Ho Chi Minh is one of the towering figures of the twentieth century, considered an icon and father of the nation by many Vietnamese. Pierre Brocheux's biography of Ho Chi Minh is a brilliant feat of historical engineering. In a concise and highly readable account, he negotiates the many twists and turns of Ho Chi Minh's life and his multiple identities, from impoverished beginnings as a communist revolutionary to his founding of the Indochina Communist Party and the League for the Independence of Vietnam, and ultimately to his leadership of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and his death in 1969. Biographical events are adroitly placed within the broader historical canvas of colonization, decolonization, communism, war, and nation building. Brocheux's vivid and convincing portrait of Ho Chi Minh goes further than any previous biography in explaining both the myth and the man, as well as the times in which he was situated.

In July 1969 a young American GI-barely 21 years old and enticed into the military just a year prior by his dream of flying-finds himself on a plane bound for South Vietnam and the 101st Airborne Division as a CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilot. So begins a year-long journey in a combat zone of the Vietnam War-a journey of fear and exhilaration, pain and joy, sadness and survival. Surprises of both grief and delight pockmark the daily grind and accompanying countdown to the day he can fly back home to the USA (called by soldiers simply "the world") on the wings of a Freedom Bird. But the one-year journey in Vietnam was also the beginning of another journey-a spiritual journey of self-identity-which would take a lifetime to unfold. In his memoir, Dale Petersen uses descriptive prose and excerpts from letters to give the reader an intensely personal view of that life-shaping experience over 37 years ago. Golf 2 Tango 4 takes readers back in time to what it felt like to be 21, homesick and unsure of what lay ahead...but willing to reach down inside for the courage to find out.

Although the Paris Peace Accords ended direct United States military involvement in Vietnam on January 27, 1973, the process of withdrawal lasted over three years. This illuminating volume chronicles this withdrawal, its background, and its impact through a combination of official history and first-person accounts from key players at every level. Brief historical narratives join recollections from U.S. servicemen and support staff, North and South Vietnamese soldiers, and such notable figures as Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Richard Nixon to reveal the human story behind the history. With a biographical dictionary summarising the lives of important individuals mentioned in the text, a glossary of unusual terms and acronyms, and an analysis of the war casualties under each U.S. president, this volume provides a singular perspective on the Vietnam War's denouement.

In the decades after World War II, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilian contractors across Asia and the Pacific found work through the U.S. military. Recently liberated from colonial rule, these workers were drawn to the opportunities the military offered and became active participants of the U.S. empire, most centrally during the U.S. war in Vietnam. Simeon Man uncovers the little-known histories of Filipinos, South Koreans, and Asian Americans who fought in Vietnam, revealing how U.S. empire was sustained through overlapping projects of colonialism and race making. Through their military deployments, Man argues, these soldiers took part in the making of a new Pacific world-a decolonizing Pacific-in which the imperatives of U.S. empire collided with insurgent calls for decolonization, producing often surprising political alliances, imperial tactics of suppression, and new visions of radical democracy.

Now in its second edition, Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam provides a fresh approach to understanding the American combat soldier's experience in Vietnam by focusing on the day-to-day experiences of front-line troops. The book delves into the Vietnam combat soldier's experience, from the decision to join the army, life in training and combat, and readjusting to civilian life with memories of war. By utilizing letters, oral histories, and memoirs of actual veterans, Kyle Longley and Jacqueline Whitt offer a powerful insight into the minds and lives of the 870,000 "grunts" who endured the controversial war. Important topics such as class, race, and gender are examined, enabling students to better analyze the social dynamics during this divisive period of American history. In addition to an updated introduction and epilogue, the new edition includes expanded sections on military chaplains, medics, and the moral injury of war. A new timeline provides details of major events leading up to, during, and after the war. A truly comprehensive picture of the Vietnam experience for soldiers, this volume is a valuable and unique addition to military history courses and classes on the Vietnam War and 1960s America.

