The Vietnam War

Author: Geoffrey Ward
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1984897748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 866

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Based on the celebrated PBS television series, the complete text of an engrossing history of America’s least-understood conflict, “a significant milestone [that] will no doubt do much to determine how the war is understood for years to come.” —The Washington Post More than forty years have passed since the end of the Vietnam War, but its memory continues to loom large in the national psyche. In this intimate history, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns have crafted a fresh and insightful account of the long and brutal conflict that reunited Vietnam while dividing the United States as nothing else had since the Civil War. From the Gulf of Tonkin and the Tet Offensive to Hamburger Hill and the fall of Saigon, Ward and Burns trace the conflict that dogged three American presidents and their advisers. But most of the voices that echo from these pages belong to less exalted men and women—those who fought in the war as well as those who fought against it, both victims and victors—willing for the first time to share their memories of Vietnam as it really was. A magisterial tour de force, The Vietnam War is an engrossing history of America’s least-understood conflict.

The Vietnam War

Author: DK
Publisher: Dorling Kindersley Ltd
ISBN: 0241487188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
The Vietnam War remains one of the most heroic and heartbreaking events in history. This definitive e-guide charts the unforgettable story of the world's first televised war. Hundreds of insightful images and a compelling narrative combine to chronicle this catastrophic conflict.?? From 1955, the communist government of North Vietnam waged war against South Vietnam and its main ally, the USA. Over the course of two decades of hostility and warfare, the number of casualties reached an incomprehensible three million people. Detailed descriptions of every episode, including Operation Passage to Freedom and the evacuation of the American embassy in Saigon, tell the stories in iconic photographs and eyewitness accounts. Discover the real people behind the conflict, with gripping biographies of key figures, including Henry Kissinger, General Thieu, President Nixon, and Pol Pot. This incredible visual record is supported by locator maps, at-a-glance timelines, archive photography, and key quotations to ensure an all-encompassing experience.?? The Vietnam War is an essential historic reference to help humanity learn the lessons of suffering and sacrifice from one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century.

China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975

Author: Qiang Zhai
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
In the quarter century after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Beijing assisted Vietnam in its struggle against two formidable foes, France and the United States. Indeed, the rise and fall of this alliance is one of the most crucial developments in the history of the Cold War in Asia. Drawing on newly released Chinese archival sources, memoirs and diaries, and documentary collections, Qiang Zhai offers the first comprehensive exploration of Beijing's Indochina policy and the historical, domestic, and international contexts within which it developed. In examining China's conduct toward Vietnam, Zhai provides important insights into Mao Zedong's foreign policy and the ideological and geopolitical motives behind it. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he shows, Mao considered the United States the primary threat to the security of the recent Communist victory in China and therefore saw support for Ho Chi Minh as a good way to weaken American influence in Southeast Asia. In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, when Mao perceived a greater threat from the Soviet Union, he began to adjust his policies and encourage the North Vietnamese to accept a peace agreement with the United States.

The Vietnam War

Author: Mark Atwood Lawrence
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199793158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
The Vietnam War remains a topic of extraordinary interest, not least because of striking parallels between that conflict and more recent fighting in the Middle East. In The Vietnam War, Mark Atwood Lawrence draws upon the latest research in archives around the world to offer readers a superb account of a key moment in U.S. as well as global history. While focusing on American involvement between 1965 and 1975, Lawrence offers an unprecedentedly complete picture of all sides of the war, notably by examining the motives that drove the Vietnamese communists and their foreign allies. Moreover, the book carefully considers both the long- and short-term origins of the war. Lawrence examines the rise of Vietnamese communism in the early twentieth century and reveals how Cold War anxieties of the 1940s and 1950s set the United States on the road to intervention. Of course, the heart of the book covers the "American war," ranging from the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem to the impact of the Tet Offensive on American public opinion, Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the 1968 presidential race, Richard Nixon's expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos, and the problematic peace agreement of 1973, which ended American military involvement. Finally, the book explores the complex aftermath of the war--its enduring legacy in American books, film, and political debate, as well as Vietnam's struggles with severe social and economic problems. A compact and authoritative primer on an intensely relevant topic, this well-researched and engaging volume offers an invaluable overview of the Vietnam War.

