Product Description
In this book James Westheider explores the social and professional paradoxes facing African-American soldiers in Vietnam.Service in the military started as a demonstration of the merits of integration as blacks competed with whites on a near equal basis for the first time.Yet as the war in Vietnam progressed, many black recruits felt isolated and threatened in an institution controlled almost totally by whites.Consequently, many blacks no longer viewed the military as a professional opportunity, but an undue burden on the black community. ... Read more

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Weaving together the histories of three distinct conflicts, Phillip B. Davidson follows the entire course of the Vietnam War, from the initial French skirmishes in 1946 to the dramatic fall of Saigon nearly thirty years later.His connecting thread is North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, a remarkable figure who, with no formal military training, fashioned a rag-tag militia into one of the world's largest and most formidable armies.By focusing on Giap's role throughout the war, and by making available for the first time a wealth of recently declassified North Vietnamese documents, Davidson offers unprecedented insight into Hanoi's military strategies, an insight surpassed only by his inside knowledge of American operations and planning.

Eminently qualified to write this history, Davidson--who served as chief intelligence officer under Generals Westmoreland and Abrams--tells firsthand the story of our tragic ordeal in Indochina and brings his unique understanding to bear on topics of continuing controversy, offering a chilling account, for example, of when and where the U.S. considered using nuclear weapons.The most comprehensive and authoritative history of the conflict to date, Vietnam at War sparkles with a rare immediacy, and brings to life in compelling fashion the war that tore America apart.We witness the chaos in Saigon when fireworks celebrating the Tet holiday are suddenly transformed into deadly rocket and machine-gun fire.We sit in on high-level meetings where General Westmoreland plans operations, or simply engages in some tough "headknocking" with subordinates.And in the end we learn that even the seemingly limitless resources of the U.S. military could not match the revolutionary "grand strategy" of the North Vietnamese.

With its easy movement from intimate memoir to trenchant military analysis, from the conference rooms of generals to the battle-scarred streets of Hue, this is military history at its most gripping.A monumental, engrossing, and unforgettable chronicle, Vietnam at War is indispensable for anyone hoping to understand a conflict that still rages in the American psyche. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Military Insider's Perspective
This war was doomed from the beginning. Donaldson takes us back to the period before WW II when France tried to colonize and rule a farflung oriental possession. The Chinese failed, then the French, then the Japanese, then the French again, and finally the US.
I've read this book twice. Once from a historian's perspective, and the second time from a military leader's perspective.Davidson is not a historian, but he is a knowledgable military leader who saw the war from inside, close up and from the perspectives of the civilian leadership decisionmaking (or lack thereof). Make no mistake, as you can imagine as a military leader, he comes down hard on the civilian leadership during the war, and rightfully so.As he said in the book, we needed a leader as president during that time and a president who would talk to the American people about the war and what was going on. We got neither. Both Johnson and later Nixon were probably the worst at keeping us informed on decisions and the course of the war.Instead we got slanted views from the media and were led to distrust what was coming from our military leadership during that time.We won the war militarily, no doubt, especially from 1965-1969. The US armed forces were superb on the battlefield. However, we lost the war in the court of public opinion and on the evening news through biased reporting and overemphasis on "body counts".
Donaldson's descriptions and examples of such key battles or operations as Tet, Rolling Thunder, and Khe Sanh from the American involvement, and Dien Bien Phu and other French debacles are poignant and accurate. We tried to defend a land and people who had never had to stand up for themselves. We have paid for it ever since. We will do it again somewhere else. Read this book with Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam a History" for a combined perspective on military aspects and a historians view.

The Professional Soldier's View
General Davidson had the inside track on the Vietnam War, at least from the American side, and for the American portion of the war.As he rightly notes, the war was a Vietnamese war, first against the French (with some Vietnamese fighting with the French), then against the Americans (with many Vietnamese fighting with the Americans, including the majority in the South), and finally a purely fratricidal war with the stalwart Soviets and Chinese Communists backing the North while the feckless Americans backed (and ultimately failed to back) the South.