Glory Days is the untold story of an airplane and its brave flyers who valiantly served our nation in time of war. The two EB-66 equipped combat squadrons flying from bases in Thailand against North Vietnam earned the Presidential Unit Citation for valor in combat, numerous Outstanding Unit Awards with V-device, and equivalent U.S. Navy citations. EB-66 flyers earned Silver Stars and Distinguished Flying Crosses for heroism, Air Medals galore, and too many Purple Hearts - attesting to their courage and sacrifice. This then is their gripping story - untold for far too long.

A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction. The first battle book from Mark Bowden since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down, Hue 1968, "an instantly recognizable classic of military history" (Christian Science Monitor), was published to massive critical acclaim and became a New York Times bestseller. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam's intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours the entire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the Front's presence, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and inter-views with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over twenty-four days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. Hue 1968 is a gripping and moving account of this pivotal moment.

Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 is the long-awaited sequel to the immensely influential Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. Like its predecessor, this book overturns the conventional wisdom using a treasure trove of new sources, many of them from the North Vietnamese side. Rejecting the standard depiction of U.S. military intervention as a hopeless folly, it shows America's war to have been a strategic necessity that could have ended victoriously had President Lyndon Johnson heeded the advice of his generals. In light of Johnson's refusal to use American ground forces beyond South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland employed the best military strategy available. Once the White House loosened the restraints on Operation Rolling Thunder, American bombing inflicted far greater damage on the North Vietnamese supply system than has been previously understood, and it nearly compelled North Vietnam to capitulate. The book demonstrates that American military operations enabled the South Vietnamese government to recover from the massive instability that followed the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. American culture sustained public support for the war through the end of 1968, giving South Vietnam realistic hopes for long-term survival. America's defense of South Vietnam averted the imminent fall of key Asian nations to Communism and sowed strife inside the Communist camp, to the long-term detriment of America's great-power rivals, China and the Soviet Union.

Eleven high school friends in idyllic North Adams, Massachusetts, enlisted to serve in Vietnam-one stayed behind to protest the war. All were from patriotic, working-class families, all members of the class of 1965 at Saint Joseph's School. Dennis Pregent was one of them. He and his classmates joined up-most right out of school, some before graduating-and endured the war's most vicious years. Seven served in the Army, three in the Marine Corps, and one in the Navy. After fighting in a faraway place, they saw the trajectories of their lives dramatically altered. One died in combat, another paralyzed, and several still suffer from debilitating conditions five decades later. Inspired by his 50th high school reunion, Pregent located his classmates, rekindled friendships, and-together, over hours of interviews-they remembered the war years.

This book considers the Vietnam war in light of U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam, concluding that the war was a direct result of failed state-building efforts. This U.S. nation building project began in the mid-1950s with the ambitious goal of creating a new independent, democratic, modern state below the 17th parallel. No one involved imagined this effort would lead to a major and devastating war in less than a decade. Carter analyzes how the United States ended up fighting a large-scale war that wrecked the countryside, generated a flood of refugees, and brought about catastrophic economic distortions, results which actually further undermined the larger U.S. goal of building a viable state. Carter argues that, well before the Tet Offensive shocked the viewing public in late January, 1968, the campaign in southern Vietnam had completely failed and furthermore, the program contained the seeds of its own failure from the outset.

This is a fascinating and truly groundbreaking study of the Vietnamese experience and memory of the Vietnam War through the lens of popular imaginings about the wandering souls of the war dead. These ghosts of war play an important part in postwar Vietnamese historical narrative and imagination and Heonik Kwon explores the intimate ritual ties with these unsettled identities which still survive in Vietnam today as well as the actions of those who hope to liberate these hidden but vital historical presences from their uprooted social existence. Taking a unique approach to the cultural history of war, he introduces gripping stories about spirits claiming social justice and about his own efforts to wrestle with the physical and spiritual presence of ghosts. Although these actions are fantastical, this book shows how examining their stories can illuminate critical issues of war and collective memory in Vietnam and the modern world more generally.

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.

