Viet Nam in 1975. Nguyen Cong Luan was born and raised in small villages near Ha Noi. He grew up knowing war at the hands of the Japanese, the French, and the Viet Minh. Living with wars of conquest, colonialism, and revolution led him finally to move south and take up the cause of the Republic of Viet Nam, exchanging a life of victimhood for one of a soldier. His stories of village life in the north are every bit as compelling as his stories of combat and the tragedies of war. This honest and impassioned account is filled with the everyday heroism of the common people of his generation.

The gritty and engaging story of two brothers, Chuck and Tom Hagel, who went to war in Vietnam, fought in the same unit, and saved each other's life. One supported the war, the other detested it, but they fought it together. 1968. It was the worst year of America's most divisive war. Flag-draped caskets came home by the thousands. Riots ravaged our cities. Assassins shot our political leaders. Black fought white, young fought old, fathers fought sons. And it was the year that two brothers from Nebraska went to war. In Vietnam, Chuck and Tom Hagel served side by side in the same rifle platoon. Together they fought in the Tet Offensive, battled snipers in Saigon, chased the enemy through the jungle, and each saved the other's life under fire. Yet, like so many American families, one brother supported the war while the other detested it. Tom and former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel never set out to be heroes, but they epitomized the best, and lived through the worst, of the most tumultuous, amazing, and consequential year in the last half century. Following the brothers' paths from the prairie heartland through a war on the far side of the world and back to a divided America, Our Year of War tells the story of two brothers at war, serving their divided country. It is a story that resonates to this day, an American story.

They Were Soldiers showcases the inspiring true stories of 49 Vietnam veterans who returned home from the "lost war" to enrich America's present and future. In this groundbreaking new book, Joseph L. Galloway, distinguished war correspondent and New York Times bestselling author of We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young, and Marvin J. Wolf, Vietnam veteran and award-winning author, reveal the private lives of those who returned from Vietnam to make astonishing contributions in science, medicine, business, and other arenas, and change America for the better. For decades, the soldiers who served in Vietnam were shunned by the American public and ignored by their government. Many were vilified or had their struggles to reintegrate into society magnified by distorted depictions of veterans as dangerous or demented. Even today, Vietnam veterans have not received their due. Until now. These profiles are touching and courageous, and often startling. They include veterans both known and unknown, including: Frederick Wallace ("Fred") Smith, CEO and founder of FedEx Marshall Carter, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange Justice Eileen Moore, appellate judge who also serves as a mentor in California's Combat Veterans Court Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell Guion "Guy" Bluford Jr., first African American in space Engrossing, moving, and eye-opening, They Were Soldiers is a magnificent tribute that gives long overdue honor and recognition to the soldiers of this "forgotten generation."

This oral history offers the voices of thirty-three Oklahomans. Some of them fought in the Vietnam War, and others waited - some are still waiting - for their loved ones to come home, alive or in a body bag. In the ranks of Stanley W. Beesley's compilation are reluctant warriors, gung ho marines, skeptics, embittered former patriots, and humanists - whites, blacks, Indians, and Hispanics; men and women; officers and grunts. These men and women recount their experiences not as heroes but as ordinary people thrust by politics and fate into the uncommon circumstances of the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, they bring to life their deadened memories and remind us of what some have chosen to forget.

Fifty years since the signing of the Paris Peace Accords signaled the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, the war's mark on the Pacific world remains. The essays gathered here offer an essential, postcolonial interpretation of a struggle rooted not only in Indochinese history but also in the wider Asia Pacific region. Extending the Vietnam War's historiography away from a singular focus on American policies and experiences and toward fundamental regional dynamics, the book reveals a truly global struggle that made the Pacific world what it is today. Contributors include: David L. Anderson, Mattias Fibiger, Zach Fredman, Marc Jason Gilbert, Alice S. Kim, Mark Atwood Lawrence, Jason Lim, Jana K. Lipman, Greg Lockhart, S. R. Joey Long, Christopher Lovins, Mia Martin Hobbs, Boi Huyen Ngo, Wen-Qing Ngoei, Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, Noriko Shiratori, Lisa Tran, A. Gabrielle Westcott