No one was in a better position to understand the American piece of the 30-year war than General Davidson. The primary value of this history is seeing the story through the eyes of a central participant. Davidson researched the French part of the war, and he kept up with the final struggle between the two Vietnams through American reporting and, later, through selected documents obtained from North Vietnamese sources.The core of the book, and the best part, is the central American war that Davidson participated in.Davidson properly thought it important to add the two other parts to present a full history of the Vietnamese struggle.

One could question whether or not General Giap deserved the heightened status that Davidson accords him.Davidson needed some way to tie all the pieces together, and he lit upon Giap as a qualified foil. He was qualified, but probably not the best qualified. There were a number of other Vietnamese, both North and South, who might have been chosen as well.Certainly Ho Chi Minh was the driving force in the North.The problem with picking him was that he died well before the war ended (while Giap survived the war). In the South there was the dominant figure of Ngo Dinh Diem, the one patriot who might have carried off the defense of the South against Ho Chi Minh's aggressive ambitions, but who was, of course, taken out by the blind machinations of Averill Harriman and Henry Cabot Lodge.Other candidates for the central role in the South were ultimately vanquished by the North, and thus disqualified by being absent at the finish.Still, the two striking figures were Ho Chi Minh in the North and Ngo Dinh Diem in the South, although neither lived to see the end of the war.

Davidson's book is superior to any other history written by the time he wrote his book.Subsequent historians, with access to larger documentation and historical pools of information, may well achieve a more definitive historical grasp.And, indeed, Davidson does not seek to put the war into any larger historical context.But all subsequent historians will draw on the special first-hand knowledge, and sense of the war, that Davidson employs in this essential work.

Davidson makes a lousy historian
I am truly hating this book.I am still slogging through it as I have a genuine desire to understand the Vietnam conflict in detail.When I see coverage of the vietnam war in the media - be it films, or documentaries, I want to know how they relate to the big picture and understand both sides of the struggle.However, this book is so painful I really dont know if I will make it to the end.

The main problem is that Davidson has some major faults as a historian.First, as a previous reviewer mentioned, he definitely glosses over a lot.This is obvious to anyone reading the book who will immediately notice how vacous some descriptions are.Some of the accounts just dont feel full fleshed enough and it is from such a high level you are not drawn into the description.

Next, I was incredibly annoyed by his style.He seems to make some base assumptions about the readers knowledge of the war, and as such he makes comentary about decisions which recks any anticipation.For example, in a truly gripping historical account which makes the reader interested in the topic and rams facts into your head, you detail a political decision.You then show the reader how this grows into a real world action or series of actions.Then you critique the decision as an interesting summarization point of view.This book however, is plagued with examples of jumping the gun, where Davidson will detail some decision or political action, put in some personal critique explaining why this will be a terrible decision, then documents in dry detail (and sometimes not even too much detail) what happened.Of course you know what is going to happen already as he has thrashed it out in agonizing detail from a political / intelligence officer viewpoint already.

The end effect of all this is that the book is hopelessly and awfully boring.My personal view is that historical accounts have a duty to educate the reader by being interesting enough that the facts stick.This is fluffy enough that it couldn't be used as a referrence book, and terrible enough that I beg everyone out there to stick well clear of it.

A Whitewashed General History of the Vietnam War
Lieutenant General Davidson (ret.) does a great job summarizing and analyzing the French war in IndoChina from 1946-1954, but fails miserably with the US campaign of 1965-1967 of which he was a part (as USMACV J-2, senior US intelligence officer in Vietnam).The author is a major apologist for General Westmoreland.Also, too much of the book centers on Washington politics rather than operational matters (which is a shame, he could have shed much light on the intelligence picture in the crucial 1967-8 campaigns).Davidson ignores the crucial Battle of Ap Bac in 1963, the Son Tay Raid, My Lai massacre and the participation of allies (ROK, Australia).The Crucial Tet campaign is glossed over - he never mentions the bloody Battle for Hue.The author is far too political and seems intent to present a white-washed "history".Maps are somewhat crude but plentiful and accurate.

A detailed analysis of the war(s) in Vietnam
The book opens with an in-depth description of the little known historical figure who directed the Vietnam wars for 30 years--North Vietnamese Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap.In Giap's background and personality we first seethe seeds of determination that led ultimately to the defeat of three majorarmies: the French, the Americans, and the Army of South Vietnam.

