Product Description
Very riveting account of this period in American History told by eye witnesses including Medics, Diplomats, Clerks, Housewives, Spies, Grunts and Generals. From a covert 1945 OSS mission to enlist the aid of Ho Chi Minh to the frenzied evacuation of Saigon in 1975. These U S citizens share their remarkable first hand experiences in a revealing and important document of a dark and unforgettable time. ... Read more

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“THE MEN WHO SACRIFICED FOR THEIR COUNTRY ARERIGHTFULLY HERALDED . . . This is an honest book–one well worthreading. . . . Stanton has laid his claim to the historian’sranks by providing his reader with well-documented, interpretiveassessments.”
–Parameters

The VietnamWar remains deep in the nation’s consciousness. It is vital thatwe know exactly what happened there–and who made it happen. Thisbook provides a complete account of American Army ground combatforces–who they were, how they got to the battlefield, and whatthey did there. Year by year, battlefield by battlefield, thenarrative follows the war in extraordinary, gripping detail. Over thecourse of the decade, the changes in fighting and in the combat troopsthemselves are described and documented. The Rise and Fall of anAmerican Army represents the first total battlefield history ofArmy ground forces in the Vietnam War, containing much previouslyunreleased archival material. It re-creates the feel of battle withdramatic precision.

“Stanton’s writing. . . gives the reader a terrifying graphic description of combat inthe many mini-environments of Vietnam.”
–TheNew York Times

“[A] MOVING, IMPORTANTBOOK.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

I was there
Having lived through the time covered in the book, as either a member of the Army or an "Army Brat", this is the truth.My copy has notes for my kids on what it was like to see this happening.This book is honest, truthful and pulls no punches.This is a "must read" if you wish to understand these times.

It has some good points
There is a large cloud over this author because of his conduct. But none the less, I enjoyed this book and think its worth the effort to keep an eye & mind open and read the book. ... Read more

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Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War incorporates new research expands its coverage of the experiences of average soldiers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Overrated!
I was required to read this book as part of a class, and unless you enjoy reading the same information repeated over and over you will not enjoy this book.

Some of the sources are decent reads, but the majority of the book's essays are long and dry.

If you're looking for a book on Vietnam I'd recommend you look some where else. Vietnam An American Ordeal by George Moss wasn't a bad read

Great savings on college textbook!!!
I received the textbook in approximately 10 days and was very happy with my purchase.It saved me alot of money compared to the college bookstore price!

vietnam
this book is such a waste of time, it tells you only the point of view of one's man ego and his denial of america's defeat by the north vietnamese. throughout the whole war,the u.s miltary only rely on body counts for there victory ,hoping the north vietnamese would fear the u.s army and surrender ,but in the end ,they were wrong ,the nva and viet cong were determine to fight to the death.

face it,even though the u.s military won many battles,the united states lost the war and retreated . the whole world is aware of this defeat but only some american citizen like this author denies this.

many of the vc casualty are infact innocent civilians ,that the u.s military has covered up by placing nva /vc uniforms and weapons on dead civilians ,then taking photographic pictures of it.

the united states gain nothing from the war ,with 60,000 + dead u.s soldiers ,thousands m.i.a (s) ,150,000 billion dollars down the drain ,over 100,000 seriously injured soldiers including amputees (missing legs,arms , body parts) ,and handicaps ,torn the country apart during the 60's and 70's ,fail to stop communism,fail to protect south vietnam,fail to stop an army that is 10 time smaller then u.s army,and fail to justified the war in rightious context,basically the united states gave up and retreated.

the north vietnamese suffered high casualty by fighting u.s army,australian army ,arvn army,south korean army,and new zealand all by them self ,but fighting to regain there country for a better vietnam in the future was a well justified reason to die just like anyother civil war (compared this to american civil war casualties).

so one's man ego and his obsession of denial will not change the world's view on why people should think who really won the war,everybody knows whowon this war,and media wasnt wrong at all.

A good, although sometimes boring look at the Vietnam War
This book has a lot of good information in it.Through the essays you gain a deep understanding of some of the events that influenced the course of the war that other books cover only slightly or omit all together.

There are a couple HORRIBLE essays that seem to drag for a long long time.Each chapter concludes with 2 essays that either have differing points of view or cover different aspects of the chapter in more detail.

The blessing of this book is that it has a lot of information that comes directly from the Vietnamese, including some translations of South Vietnamese army members as they consider their defeat and flee Saigon after the North takes it over.

