The author was born in 1940 and spent his childhood in two small villages, the paternal and the maternal, in southern Vietnam: Binh Chuan and Tuy An (An Phu). The villages were deeply affected by the powerful political events of the next fifty years. In this memoir (first sentence: ""I was born as the Japanese Troops were invading northern Vietnam""), the author writes of what he saw, heard and knew, providing an invaluable social history of the country.Readers will learn about people who have endured separation, dictatorship, carnage, persistent suffering and poverty, all the while yearning for independence and prosperity. Included are many stories - some funny, some heartbreaking - that reveal how the Vietnamese people lived, as well as their thoughts on war, on the French, Japanese and Americans, on the Nationalist and Communist governments, and on escape. The result is a heartfelt ""social painting"" of the nation.

Drafted in October 1968, John A. Nesser left behind his wife and young son to fight in the controversial Vietnam War. Like many in his generation, he was deeply at odds with himself over the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, instilled with a strong sense of duty to his country but uncertain about its mission and his role in it. Nesser was deployed to the Ashau Valley, site of some of the war's heaviest fighting, and served eight months as an infantry rifleman before transferring to become a door gunner for a Chinook helicopter. In this stirring memoir, he recalls in detail the exhausting missions in the mountainous jungle, the terror of walking into an ambush, the dull-edged anxiety that filled quiet days, and the steady fear of being shot out of the sky. The accounts are richly illustrated with Nesser's own photographs of the military firebases and aircraft, the landscapes, and the people he encountered.

All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War-a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations. From a kaleidoscope of cultural forms-novels, memoirs, cemeteries, monuments, films, photography, museum exhibits, video games, souvenirs, and more-Nothing Ever Dies brings a comprehensive vision of the war into sharp focus. At stake are ethical questions about how the war should be remembered by participants that include not only Americans and Vietnamese but also Laotians, Cambodians, South Koreans, and Southeast Asian Americans. Too often, memorials valorize the experience of one's own people above all else, honoring their sacrifices while demonizing the "enemy"-or, most often, ignoring combatants and civilians on the other side altogether. Visiting sites across the United States, Southeast Asia, and Korea, Viet Thanh Nguyen provides penetrating interpretations of the way memories of the war help to enable future wars or struggle to prevent them. Drawing from this war, Nguyen offers a lesson for all wars by calling on us to recognize not only our shared humanity but our ever-present inhumanity. This is the only path to reconciliation with our foes, and with ourselves. Without reconciliation, war's truth will be impossible to remember, and war's trauma impossible to forget.

"Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es)" examines how the Vietnam War has continued to serve as a stage for the shoring up of American imperialist adventure and for the (re)production of American and Vietnamese American identities. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, this book retheorizes the connections among history, memory, and power and refashions the fields of American studies, Asian American studies, and refugee studies not around the narratives of American exceptionalism, immigration, and transnationalism but around the crucial issues of war, race, and violence--and the history and memories that are forged in the aftermath of war. At the same time, the book moves decisively away from the "damage-centered" approach that pathologizes loss and trauma by detailing how first- and second-generation Vietnamese have created alternative memories and epistemologies that challenge the established public narratives of the Vietnam War and Vietnamese people. Explicitly interdisciplinary, "Body Counts" moves between the humanities and social sciences, drawing on historical, ethnographic, cultural, and virtual evidence in order to illuminate the places where Vietnamese refugees have managed to conjure up social, public, and collective remembering.

J. William Fulbright was the longest serving and most powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Both an intellectual and an internationalist, he had great influence over the course of American foreign relations in the 1960s and 1970s. Fulbright was also the most prominent, and the most effective, of the first American critics of the Vietnam War. His criticism was particularly galling and damning to Lyndon Johnson because Fulbright was a principled internationalist who could not be dismissed as an ideologue. Fulbright used hearings by the Foreign Relations Committee as a forum in which to advance his powerful critique of the war, and his writings constitute an ongoing, comprehensive critique of American foreign policy. This abridgement of Woods' prize-winning biography of J. William Fulbright presents the full story of Fulbright's role as one of the leading congressional opponents of the Vietnam War.

J. William Fulbright was the longest serving and most powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Both an intellectual and an internationalist, he had great influence over the course of American foreign relations in the 1960s and 1970s. Fulbright was also the most prominent, and the most effective, of the first American critics of the Vietnam War. His criticism was particularly galling and damning to Lyndon Johnson because Fulbright was a principled internationalist who could not be dismissed as an ideologue. Fulbright used hearings by the Foreign Relations Committee as a forum in which to advance his powerful critique of the war, and his writings constitute an ongoing, comprehensive critique of American foreign policy. This abridgement of Woods' prize-winning biography of J. William Fulbright presents the full story of Fulbright's role as one of the leading congressional opponents of the Vietnam War.

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."

