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Why Vietnam Matters
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Book Synopsis Why Vietnam Matters by : Rufus Phillips
Download or read book Why Vietnam Matters written by Rufus Phillips and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phillips's short chapter on lessons the U.S. should have learned from the Vietnam War should be mandatory reading in Washington, D.C. -- Publishers Weekly It is, among other things, a wonderful read, full of detail and drama. --George Packer, The New Yorker Rufus Phillips offers an extraordinary inside history of the most critical years of American involvement in Vietnam, from 1954 to 1968, and explains why it still matters. Describing what went right and then wrong, he finds that our failure to understand the Communists, our South Vietnamese allies, or even ourselves took us down the wrong road of a conventional war until it was too late--we missed the war's essential political character. Documenting the story from his own personal files, now available at the Texas Tech Vietnam Archive, as well as from the historical record, the former government official paints striking portraits of such key figures as John F. Kennedy, Maxwell Taylor, Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, and Ngo Dinh Diem, among others with whom he dealt.
Book Synopsis Why Vietnam Matters by : Rufus C Phillips
Download or read book Why Vietnam Matters written by Rufus C Phillips and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rufus Phillips offers an extraordinary inside history of the most critical years of American involvement in Vietnam, from 1954 to 1968, and explains why it still matters. Describing what went right and then wrong, he contends that our failure to understand the Communists, our South Vietnamese allies, or even ourselves took us down the wrong road of a conventional war until it was too late—we missed the war’s essential political character. Documenting the story from his own personal files, now available at the Texas Tech Vietnam Archive, as well as from the historical record, the former government official paints striking portraits of such key figures as John F. Kennedy, Maxwell Taylor, Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, and Ngo Dinh Diem, among others with whom he dealt."
Book Synopsis The War That Never Ends by : David L. Anderson
Download or read book The War That Never Ends written by David L. Anderson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than three decades after the final withdrawal of American troops from Southeast Asia, the legacy of the Vietnam War continues to influence political, military, and cultural discourse. Journalists, politicians, scholars, pundits, and others have used the conflict to analyze each of America's subsequent military engagements. Many Americans have observed that Vietnam-era terms such as "cut and run," "quagmire," and "hearts and minds" are ubiquitous once again as comparisons between U.S. involvement in Iraq and in Vietnam seem increasingly appropriate. Because of its persistent significance, the Vietnam War era continues to inspire vibrant historical inquiry. The eminent scholars featured in The War That Never Ends offer fresh and insightful perspectives on the continuing relevance of the Vietnam War, from the homefront to "humping in the boonies," and from the great halls of political authority to the gritty hotbeds of oppositional activism. The contributors assert that the Vietnam War is central to understanding the politics of the Cold War, the social movements of the late twentieth century, the lasting effects of colonialism, the current direction of American foreign policy, and the ongoing economic development in Southeast Asia. The seventeen essays break new ground on questions relating to gender, religion, ideology, strategy, and public opinion, and the book gives equal emphasis to Vietnamese and American perspectives on the grueling conflict. The contributors examine such phenomena as the role of women in revolutionary organizations, the peace movements inspired by Buddhism, and Ho Chi Minh's successful adaptation of Marxism to local cultures. The War That Never Ends explores both the antiwar movement and the experiences of infantrymen on the front lines of battle, as well as the media's controversial coverage of America's involvement in the war. The War That Never Ends sheds new light on the evolving historical meanings of the Vietnam War, its enduring influence, and its potential to influence future political and military decision-making, in times of peace as well as war.
Book Synopsis The Things They Carried by : Tim O'Brien
Download or read book The Things They Carried written by Tim O'Brien and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Book Synopsis The American War in Contemporary Vietnam by : Christina Schwenkel
Download or read book The American War in Contemporary Vietnam written by Christina Schwenkel and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-13 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christina Schwenkel's absorbing study explores how the "American War" is remembered and commemorated in Vietnam today -- in official and unofficial histories and in everyday life. Schwenkel analyzes visual representations found in monuments and martyrs' cemeteries, museums, photography and art exhibits, battlefield tours, and related sites of "trauma tourism." In these transnational spaces, American and Vietnamese memories of the war intersect in ways profoundly shaped by global economic liberalization and the return of American citizens as tourists, pilgrims, and philanthropists.