Hoping to stay out of Vietnam, David Lyman joined the U.S. Naval Reserve to avoid the draft. By the summer of 1967 he found himself with a SeaBee unit on a beach in Chu Lai. A reporter in civilian life, he was assigned to Military Construction Battalion 71 as a photojournalist, documenting the lives of the hard-working and harder-drinking U.S. Navy SeaBees as they engineered the infrastucture of war-roads, runways, heliports and base camps for troops on the edges of the conflict. He was also shot at, almost blown up by a road mine, spent nights in a mortar pit as rockets bombarded a nearby Marine runway, and rode along on convoys through Viet Cong territory to photograph villages outside "The Wire." The stories and photographs Lyman published as editor of the battalion's newspaper, The Transit, form the basis of his memoir.

A new collection of Bill Ehrhart's essays, 25 of them written between 2002 and 2011 on subjects ranging from the failures of American policymakers during the Vietnam War to life in 21st century Vietnam, from the trenches of the Western Front to the crossing of the Rhine to the mountains of Korea to the sands of Iraq, from the value of one's name to the cowardice of Congress, from mountain gorillas in Rwanda to the National Book Award-winning journalist Gloria Emerson, from teaching poetry to teenagers to luxuriating in a Japanese hot spring spa, on the famous (Wilfred Owen) and the obscure (Robert James Elliott), these essays explore the fallacies of history, the madness of war, the craft of poetry, the profession of teaching, and the art of living.

'THE VIETNAMESE ANNE FRANK' Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the moving diary kept by a 27-year-old Vietnamese doctor who was killed by the Americans during the Vietnam War, while trying to defend her patients. Not only is it an important slice of history, from the opposite side of Dispatches and Apocalypse Now, but it shows the diarist - Dang Thuy Tram - as a vibrant human being, full of youthful idealism, a poetic longing for love, trying hard to be worthy of the Communist Party and doing her best to look after her patients under appalling conditions. She wrote straight from the heart and, because of this, her diary has been a huge bestseller in Vietnam and continues to fascinate at a time of renewed interest in the Vietnam War.

In January 1966, navy nurse Lieutenant Kay Bauer stepped off a pan am airliner into the stifling heat of Saigon and was issued a camouflage uniform, boots, and a rifle. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she said of the weapon. "I'm a nurse."

Bauer was one of approximately six thousand military nurses who served in Vietnam. Historian Kim Heikkila here delves into the experiences of fifteen nurse veterans from Minnesota, exploring what drove them to enlist, what happened to them in-country, and how the war changed their lives.

Like Bauer, these women saw themselves as nurses first and foremost: their job was to heal rather than to kill. after the war, however, the very professional selflessness that had made them such committed military nurses also made it more difficult for them to address their own needs as veterans. Reaching out to each other, they began healing from the wounds of war, and they turned their energies to a new purpose: this group of Minnesotans launched the campaign to build the Vietnam Women's Memorial. In the process, a collection of individuals became a tight-knit group of veterans who share the bonds of a sisterhood forged in war.

Kim Heikkila is an adjunct instructor in the history department at St. Catherine University, where she teaches courses on U.S. history, U.S. women's history, the Vietnam War, and the 1960s.

Elbridge Durbrow served as the third United States ambassador to the Republic of Vietnam from 1957 to 1961. His relationships with Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and members of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Saigon helped to shape his tenure in office, which ultimately concluded with his decision to end his support for the Vietnamese leader as well as turn away from the American military representatives who had earned Ngo Dinh Diem's trust. This triangular relationship between three competing entities was mired in clashes of ego and personality that often interfered with the American decision making process. Durbrow and his embassy staff, rather than work with the Vietnamese leadership, chose to focus on the negative and reported to Washington only those items that reinforced this perspective. They created an atmosphere of distrust and anxiety that neither the Americans nor Vietnamese could overcome in the 1960s and helped to create the conditions for greater United States involvement in Southeast Asia.

Half-Hispanic, half-Yaqui Indian, and an orphan, Roy Benavidez fought his way out of poverty and bigotry to serve with the U.S. Army s elite the Airborne and the Special Forces. Seriously wounded in Vietnam, he was told he would never walk again. Benavidez not only conquered his disability but demanded to return to combat.On his second tour, when twelve of his comrades on a secret CIA mission in Cambodia were surrounded by hundreds of North Vietnamese regulars, Benavidez volunteered to rescue them. Despite severe injuries suffered in hand-to-hand combat, Benavidez personally saved eight men. His actions ensured his everlasting place as one of the great heroes of the war. In February 1981, President Reagan awarded him the Medal of Honor.