The Origins of the Vietnam War

Author: Fredrik Logevall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138129979
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Book Description
Why did the US make a commitment to an independent South Vietnam? Could a major war have been averted? Fredrik Logevall provides a concise, comprehensive and accessible introduction to the origins of the Vietnam War from the end of the Indochina War in 1954 to the eruption of full-scale war in 1965, and places events against their full international background.

The Vietnam War

Author: Edward Miller
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405196785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
The Vietnam War is an outstanding collection of primary documents related to America’s conflict in Vietnam which includes a balance of original American and Vietnamese perspectives, providing a uniquely varied range of insights into both American and Vietnamese experiences. Includes substantial non-American content, including many original English translations of Vietnamese-authored texts which showcase the diversity and complexity of Vietnamese experiences during the war Contains original American documents germane to the continuing debates about the causes, consequences and morality of the US intervention Incorporates personal histories of individual Americans and Vietnamese Introductory headnotes place each document in context Features a range of non-textual documents, including iconic photographs and political cartoons

A Companion to the Vietnam War

Author: Marilyn B. Young
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405172045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528

Book Description
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 Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War

Author: David L. Anderson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231507380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Book Description
More than a quarter of a century after the last Marine Corps Huey left the American embassy in Saigon, the lessons and legacies of the most divisive war in twentieth-century American history are as hotly debated as ever. Why did successive administrations choose little-known Vietnam as the "test case" of American commitment in the fight against communism? Why were the "best and brightest" apparently blind to the illegitimacy of the state of South Vietnam? Would Kennedy have pulled out had he lived? And what lessons regarding American foreign policy emerged from the war? The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War helps readers understand this tragic and complex conflict. The book contains both interpretive information and a wealth of facts in easy-to-find form. Part I provides a lucid narrative overview of contested issues and interpretations in Vietnam scholarship. Part II is a mini-encyclopedia with descriptions and analysis of individuals, events, groups, and military operations. Arranged alphabetically, this section enables readers to look up isolated facts and specialized terms. Part III is a chronology of key events. Part IV is an annotated guide to resources, including films, documentaries, CD-ROMs, and reliable Web sites. Part V contains excerpts from historical documents and statistical data.

The Vietnam War

Author: Mitchell K. Hall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317863747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Book Description
The Vietnam War examines the conflict from its origins through to 1975 and North Vietnam’s victory. This new revised edition is completely up-to-date with current academic debates and includes new source material. Mitchell Hall explores all the key elements of the conflict, including: · US motivations for entering the war and the military strategies employed · The role of the media · The rise of domestic opposition · The war’s impact in the US and Vietnam. Mitchell Hall provides numerous insights into the political decisions of the Vietnamese communists, and Vietnam’s relations with other major powers, particularly China and the Soviet Union. The main text is supported by a comprehensive documents section, and a range of study tools, including a Chronology of events, Who's Who, a Glossary of terms and a Further Reading section. Concise yet thorough, the book provides students with an accessible and stimulating introduction to the war.

Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars

Author: Mark Philip Bradley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195315138
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
Making sense of the wars for Vietnam has had a long history. The question "why Vietnam?" dominated American and Vietnamese political life for much of the length of the wars and has continued to be asked in the decades since they ended. This volume brings together the work of eleven scholars to examine the conceptual and methodological shifts that have marked the contested terrain of Vietnam War scholarship. Editors Marilyn Young and Mark Bradley's superb group of renowned contributors spans the generations--including those who were active during wartime, along with scholars conducting research in Vietnamese sources and uncovering new sources in the United States, former Soviet Union, China, and Eastern and Western Europe. Ranging in format from top-down reconsiderations of critical decision-making moments in Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon, to microhistories of the war that explore its meanings from the bottom up, these essays comprise the most up-to-date collection of scholarship on the controversial historiography of the Vietnam Wars.