Download or read book Vietnam written by Bill Hayton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A much-needed behind-the-scenes survey of an emerging Asian power The eyes of the West have recently been trained on China and India, but Vietnam is rising fast among its Asian peers. A breathtaking period of social change has seen foreign investment bringing capitalism flooding into its nominally communist society, booming cities swallowing up smaller villages, and the lure of modern living tugging at the traditional networks of family and community. Yet beneath these sweeping developments lurks an authoritarian political system that complicates the nation’s apparent renaissance. In this engaging work, experienced journalist Bill Hayton looks at the costs of change in Vietnam and questions whether this rising Asian power is really heading toward capitalism and democracy. Based on vivid eyewitness accounts and pertinent case studies, Hayton’s book addresses a broad variety of issues in today’s Vietnam, including important shifts in international relations, the growth of civil society, economic developments and challenges, and the nation’s nascent democracy movement as well as its notorious internal security. His analysis of Vietnam’s “police state,” and its systematic mechanisms of social control, coercion, and surveillance, is fresh and particularly imperative when viewed alongside his portraits of urban and street life, cultural legacies, religion, the media, and the arts. With a firm sense of historical and cultural context, Hayton examines how these issues have emerged and where they will lead Vietnam in the next stage of its development.
Book Synopsis Kill Anything That Moves by : Nick Turse
Download or read book Kill Anything That Moves written by Nick Turse and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on classified documents and interviews, argues that American acts of violence against millions of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War were a pervasive and systematic part of the war.
Book Synopsis 50 Things You Should Know About the Vietnam War by : Chris McNab
Download or read book 50 Things You Should Know About the Vietnam War written by Chris McNab and published by QEB Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new title from the 50 Things You Should Know About series is packed full of infographics, illustrations, maps, and color photographs from the period. Not only identifying major political and military figures from both sides of the conflict with the 'Who's Who' pages, this title also documents the significance of medical workers, protesters, and civilians caught in the crossfire. Photos of memorabilia, such as patches, pins, and bracelets, add a personal aspect to the war.
Book Synopsis Nothing Ever Dies by : Viet Thanh Nguyen
Download or read book Nothing Ever Dies written by Viet Thanh Nguyen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction A New York Times Book Review “The Year in Reading” Selection 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. “[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War...As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.” —Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times “In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war...[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.” —Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review “Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
Download or read book Vietnam written by Michael Lind and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Lind casts new light on one of the most contentious episodes in American history in this controversial bestseller. In this groundgreaking reinterpretation of America's most disatrous and controversial war, Michael Lind demolishes enduring myths and put the Vietnam War in its proper context—as part of the global conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Lind reveals the deep cultural divisions within the United States that made the Cold War consensus so fragile and explains how and why American public support for the war in Indochina declined. Even more stunning is his provacative argument that the United States failed in Vietnam because the military establishment did not adapt to the demands of what before 1968 had been largely a guerrilla war. In an era when the United States so often finds itself embroiled in prolonged and difficult conflicts, Lind offers a sobering cautionary tale to Ameicans of all political viewpoints.
Book Synopsis Imagining Vietnam and America by : Mark Philip Bradley
Download or read book Imagining Vietnam and America written by Mark Philip Bradley and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-06-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of the encounter between Vietnam and the United States from 1919 to 1950, Mark Bradley fundamentally reconceptualizes the origins of the Cold War in Vietnam and the place of postcolonial Vietnam in the history of the twentieth century. Among the first Americans granted a visa to undertake research in Vietnam since the war, Bradley draws on newly available Vietnamese-language primary sources and interviews as well as archival materials from France, Great Britain, and the United States. Bradley uses these sources to reveal an imagined America that occupied a central place in Vietnamese political discourse, symbolizing the qualities that revolutionaries believed were critical for reshaping their society. American policymakers, he argues, articulated their own imagined Vietnam, a deprecating vision informed by the conviction that the country should be remade in America's image. Contrary to other historians, who focus on the Soviet-American rivalry and ignore the policies and perceptions of Vietnamese actors, Bradley contends that the global discourse and practices of colonialism, race, modernism, and postcolonial state-making were profoundly implicated in--and ultimately transcended--the dynamics of the Cold War in shaping Vietnamese-American relations.