Thewars are presented from a factual, and thoroughly researched, perspective. Davidson analyses both sides of each major strategy, and each key battle. A reader wanting to know what really took place in the Vietnam wars (oursand theirs), from a military perspective, will find the answers here.Andthe answers are sometimes surprising when compared to the newspaper andtelevison accounts which were published at that time. ... Read more

Product Description

"This book has been long needed: a concise, complete and dispassionate survey of the Vietnam War.... Best of all, the no-nonsense approach answers questions as soon as they arise in the reader's mind." -- Kliatt

"If there is such a thing as an objective account [of the Vietnam War], this is it.... If you want to read one book about Vietnam, read this one." -- New York Review of Books

A short, narrative history of the origins, course, and outcome of America's military involvement in Vietnam by an experienced guide to the causes and conduct of war, Larry H. Addington. He begins with a history of Vietnam before and after French occupation, the Cold War origins of American involvement, the domestic impact of American policies on public support, and the reasons for the ultimate failure of U.S. policy.

Customer Reviews (4)

Mixed Response
The first word in this book is "Vietnam," and the last two words are "folly there."That sums up the author's view of American involvement in Vietnam.

I appreciated the brevity of the book; I finished it in only two evenings.The author explains clearly the military problems the US faced there, how they found themselves caught up in a war they couldn't win, at least in a way acceptable to world opinion, but also a war they couldn't disengage from without endangering the South Vietnamese they'd vowed to help.The book could have used more maps and at least some photos.

The author portrays the North Vietnamese in a favorable light, with Ho Chi Minh coming off as almost a hero; the chief culprits are America's policy makers and presidents, particularly Johnson, who were driven by anti-communist paranoia.This is the part that left me puzzled.The US government is certainly a flawed instrument, but I find it hard to believe the North Vietnamese communists were as benign as this book makes them out to be.There was a reason why America was so opposed to communism then, but this book doesn't address it.

So this book was useful for a quick read on the military operations in Vietnam, but less so in addressing (even in brief) the larger issues of US involvement there.

Not exactly what I was looking for
The book provides are very thorough accout aobut the tactics employed during the war and the battles that resulted.The level of detail is tremendous and the book is well written.However, I was hoping for a more thorough examination of the sociological effects of the war, particularly here in the US.Maybe there is another book that I can read for this.

A Great Summary
It is a rare book that can effectively summarize a long war and a longer historical process in a short space, yet this book does so with gem-like clarity. It is also extraordinarily evenhanded--a great accomplishmentgiven the depth of feeling surrounding the war. The text weaves variousperspectives into the narrative so well that I always felt unimpeded bybias and appreciative of its broad objectivity. The author keeps the largerfocus on the main political and military issues which shaped the war yetalways includes enough detail to give a strong sense of what was takingplace both in policy circles and on the ground.The author has clearymastered a great deal of material and keeps to the facts, yet through it Iwas deeply moved. I think there is a subtle tone to the book of compassionfor human tragedy that makes it not just highly readable but important toall of us who struggle to understand human events, and particularly thiswar.

The Whole Story--Complete and Concise
I was young while the vietnam war was taking place. I've always wanted to learn more about it. This book tells precisely everything that went on very concisely. It also tells what went on in America during that time andyou're able to get the whole picture. I wish that I would have read this along time ago and I now know what other areas to look into for futurereference. My family and I went to view "The Moving Wall"(Vietnam Memorial Duplicate) and I was fortunate and very honored to beable to discuss some situations with Vietnam Vets that were there. It was agreat experience and those that I spoke with were impressed with what Iknew! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (20)

Honor Bound
A beautifully written, strong story - these men were/are heroes, and their sacrifices should not be forgotten.This book should be required reading for all schools.

A gripping history
While as comprehensive and extraordinarily detailed as a college text, and as fully annotated, this is a great example of a 'popular' history at the top of its game. The enormous amount of (often grueling) material is nicely organized across time, place, and category, the many significant characters are well-delineated, and there is a sense of narrative flow and pretty steady momentum to this highly readable book.

must read
This is a excellent, outstanding and informative book, that every patriotic american should read. These men are real American Heroes, I needn"t say more.