Over all, I like this book.At least one of the essays in the very beginning is bad enough that I almost put the book down and didn't pick it back up, but once you get past that, you are in for a good read!

Lessons learned
As the book title and "a reader" suggests this is a book with tons and tons of essays on the Vietnam War.These essays cover just about everything that was political or social or anything else about the war.It has topics on Kennedy, Johnson, Eisenhower, Nixon, My Lai, The Tet Offensive, discrimination, the domestic homefront, etc.This book provided a great wealth of sources for a research paper that I had to do.However, unless you are really into the Vietnam War, or that era, this book may be a little dry some times.It does provide a lot of good information, such as facts and figures, but it is just a bunch of peoples, the scholars who wrote the essays, opinions; as well as some Vietnam Vets accounts of the war itself, coming home, etc.

I am giving it four out of five because of the dryness that sometimes occurs.Yet, it does remain a really good source for material, if one has to do research or just has general curiosity.Of course, by the end of the book, the reader will begin to see the lessons learned from Vietnam. ... Read more

Product Description
A study of American attempts to come to terms with the legacy of the Vietnam War, this book highlights the central role played by Vietnam veterans in shaping public memory of the war. Tracing the evolution of the image of the Vietnam veteran from alienated dissenter to traumatized victim to noble warrior, Patrick Hagopian describes how efforts to commemorate the war increasingly downplayed the political divisions it spawned in favor of a more unifying emphasis on honoring veterans and promoting national healing.

Veterans themselves contributed to this process by mobilizing in the early 1980s to create a national memorial dedicated to all Americans who fought and died in Southeast Asia. At the same time, President Ronald Reagan, after failing to convince the public that the war was a noble cause, seized upon the idea of healing as a way of reaffirming the value of military service and, by extension, countering the effects of the so-called Vietnam syndrome the widespread fear that any assertive foreign policy initiative might result in another Vietnam. It was with this aim in view, Hagopian reveals, that the Reagan administration worked quietly behind the scenes to ensure that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would be completed, despite strong conservative opposition to Maya Lin s bold design.

Hagopian shows that the same emphasis on healing came into play in the creation of countless other Vietnam War memorials throughout the country. At many of these sites, the focus was on the psychic wounds believed to have been inflicted on returning vets by an ungrateful nation. Thus the dedication of state and local memorials became occasions not only for setting aside opposing views of the war and honoring those who served, but also for the performance of public rituals in which veterans were welcomed home. ... Read more

Product Description

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.

Customer Reviews (1)

Voices From the Vietnam War
This is an essential book for anyone writing non-revisionist history of our most propagandized war. Even the casual reader of military history would add measurably to his knowledge and value to his library. Prof. Li has added well to his list of published works.

Jerry Noel Hoblit, AFC ... Read more

Product Description
Provides a comprehensive look at both sides of the Vietnam War through a collection of personal tales and delves into the political and military events in the United States and elsewhere that originally caused the war and the brought it to an end. Reprint. TV tie-in." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (69)

impressive
It took me several tries to get through this densely packed history of Vietnam up to 1975, but I'm glad I made it the third time around.I was most impressed with Karnow's knowledge of all the major players in the 1954 to 1975 period, and how he was able to interweave these individuals' stories into a comprehensive history of the conflicts in Vietnam after World War II.

I have to agree with another review that I read that critiqued Karnow's book as being more focused on the political rather than the military aspects of US involvement; however, that leads to one of the central messages that I got out of this history - the US and the South Vietnam were ultimately unsuccessful because of the failure of the South to be an effective government to their people. The corruption and lack of focus on the average citizen's needs by the Diem and the Thieu governments led these regimes to failure in the end.

Steamy Historical Event
Stanley Karnow knew Vietnamese history like the back of his hand which also surprised even him with the discovery when he showed-up in the 1980's to do interviews for the book that one of his Vietnamese co-workers back in the 1960's, Colonel Bui Tin, turned-out to be a Viet Minh spy. The historical events was told more or less through the lens of Colonel Bui Tin ending with the Colonel lying flat on his back in a state of exuberance in the backyard of the Presidential Palace in Saigon "Ho Chi Minh City."

The American Civil War...
...at least the one in the 20th Century, was fought over this country, and the ramifications reverberate today. There were those who saw, and those who will never see. Those who lived through that period, and took sides in one camp or the other are unlikely to ever change their minds, even if the motivation took the form of the proverbial lightning bolt on the way to Damascus. And certainly one book is unlikely to do it, as evidenced by some of the other reviews, particularly the 1 and 2-star ones. However, for the "younger generations," those who look back on the ancient events of America's involvement in Vietnam as they might the Peloponnesian Wars, and want to read just one book, this one would be it, the sine qua non of books on Vietnam, covering both the prelude to American involvement, as well as the entire war to the end, in 1975.