Book Synopsis Nothing Is Impossible by : Ted Osius
Download or read book Nothing Is Impossible written by Ted Osius and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today Vietnam is one of America’s strongest international partners, with a thriving economy and a population that welcomes American visitors. How that relationship was formed is a twenty-year story of daring diplomacy and a careful thawing of tensions between the two countries after a lengthy war that cost nearly 60,000 American and more than two million Vietnamese lives. Ted Osius, former ambassador during the Obama administration, offers a vivid account, starting in the 1990s, of the various forms of diplomacy that made this reconciliation possible. He considers the leaders who put aside past traumas to work on creating a brighter future, including senators John McCain and John Kerry, two Vietnam veterans and ideological opponents who set aside their differences for a greater cause, and Pete Peterson—the former POW who became the first U.S. ambassador to a new Vietnam. Osius also draws upon his own experiences working first-hand with various Vietnamese leaders and traveling the country on bicycle to spotlight the ordinary Vietnamese people who have helped bring about their nation’s extraordinary renaissance. With a foreword by former Secretary of State John Kerry, Nothing Is Impossible tells an inspiring story of how international diplomacy can create a better world.
Book Synopsis America's War in Vietnam by : Larry H. Addington
Download or read book America's War in Vietnam written by Larry H. Addington and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-22 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of the Vietnam War, with an emphasis on its military campaigns and political issues.
Download or read book Deep River written by Karl Marlantes and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three Finnish siblings head for the logging fields of nineteenth-century America in the New York Times–bestselling author’s “commanding historical epic” (Washington Post). Born into a farm family, the three Koski siblings—Ilmari, Matti, and Aino—are raised to maintain their grit and resiliency in the face of hardship. This lesson in sisu takes on special meaning when their father is arrested by imperial Russian authorities, never to be seen again. Lured by the prospects of the Homestead Act, Ilmari and Matti set sail for America, while young Aino, feeling betrayed and adrift after her Marxist cell is exposed, follows soon after. The brothers establish themselves among a logging community in southern Washington, not far from the Columbia River. In this New World, they each find themselves—Ilmari as the family’s spiritual rock; Matti as a fearless logger and entrepreneur; and Aino as a fiercely independent woman and union activist who is willing to make any sacrifice for the cause that sustains her. Layered with fascinating historical detail, this novel bears witness to the stump-ridden fields that the loggers—and the first waves of modernity—leave behind. At its heart, Deep River explores the place of the individual, and of the immigrant, in an America still in the process of defining its own identity.
Download or read book Haunting Legacy written by Marvin Kalb and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States had never lost a war that is, until 1975, when it was forced to flee Saigon in humiliation after losing to what Lyndon Johnson called a "raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country." The legacy of this first defeat has haunted every president since, especially on the decision of whether to put "boots on the ground" and commit troops to war. In Haunting Legacy, the father-daughter journalist team of Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb presents a compelling, accessible, and hugely important history of presidential decisionmaking on one crucial issue: in light of the Vietnam debacle, under what circumstances should the United States go to war? The sobering lesson of Vietnam is that the United States is not invincible it can lose a war and thus it must be more discriminating about the use of American power. Every president has faced the ghosts of Vietnam in his own way, though each has been wary of being sucked into another unpopular war. Ford (during the Mayaguez crisis) and both Bushes (Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan) deployed massive force, as if to say, "Vietnam, be damned." On the other hand, Carter, Clinton, and Reagan (to the surprise of many) acted with extreme caution, mindful of the Vietnam experience. Obama has also wrestled with the Vietnam legacy, using doses of American firepower in Libya while still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. The authors spent five years interviewing hundreds of officials from every post war administration and conducting extensive research in presidential libraries and archives, and they've produced insight and information never before published. Equal parts taut history, revealing biography, and cautionary tale, Haunting Legacy is must reading for anyone trying to understand the power of the past to influence war-and-peace decisions of the present, and of the future.