This book defines Honor.
Definitely one of the best books I every read.It's amazing what a man will do for honor, to protect the life and dignity of another, at his own peril. There are scores of examples of this in this book. On the down side, what men bent on tyranny and oppression will do to break the will of another. However, light truly shines through darkness. If you think you have it rough, read this book.

Ultimate Book on Vietnam POW's
This is a lengthy but well written book. If you are looking for an excellent history of the POW's from the Vietnam war, this is the one to get. If you are interested in history or the human aspects of the Vietnam POW's this would be very valuable. I have read a number of books on POW's and this is by far the best of the lot. ... Read more

Product Description
A nonstop maelstrom of combat action, leaving the reader nearly breathless by the end. The human courage and carnage described in these pages resonates through the centuries, from Borodino to the Bulge, but the focus here is on the Vietnam War, and a unique unit formed to take part at its height.

Customer Reviews (12)

Couldn't put it down
Bought this book for the Kindle E-reader. Honestly, I couldn't put it down.Once I started reading it, every spare minute I got I would read a few more pages until I finished it.

Being too young to be drafted for the war, this book really gave me a whole new appreciation for those men and women who served our country in the Vietnam War.When I see those car bumper stickers that say "Vietnam Vet", this books makes me want to get out of my car at a stop light and go and thank that vet sitting in the car in front of me.

This is a must read for everyone who is under fifty years old.

Vietnam from an Career Officer's Point of View
This is a good account of the Tet Offensive in III Corps written from a career officer's standpoint.The grunts are viewed as loyal tools for the officers who long for battle but circle overhead in a command and control heliocopter while the grunts are chopped up in the battle below.It gives a good critique of the officers involved and their readiness for battle and does not pull punches on the incompetency of a fellow officer.The attitude of the EM is probably as an officer saw it but not the men would have portrayed themselves if given a choice at the time of the action.It is a good read and should be of interest to those who had the misfortune of visiting Vietnam during those times as well as to those who did not.

"All gave some, some gave all."
Robert Tonsetic's gripping account of combat in the 199th L.I.B. circa 1967-68, "Days of Valor," was hard to put down. Tonsetic's writing style makes you feel like you are watching the action unfold; having personally traversed some of the same real estate during that time frame helped bring the accounts into even sharper focus. That being said, I wished Tonsetic had included some sketch maps of the various actions to help orient the reader, especially when it comes to the disposition of the units involved, both friendly and enemy.There were also a couple of minor errors that I did pick out, but they are just that, i.e., nit noids. First, the map on page 148, "Saigon Targets of Tet Attacks," has the Newport Bridge in the wrong location; the map shows it connecting Saigon with Highway 1, when in fact the Newport Bridge actually crossed the Saigon River where his map shows "Highway 316;" this road was actually referred to as Highway 1A on US maps at the time. Highway 1A was the main thoroughfare connecting the Newport Docks with the huge Long Binh base, approximately 20 miles north.The other minor point is on page 262 where the author states: "The 199th's colors were furled, cased and placed in storage . . ."While this is an accurate statement, it does not tell the whole story; he should have mentioned that the 199th was later reactivated at Ft. Lewis, Washington in 1991 as the 199th Infantry Brigade (Motorized). As the brigade chief of staff, I had the honor and privilege of wearing the Redcacther patch from December, 1991 until July, 1992 when we were reflagged as the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment (Light). A minor point, but one that helps fill in the picture of this proud unit and the brave soldiers who served in it, and especially to the memories of those who gave all.

Great Book!Great Service.
The service from the bookstore was FAST!The book arrived in excellant condition and it was almost new.Thank You.