More than half a million copies of "Chickenhawk" have been sold since it was first published in 1983. Now with a new afterword by the author and photographs taken by him during the conflict, this straight-from-the-shoulder account tells the electrifying truth about the helicopter war in Vietnam. This is Robert Masonas astounding personal story of men at war. A veteran of more than one thousand combat missions, Mason gives staggering descriptions that cut to the heart of the combat experience: the fear and belligerence, the quiet insights and raging madness, the lasting friendships and sudden deathathe extreme emotions of a achickenhawka in constant danger.

Throughout the past decade, defenders of the U.S. role in Vietnam have argued that America's defeat was not the result of an illegitimate intervention or military shortcomings, but rather a failure of will because national leaders, principally Lyndon B. Johnson, forced the troops to "fight with one hand tied behind their backs." In this volume, Robert Buzzanco disproves this theory by demonstrating that political leaders, not the military brass, pressed for war; that American policymakers always understood the problems and peril of war in Indochina; and that civil-military acrimony and the political desire to defer responsibility for Vietnam helped lead the United States into the war. For the first time, these crucial issues of military dissent, interservice rivalries, and civil-military relations and politics have been tied together to provide a cogent and comprehensive analysis of the U.S. role in Vietnam.

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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.

'The best 'bird's eye view' of the helicopter war in Vietnam in print today ... Mills has captured the realities of a select group of aviators who shot craps with death on every mission' R.S. Maxham, Director, US Army Aviation Museum The aeroscouts of the 1st Infantry Division have three words emblazoned on their unit patch: Low Level Hell. It was the perfect concise defininition of what those 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. They were the 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, who were usually 19 to 22 years old, invented the book as they went along.

* Insider account of long range reconnaissance missions of 101st Airborne *Vivid depiction of fighting in the jungles of Vietnam Combat veteran Larry Chambers'timeless story of LRRPs in Vietnam is an unforgettable account of what it took it took to survive Long Range Patrol missions in jungles that the NVA considered their own. Now with a new introduction from the author, Recondo, vividly describes the guts and determination it took to pass the tough volunteer-only training program in Nha Trang and the hair-raising graduation mission to scout, locate, and out-guerrilla the NVA.

Throughout the past decade, defenders of the U.S. role in Vietnam have argued that America's defeat was not the result of an illegitimate intervention or military shortcomings, but rather a failure of will because national leaders, principally Lyndon B. Johnson, forced the troops to "fight with one hand tied behind their backs." In this volume, Robert Buzzanco disproves this theory by demonstrating that political leaders, not the military brass, pressed for war; that American policymakers always understood the problems and peril of war in Indochina; and that civil-military acrimony and the political desire to defer responsibility for Vietnam helped lead the United States into the war. For the first time, these crucial issues of military dissent, interservice rivalries, and civil-military relations and politics have been tied together to provide a cogent and comprehensive analysis of the U.S. role in Vietnam.

Combat helicopter pilots in the Vietnam War flew each mission in the face of imminent death. Begun as a series of letters to Department of Veterans Affairs, this compelling memoir of an aircraft commander in the 116th Assault Helicopter Company-""The Hornets""-relates his experience of the war in frank detail. From supporting the 25th Infantry Division's invasion of Cambodia, to flying the lead aircraft in the 101st Airmobile Division's pivotal invasion of Laos, the author recounts the traumatic events of his service from March 1970 to March 1971.

In this new collection of essays on the Vietnam War, eminent scholars of the Second Indochina conflict consider several key factors that led to the defeat of the United States and its allies. The book adopts a candid and critical look at the U.S.’s stance and policies in Vietnam, and refuses to condemn, excuse, or apologize for America’s actions in the conflict. Rather, the contributors think widely and creatively about the varied reasons that may have accounted for the U.S.’s failure to defeat the North Vietnamese Army, such as role played by economics in America’s defeat. Other fresh perspectives on the topic include American intelligence failure in Vietnam, the international dimensions of America’s defeat in Vietnam, and the foreign policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

From 1967-1971, Stuart Steinberg served in the U.S. Army as an explosive ordnance disposal specialist. In January 1968, he was sent to Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where chemical and biological weaponry was stockpiled, staying there until July 1968. Steinberg was involved in helping to clean up the worst nerve gas disaster in American history on March 13, 1968. As a result, he volunteered to serve in Vietnam from September 4, 1968 to March 24, 1970. This is What Hell Looks Like explores the difficult and traumatic situations faced by Steinberg and his teammates across their time in Vietnam. This volume also examines the causes and consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder though Steinberg's honest account of his experiences, including his subsequent addiction to prescription painkillers. Documenting Steinberg's personal journey through "Hell," his account casts further light on life during the Vietnam War.

On 21 March 1933, the National Socialists celebrated their alliance with the old Wilhelmine elites on the Day of Potsdam. Eighty years following 1933, the great year of upheaval, this volume more closely reexamines the historical context of the Day of Potsdam as a critical moment on the road to dictatorship. Nine scholarly articles reconstruct the events on the Day of Potsdam and analyze its importance in the culture of commemoration."