Book Synopsis Warriors and Fools by : Harry Rothmann
Download or read book Warriors and Fools written by Harry Rothmann and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warriors and Fools is about the Vietnam War. It seeks to answer one specific question - why did the US fail to achieve its principal objective to defend South Vietnam from communist aggression? The story's findings and conclusions are neither orthodox nor revisionist. Those trying to gain insights on how American civilian leaders lost the war that its military could have won, or how the US Congress, Press, or Antiwar activists caused the US withdrawal and loss of the war will be disappointed. Rather, as this story explains, the answer of why America lost is more linked to human interactions and relationships than what should have been done or not done. For this story reveals that the interrelationship between American civilian and military leaders and advisors was extraordinarily divisive and dysfunctional. So much so that US leaders' decisions resulted in flawed, timid policies and foolish strategies that led to defeat. Moreover, that troublesome interrelationship was primarily a result of mistrusts, misunderstandings, and misperceptions on US leaders' and advisors' roles, responsibilities, and what they thought would lead to a positive end to the war. In addition, primarily because they were ignorant of their opponents' culture and history and overconfident from their past experiences, US civilian and military policymakers ignored or misunderstood their enemy. Indeed, the main North Vietnamese war leaders, whom most Americans did not even know were calling the shots on their pursuit of victory, were determined to end the war militarily, and most persistent in that goal. They also mislead and mystified US civilian and military leaders alike through a brilliant strategy relying on propaganda and ruse that fooled their opponents into believing that a diplomatic solution was possible. The story of how and why the US lost South Vietnam to the communists uses the most recently released documents from the US archives and Presidential taped conversations of the top-secret meetings and behind door conversations of the major American participants from Truman through the Nixon Administrations. It also utilizes the latest, ground breaking research and released documentation of the war from the Communist Vietnamese side of the conflict, Warriors and Fools delves deeply into the decision making, strategies, goals, and motives of the North Vietnam leaders as they waged their war for unification, first against the French and then against the Americans. The book further consults the memoirs, interviews, and oral histories of former South Vietnamese leaders and combatants to discover their views on their struggle to form a new nation free from communist aggression. It then compares the attitudes, desires, and objectives of these Vietnamese leaders to those of the Americans to makes some startling discoveries about what US leaders wanted to accomplish and what their Vietnamese counterparts, both in the North and South, prevented them from achieving. This book is both broad and deep in scope in its narration of the Vietnam War story. It takes the reader from the White House's oval office and Hanoi's Politburo room, to the Pentagon's and North Vietnam Army's command centers, to Vietnam's mountain and rice patty battlefields to show the courage, determination, foolhardiness, mistakes, and horrors of war from both sides. Warriors and Fools should be of interest to those who served in the war, and serious students and teachers of this event and period. It is not intended as light reading, or for someone trying to get just a brief understanding of what happened there and in America at the time.
Book Synopsis The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by : Max Boot
Download or read book The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam written by Max Boot and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (Biography) A New York Times bestseller, this “epic and elegant” biography (Wall Street Journal) profoundly recasts our understanding of the Vietnam War. Praised as a “superb scholarly achievement” (Foreign Policy), The Road Not Taken confirms Max Boot’s role as a “master chronicler” (Washington Times) of American military affairs. Through dozens of interviews and never-before-seen documents, Boot rescues Edward Lansdale (1908–1987) from historical ignominy to “restore a sense of proportion” to this “political Svengali, or ‘Lawrence of Asia’ ”(The New Yorker). Boot demonstrates how Lansdale, the man said to be the fictional model for Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, pioneered a “hearts and minds” diplomacy, first in the Philippines and then in Vietnam. Bringing a tragic complexity to Lansdale and a nuanced analysis to his visionary foreign policy, Boot suggests Vietnam could have been different had we only listened. With contemporary reverberations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, The Road Not Taken is a “judicious and absorbing” (New York Times Book Review) biography of lasting historical consequence.