Stanley Karnow is a reporter of astonishing erudition. He combines the first-hand knowledge that comes from the "field work," with a scholarly appreciation of the historical forces at work. Like other soldiers who were in the war, I've had my problems with reporters, and what they chose to see and report. Karnow neatly addresses the issue of page 279, when he reports an exchange between Peter Arnett of the Associated Press (and later famous for his coverage from Baghdad of the '91 war) and Admiral Felt. Arnett had asked Felt a hard question after the Battle of Ap Bac, and Felt shot back: "Get on the team."All too many did, buying the line that was peddled at what even they would call "the Five O'clock Follies," the spin the America military would put on the war each day for press consumption. Karnow was one of the courageous ones, along with Neil Sheehan, Jonathan Schell, and others, who would report what they saw. But as he sardonically says of others: "Frequently, though, the magazines distorted the dispatches of their reporters and relied instead on guidance from White House...True to their tradition, "Time" and "Life" stood up for America (p 503). In terms of how people "spun" the facts, Karnow quotes Komer about a situation report that was filed, and Komer corrects to say that he was asked to file a PROGRESS report, and thus all the non-progress had to be edited out. (p 515)

Over half of this almost 700 page book is devoted to events prior to the major American military buildup in 1965. It covers the French involvement, from the 1800's through their colonial demise in 1954. Another excellent book on this era is "River Road to China," which I recently reviewed. The first chapter of the book is aptly entitled, "The War Nobody Won," (like almost all wars.) It updates the 1983 edition to the early `90's. There are so many valid points to highlight, it is hard to select only a few, but one that has always been particularly infuriating to me was the campaign to give the MIA families the false hope that their loved ones might still be alive in Vietnam; all of which was a pretext for maintaining diplomatic non-recognition of the country. It was an effective campaign, and Karnow cites a "Time" magazine survey published in April, 1990 that showed 62 percent of Americans--and 84% of veterans--maintained that the Vietnamese were holding U.S. captives (p 55).Meanwhile, for all this support of imaginary veterans, the very real ones here in the States were all too often denied treatment for conditions caused by military service, such as the devastating effects from Agent Orange.

Like Sheehan, Karnow excoriates McNamara, the master of "can-doism," and famous for his statement: "every quantitative measurement...shows that we are winning the war" (p 271).Yet the qualitative picture "in the field," that was daily rubbed in the face of the G.I's willing to see was so vastly different. Karnow quotes Mark Smith, formerly of the 1st Cav. Division, who was also fascinated by the physical beauty in Binh Dinh province where I served. Karnow says of Binh Dinh: "...the lush green mountains rose from a plain of rice fields divided with such geometrical precision as to suggest that the peasants who had landscaped the scene were natural mathematicians. And then Karnow quotes Smith, who felt intimidated by the "subtle, incomprehensible villages--whole societies right in front of us, yet impenetrable even after we had entered them, never understanding anything or seeing anything understandable, the people staring at us as if we were from Mars." (p 482).

As for those who didn't see, it would be hard to top the statement made by someone who hide in the Texas Air National Guard during the war. During President Bush's "diplomatic" visit to Vietnam, he told the Vietnamese that the "lessons" of the Vietnam War are that if we had stayed long enough, we would have won!As for the "lessons" that one of those who did see, Karnow, said, and it was reported in this month's "Newsweek": When the commanding general of American and Allied forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal asked: "Is there anything we learned in Vietnam that we can apply to Afghanistan?" Karnow's reply was just as simple: "The main thing I learned is that we never should have been there in the first place."

Truly excellent advise for Afghanistan as well. This book is more than a 5-star read, it should be required reading for all American students.

Great History
There is a reason this is considered the best single volume history of the Vietnam War.Karnow, who was a reporter in Vietnam before and during the war, and had also made a number of reporting trips back to Vietnam to interview community leaders, produced a great history of that ultimately tragic war for both Vietnam and the US.Karnow traces US involvement in Vietnam from before the end of the Second World War.Cold War politics drove the US to stay involved in the internal politics of Vietnam.Misguided ideas about the domino theory, or that the fall of one Asian county to communism would lead to the whole continent to succumb, led political leadership of both the Republican and Democratic parties to increase troop levels.The numbers of troops escalated sharply during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

Karnow covers in depth the reaction of US military and political leadership to the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the impact Richard Nixon had on the conflict.Nixon increased the bombing campaign, but also began peace talks (with a shove from the Democratically controlled Congress).