Phil Gioia grew up an army brat during the decades after World War II. Drawn to the military, he attended the Virginia Military Institute, then was commissioned in the U.S. Army, where he completed Jump School and Ranger School. Not even a year after college graduation, he landed in Vietnam in early 1968-in the first weeks of the Tet offensive, which marked a major escalation of the war. Commanding a company in the 82nd Airborne Division, Gioia led his paratroopers into the city of Hue for intense fighting-danger was always just around the corner -and the grisly discovery of mass graves. Wounded, he was sent home in May but returned with the 1st Cavalry Division a year later, this time leading a rucksack company of light infantry. Inserted into far-flung landing zones, Gioia and his men patrolled the jungles and rubber plantations along the Cambodian border, looking for a furtive enemy who preferred ambushes to set-piece battles and nighttime raids to daylight attacks. Danger Close! recounts the Vietnam War from the unique boots-on-the-ground perspective of a young officer who served two tours in two different divisions. He tells his story thoughtfully, straightforwardly, and always vividly, from the raw emotions of unearthing massacred human beings to the terrors of fighting in the dark, with red and green tracers slicing the air. Hard to put down and hard to forget, Danger Close! will remind readers of the best Vietnam memoirs, like Guns Up! and Baptism.

From Andrew Wiest, the bestselling author of The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam and one of the leading scholars in the study of the Vietnam War, comes a frank exploration of the human experience during the conflict. Vietnam allows the reader a grunt's-eye-view of the conflict - from the steaming rice paddies and swamps of the Mekong Delta, to the triple-canopy rainforest of the Central Highlands and the forlorn Marine bases that dotted the DMZ. It is the definitive oral history of the Vietnam War told in the uncompromising, no-holds barred language of the soldiers themselves.

Diary of A Young Artist is a beautiful reproduction of the diary notes and sketches of Vietnamese war artist Pham Thanh Tam, created in the Vietminh trenches while on the front line of the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu.

Presenting new perspectives on the Vietnam War, its global repercussions, and its role in modern history, this volume reveals "America's War" as an international event that reverberated worldwide. The essays address political, military, and diplomatic issues and the cultural and intellectual consequences of "Vietnam." They compare the Vietnam War to other major conflicts in world history. "America's War" is depicted as a global event whose origins and characteristics deserve an interdisciplinary treatment.

Many came to see cold war liberals during the Vietnam War as willing to invoke the democratic ideal, while at the same time tolerating dictatorships in the cause of anticommunism. This volume of essays demonstrates how opposition to the war, the military-industrial complex, and the national security state crystallized in a variety of different and often divergent political traditions. Indeed, for many of the individuals discussed, dissent was a decidedly conservative act in that they felt the war threatened traditional values, mores, and institutions.

Many came to see cold war liberals during the Vietnam War as willing to invoke the democratic ideal, while at the same time tolerating dictatorships in the cause of anticommunism. This volume of essays demonstrates how opposition to the war, the military-industrial complex, and the national security state crystallized in a variety of different and often divergent political traditions. Indeed, for many of the individuals discussed, dissent was a decidedly conservative act in that they felt the war threatened traditional values, mores, and institutions.

The Vietnam War actually began in December 1946 with a struggle between the communists and the French for possession of the country. Vietnam's strategic position in Southeast Asia along with veiled economic concerns and a political agenda led to the involvement of other countries, including the United States. Written by an officer in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces, this poignant memoir seeks to clarify the nuances of South Vietnam's defeat. From the age of 12, Van Nguyen Duong watched as the conflict affected his home, family, village and friends. He discusses not only the day-to-day hardships he endured from forced relocation and eventual imprisonment but also the anguish caused by the illusive reality of Vietnamese independence.The various political forces at work in Vietnam, the hardships suffered by RVNAF soldiers after the 1975 U.S. withdrawal from Saigon, and the effect of reunification on the Vietnamese people are also discussed. An appendix contains a summary of the Eleven Point Program Accords of January 1962.