The Air War in Vietnam is a deep dive into the effectiveness of air power during the Vietnam War, offering particular evaluation of the extent to which air operations fulfilled national policy objectives. Built from exhaustive research into previously classified and little-known archival sources, Michael Weaver insightfully blends new sources with material from the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States Series. While Air Force sources from the lion's share of the documentary evidence, Weaver also makes heavy use of Navy and Marine materials. Breaking air power into six different mission sets--air superiority, aerial refueling, airlift, close air support, reconnaissance, and coercion & interdiction--Weaver assesses the effectiveness of each of these endeavors from the tactical level of war and adherence to US policy goals. Critically, The Air War in Vietnam perceives of the air campaign as a siege of North Vietnam. While American air forces completed most of their air campaigns successfully on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, what resulted was not a failure in air power, but a failure in the waging of war as a whole. The Air War in Vietnam tackles controversies and unearths new evidence, rendering verdicts both critical and positive, arguing that war, however it is waged, is ultimately effective only when it achieves a country's policy objectives.

In the Tet Offensive of 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched a massive countrywide attack on South Vietnam. Though the Communists failed to achieve their tactical and operational objectives, James Willbanks claims Hanoi won a strategic victory. The offensive proved that America's progress was grossly overstated and caused many Americans and key presidential advisors to question the wisdom of prolonging combat.

Willbanks also maintains that the Communists laid siege to a Marine combat base two weeks prior to the Tet Offensive-known as the Battle of Khe Sanh--to distract the United States. It is his belief that these two events are intimately linked, and in his concise and compelling history, he presents an engaging portrait of the conflicts and singles out key problems of interpretation.

Willbanks divides his study into six sections, beginning with a historical overview of the events leading up to the offensive, the attack itself, and the consequent battles of Saigon, Hue, and Khe Sahn. He continues with a critical assessment of the main themes and issues surrounding the offensive, and concludes with excerpts from American and Vietnamese documents, maps and chronologies, an annotated list of resources, and a short encyclopedia of key people, places, and events.

An experienced military historian and scholar of the Vietnam War, Willbanks has written a unique critical reference and guide that enlarges the debate surrounding this important turning point in America's longest war.

Finalist for the 1971 National Book Award

In early 1968, Communist forces in Vietnam launched a surprise offensive that targeted nearly every city, town, and major military base throughout South Vietnam. For several hours, the U.S. embassy in Saigon itself came under siege by Viet Cong soldiers. Militarily, the offensive was a failure, as the North Vietnamese Army and its guerrilla allies in the south suffered devastating losses. Politically, however, it proved to be a crucial turning point in America's involvement in Southeast Asia and public opinion of the war. In this classic work of military history and war reportage--long considered the definitive history of Tet and its aftermath--Don Oberdorfer moves back and forth between the war and the home front to document the lasting importance of this military action. Based on his own observations as a correspondent for the "Washington Post" and interviews with hundreds of people who were caught up in the struggle, "Tet " remains an essential contribution to our understanding of the Vietnam War.

By the autumn of 1971 a war-weary American public had endured a steady stream of bad news about the conduct of its soldiers in Vietnam. It included reports of fraggings, massacres, and cover-ups, mutinies, increased racial tensions, and soaring drug abuse. Then six soldiers at Fire Support Base Pace, a besieged U.S. artillery outpost near the Cambodian border, balked at an order to conduct a nighttime ambush patrol. Four days later, twenty soldiers from a second unit objected to patrolling even in daylight. The sensation these events triggered in the media, along with calls for a congressional investigation, reinforced for the American public the image of a dysfunctional military on the edge of collapse. For a time Pace became the face of all that was wrong with American troops during the extended withdrawal from Vietnam. William Shkurti, however, argues that the incidents at Firebase Pace have been misunderstood for four decades. Shkurti, who served as an artillery officer not far from Pace, uses declassified reports, first-person interviews, and other sources to reveal that these incidents were only temporary disputes involving veteran soldiers exercising common sense. Shkurti also uses the Pace incidents to bring an entire war and our withdrawal from it into much sharper focus. He reevaluates the performance and motivation of U.S. ground troops and their commanders during this period, as well as that of their South Vietnamese allies and North Vietnamese adversaries; reassesses the media and its coverage of this phase of the war; and shows how some historians have helped foster misguided notions about what actually happened at Pace. By taking a closer look at what we thought we knew, Shkurti persuasively demonstrates how combat units still in harm's way adapted to the challenges before them and soldiered on in a war everyone else wanted to be over. In doing so, he also suggests a context to better understand the challenges that may lie ahead in the drawdown of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

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.