A great read, this is the go to source for those looking for the story of the Vietnam War.I highly recommend this book.

Excellent account of Vietnam
Stanley Karnow is an excellent author who reports the history of Vietnam through multiple perspectives. If you ever had a question about Vietnam, READ THIS BOOK! ... Read more

Product Description
How Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger pursued their public vow to end the Vietnam War and win the peace has long been entangled in bitter controversy and obscured by political spin. Recent declassifications of archival documents, on both sides of the former Iron and Bamboo Curtains, have at last made it possible to uncover the truth behind Nixon's and Kissinger's management of the war and to better understand the policies and strategies of the Vietnamese, Soviets, and Chinese.

Drawing from this treasure trove of formerly secret files, Jeffrey Kimball has excerpted more than 140 print documents and taped White House conversations bearing on Nixon-era strategy. Most of these have never before been published and many provide smoking-gun evidence on such long-standing controversies as the "madman theory" and the "decent-interval" option. They reveal that by 1970 Nixon's and Kissinger's madman and détente strategies had fallen far short of frightening the North Vietnamese into making concessions. By 1971, as Kissinger notes in one key document, the administration had decided to withdraw the remaining U.S. combat troops while creating "a healthy interval for South Vietnam's fate to unfold."

The new evidence uncovers a number of behind-the-scenes ploys--such as Nixon's secret nuclear alert of October 1969--and sheds more light on Nixon's goals in Vietnam and his and Kissinger's strategies of Vietnamization, the "China card," and "triangular diplomacy." The excerpted documents also reveal significant new information about the purposes of the LINEBACKER bombings, Nixon's manipulation of the POW issue, and the conduct of the secret negotiations in Paris--as well as other key topics, events, and issues. All of these are effectively framed by Kimball, whose introductions to each document provide insightful historical context.

Building on the ground-breaking arguments of his earlier prize-winning book, Nixon's Vietnam War, Kimball also offers readers a concise narrative of the evolution of Nixon-era strategy and a critical assessment of historical myths about the war. The story that emerges from both the documents and Kimball's contextual narratives directly contradicts the Nixon-Kissinger version of events. In fact, they did not pursue a consistent strategy from beginning to end and did not win a peace with honor.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Nam policy history
At less than 370 pages, THE VIETNAM WAR FILES / UNCOVERING THE SECRET HISTORY OF NIXON-ERA STRATEGY by Jeffrey Kimball is a small book, compared to the size of the ax which it is attempting to grind on how poorly American policy works in those areas of the world where a quick victory is not in the cards.The longer version of the story, told in NIXON'S VIETNAM WAR (1998) by Jeffrey Kimball attempted to cover the years 1953 to 1973.The events of those years were rather awesome in leading up to the final situation, which is covered in depth in this book, described in the Prologue as carrying the analysis onward "from 1969 to 1975" (p. 3) to show how events conformed to expectations in the way Robert McNamara had expected the odds to be about even already in December, 1965, when considering how the war was going to present even tougher choices down the road.

Those who were most interested in how awful Vietnam turned out as a big step on the road to American hyperpower status will not be surprised that Kimball's epilogue to this book begins with insights on `historical myth' and `mythical tale' from those times before declaring that Nixon's and Kissinger's memoirs "were self-serving, incomplete, and obfuscatory, and they took legal and administrative steps that delayed the release of relevant documentary evidence about their policies, strategies, and motives."(p. 297).There was no good reason to tell Americans that power could make us more hyper than we already had been, but Kimball is good at finding the secrets which show how hyper the drive for American power has become.

I like books which make secret policies a major quest in the historical area, and this one laments the fact that not much has been found yet about Cambodia.History is such a dynamic pursuit, with odd quirks popping out from weird angles, that I doubt any adequate explanation of that bit of secret policy will ever be forthcoming.People who thought that Americans needed to fight in Nam so San Francisco would be safe see that argument fail when it is applied to Cambodia, South Vietnam's only neighbor south of Laos, where a peaceful situation prior to 1970 rapidly turned into a victory for enemies of civilization in any form advanced enough to unleash a massive bombing campaign, as a demonstration of hyperpower capabilities when bombs were dropping like the cards in a game of 52 pick up.