"Forever Forward" is the first in-depth account of K-9 Operations during the Vietnam War, and provides a behind the scenes look at how Allied forces employed dog teams in a variety of roles, the evolution of the United States military working dog program, and the aftermath of Vietnam. The 4,000 dogs that served with our men in Vietnam in every service branch are America's unsung heroes. American dog teams averted over 10,000 casualties and worked as scouts, sentries, trackers, mine, and tunnel detectors. They were so effective the Viet Cong even placed a bounty on them. Heroes yes, but our own government left most of them behind to an unknown fate.

During the Vietnam War, the United States embarked on an unusual crusade on behalf of the government of South Vietnam. Known as the pacification program, it sought to help South Vietnam's government take root and survive as an independent, legitimate entity by defeating communist insurgents and promoting economic development and political reforms. In this book, Richard Hunt provides the first comprehensive history of America's "battle for hearts and minds," the distinctive blending of military and political approaches that took aim at the essence of the struggle between North and South Vietnam. Hunt concentrates on the American role, setting pacification in the larger political context of nation building. He describes the search for the best combination of military and political action, incorporating analysis of the controversial Phoenix program, and illuminates the difficulties the Americans encountered with their sometimes reluctant ally. The author explains how hard it was to get the U.S. Army involved in pacification and shows the struggle to yoke divergent organizations (military, civilian, and intelligence agencies) to serve one common goal. The greatest challenge of all was to persuade a surrogate-the Saigon government-to carry out programs and to make reforms conceived of by American officials. The book concludes with a careful assessment of pacification's successes and failures. Would the Saigon government have flourished if there had been more time to consolidate the gains of pacification? Or was the regime so fundamentally flawed that its demise was preordained by its internal contradictions? This pathbreaking book offers startling and provocative answers to these and other important questions about our Vietnam experience.

The Vietnam War's influence on politics, foreign policy, and subsequent military campaigns is the center of much debate and analysis. But the impact on veterans across the globe, as well as the war's effects on individual lives and communities, is a largely neglected issue. As a consequence of cultural and legal barriers, the oral histories of the Vietnam War currently available in English are predictably one-sided, providing limited insight into the inner workings of the Communist nations that participated in the war. Furthermore, many of these accounts focus on combat experiences rather than the backgrounds, belief systems, and social experiences of interviewees, resulting in an incomplete historiography of the war. Chinese native Xiaobing Li corrects this oversight in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans. Li spent seven years gathering hundreds of personal accounts from survivors of the war, accounts that span continents, nationalities, and political affiliations. The twenty-two intimate stories in the book feature the experiences of American, Chinese, Russian, Korean, and North and South Vietnamese veterans, representing the views of both anti-Communist and Communist participants, including Chinese officers of the PLA, a Russian missile-training instructor, and a KGB spy. These narratives humanize and contextualize the war's events while shedding light on aspects of the war previously unknown to Western scholars. Providing fresh perspectives on a long-discussed topic, Voices from the Vietnam War offers a thorough and unique understanding of America's longest war.

Even if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW coming home stories. What had gone on behind these prison walls? Along with legends of lionized heroes who endured torture rather than reveal sensitive military information, there were news leaks suggesting that others had denounced the war in return for favorable treatment. What wasn't acknowledged, however, is that U.S. troop opposition to the war was vast and reached well into Hoa Loa Prison. Half a century after the fact, Dissenting POWs emerges to recover this history, and to discover what drove the factionalism in Hoa Lo. Looking into the underlying factional divide between prowar "hardliners" and antiwar "dissidents" among the POWs, authors Wilber and Lembcke delve into the postwar American culture that created the myths of the HeroPOW and the dissidents blamed for the loss of the war. What they found was surprising: It wasn't simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officers versus enlisted men standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their precaptive experience that drew the lines. After the war, the hardcore hero holdouts-like John McCain-moved on to careers in politics and business, while the dissidents faded from view as the antiwar movement, that might otherwise have championed them, disbanded. Today, Dissenting POWs is a necessary myth buster, disabusing us of the revisionism that has replaced actual GI resistance with images of suffering POWs - ennobled victims that serve to suppress the fundamental questions of America's drift to endless war.

The combat history of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines--or One Five (1/5)--is long and illustrious, but there are many periods of their combat operations during the Vietnam War about which there is little in print. This history is drawn from many years of research, from the author's personal memories, and from careful study of the battalion's Command Chronologies and Combat After-action Reports and other historical records. Most importantly it includes a collection of true stories told to the author by dozens of U.S. Marines who served in and fought with 1/5 during the Vietnam War, at all levels of the Chain of Command. This book hunkers down with the Mud Marines of Charlie One Five, a small but determined band of American fighting men, and their very human and often painful stories of combat cover a wide range of scenarios and situations. Follow the Marines of 1/5 as they are lulled by the exotic and beautiful countryside, trudge through swamps, jungles, mountains, and rice paddies for seemingly endless days, and struggle to stay alert during their cautious passage through the extreme terrain and weather conditions of this incredibly scenic but deceptive land, only to be shattered by sudden and deadly attacks from Viet Cong snipers, ambushes, and command-detonated bombs. Despite the overwhelming odds against them, the Marines of Charlie One Five always emerge victorious in every battle they fight.