This book is most game-like in its use of card terminology for the Nixon strategy, which even carries over to "Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders had coincidentally decided that it was time to rejoin the world of nations, play the American card against the Soviet Union, and, especially, use the opportunity to get U.S. forces out of Taiwan."(p. 299).That might seem like a bit much for the Chinese to hope for, but a tape on Nam reveals Nixon saying, "Oh, I don't mean to tell, tell Thieu we're getting out in the fall.But it's moot, because we are without question gonna get out . . ."(p. 168).That was from Oval Office Conversation no. 527-16, Nixon, Haldeman, Kissinger, and John Ehrlichman, 9:14-10:12 a.m., June 23, 1971, in which Kissinger said, "Now, our cards, starting now, our cards are going to start falling."(p. 167).Three weeks before, a press conference brought up antiwar sentiment `that American intervention was immoral' (p. 160) and a tape of the following morning, June 2, 1971, reveals that Nixon was "very agitated during the conversation.Pounding his desk at one point, he vowed, . . .He would use his `card' of massive bombing."(p. 161).Since American troops were there, "it is certainly immoral to send Americans abroad and not back them up with American power!"(p. 162).Nixon might be a bit unclear about what actually happened after the French left North Vietnam, but he was worried about allowing "the bloodbath in South Vietnam that they had in North Vietnam where 50,000 of our good Catholic [unclear] of Danang [a city shown on the map facing page 1 along the coast southeast of Quang Tri and Hue in South Vietnam] were murdered, 500,000 were starved to death in slave-labor camps [pounding his desk]."(p. 162).In the next page of the transcript, it is a footnote that describes "Nixon is shouting and pounding his desk, while Kissinger is trying to speak."(p. 163).Like Khrushchev taking off his shoe to pound on a desk at the United Nations, hyperpowers believe in their ability to emphasize what they say when considering options like "We're gonna take out the dikes, we're gonna take out the power plants, we're gonna take out Haiphong, we're gonna level that goddamn country!"(p. 163).

Sometimes it is difficult to make sense of the conversations contained in pages 127-294, from Le Duc Tho's observation "It will take an unlimited time.We don't know when, or whether, it will be done.If it does not work, you will have the choice to remain in Vietnam or leave."(February 21, 1970, p. 129) to "It is a tragic situation.I am deeply troubled by what has happened . . ." (a proposed response on April 3, 1975, p. 294).Nam was unique in being a country in which the United States found itself opposing an established government with a lot of half measures which Nixon didn't want to limit himself to:

KISSINGER:Mr. President, if you had been in office '66, '67--

NIXON:--The war would be over--

KISSINGER:the war would be over, and, and, they'd be fewer casualties--
(p. 162).In '67, even General Westmoreland thought we were winning, but he was never sure the war was over.As far as policy goes, Nam is like an intelligence test that never quits for people looking for vicious evidence of American cruelty.Even Osama knows about Nam.

New evidence
Kimball's Vietnam War Files is a followup book to his award-winning Nixon's Vietnam War (1998).Both books break new ground on the history of the Nixon-Kissinger phase of the Vietnam War inasmuch as they both draw on a treasure trove of declassified documents from both sides of the conflict, clarify controversies about Nixon-Kissinger strategy, and reveal new information about the Nixon administration's handling of the war and about Communist Vietnamese strategy.The Vietnam War Files is briefer than Nixon's Vietnam War, but it includes numerous additional documents that were declassified between 1998 and 2004.Many of these documents consist of Kimball's own transcriptions of conversations between Nixon and Kissinger in the Oval Office about key strategies and decisions.There is new information about Nixon's highly secret nuclear alert of 1969, the Madman Theory, détente with the Soviet Union, the opening to China, and many other issues, including the Nixon-Kissinger decent-interval exit strategy.All of the documents in The Vietnam War Files make fascinating reading.More importantly, they demonstrate how solid, smoking-gun evidence (here reproduced in the form of substantial excerpts from paper files and transcribed conversations) can help readers break through the long-standing, politically charged debate about Nixon, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War.This was one of Kimball's purposes in writing the book: to substitute good evidence and sound logic for biased argument.The Vietnam War Files is Kimball's third book about Vietnam.His past writings have also included articles and essays about war and diplomacy.He has also interviewed some of the key policymakers on both sides of the war.

Original thesis!
Much of this book is predicated on the newly released Nixon tapes; thus, it offers many new insights.However, on page 20,the author implies that the first draft lottery was held in 1971.The first draft lottery was held Dec. 1, 1969 and took effect in Jan. 1970. ... Read more

Product Description

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.