Days Of Valor
This is one of the finest books of the Vietnam War. It focuses on a six month window of heavy Infantry combat involving the 199th Light Infantry (Seperate) Brigade. The Tet Offensive was a decisive period of the war. Col. Tonsetic painstakingly weaves personal stories of Infantryman throughout the whole book. His book uses mulitple soldiers, eye witness accounts, of enemy contact. It gives the reader a whole picture of how each event unfolded as seen by mulitple participants. Col. Tonsetic has amassed a verifiable masterpiece of Infantry combat. It's a true story of American soldiers who performed their extreme duties under very difficult circumstances. If you want to read a book about Vietnam that is absent of the political spin about the war, this is the book. It is a must read and valued addition to American military history.
... Read more

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This complete history of the Vietnam War, as documented in essays by leading experts and in original source material, presents selections from the documented record, dispels distortions, and illuminates in depth both sides of the history of America's encounter with Vietnam. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A valuable resource for the persistent reader
The collection of essays and official documents comprising this Vietnam history book can be quite a challenge to negotiate, perhaps even for the most serious Vietnam War readers.Personally, I recall reading this book during my (horrible) recovery from having my wisdom teeth removed, which provided the very ironic context for my pushing through the numerous essays, government documents, and accounts presented by the editors.For me, being someone who reads Vietnam War history as a hobby, it was one of those books that I knew was highly valuable while I was reading it, yet this type of enjoyment was often not accompanied by the "can't put it down" type of reading experience.
Overall, however, I would say that the richness, diversity, and balance of the material serves to compensate for any deficiencies the book might have in the excitement and engrossment arena.I often find myself referring back to the book while reading other Vietnam works.I would therefore recommend this book, but with the strong caveat that it should only be taken on if one is prepared to move through the heavy, sometimes even "boring" material in order to reap the substantial benefits yielded by this effort.

A meaty political review of the Vietnam conflict.
Full of primary source materical, Vietnam in America provides an amazingamount of information on the events leading up to and the involvement ofthe United States in the Vietnam War.Whether its abstracts from Ho ChiMinh or CIA incursion force leaders, this book contains a great deal ofdata not to be found in other like works.A tough reader, this book is notsuggested for casual reading and should be used for the diehard historybuff or for research material. ... Read more

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A Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year Selection
A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller

An epic narrative that chronicles the experience of America’s Vietnam veterans. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Subjectively skewed work on a marginal organization
In histories of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement, there is a clear, some would argue glaring demarcation between those who wish the antiwar movement was better than it was, and those who provide objective history. If one did not know where Gerald Nicosia stood on these matters, "Home to War" should remove any doubts: it is a decidedly subjective and inaccurate portrayal of VVAW's role in the antiwar movement.
The subjectivity of Nicosia can be readily ascertained by reviewing his treatment of Mark Lane's book "Conversations with Americans" starting on page 79. Lane was an attorney who enjoyed a rather close relationship with Jane Fonda who kept Lane in a leadership role in the Winter Soldier Investigation that she funded.Nicosia states that Neil Sheehan questioned Lane about his book and asked why he (Lane) did not cross check any of his interviewees' stories. Further down in the same paragraph, "As the War crimes heated up, Lane doubtless knew that his book would be challenged to it's authenticity and accuracy; so it was in his interest both literary and commercial, to have a group of veterans corroborate his stories". The implication being that Lane's work wasn't flawed but simply lacked cross checking.
This isn't quite what happened. Neil Sheehan, a New York Times Reporter and clearly antiwar in his views was asked to prepare a review of Lane's book for the "New York Time Book Review". Sheehan would soon break the Pentagon Papers story and win a Pulitzer Prize for later work.
Sheehan published his review of Lane's book on December 27, 1970 and he hammered both Lane and the publisher Simon and Schuster.
In case after case, Sheehan found the witnesses story were fabricated and that Lane hadn't bothered to cross check the facts.
One witness told Lane his father was an ex-Nazi tank commander and now commanding U.S. Troops in Vietnam. That Lane could simply accept that a Nazi Tank Commander was now in the US Army is scary. When the names were checked by Sheehan, the officer simply did not exist.
Tracking down the commanding officer of another witness, Sheehen discovered the witness wasn't anywhere near where he said he was.
Another witness a medic, refused orders into a combat area twice, then admitted to stealing morphine and committing a homosexual act resulting in a court martial and undesirable discharge. Lane accepted the man's claims to have been in combat and a witness to all kinds of atrocities without bothering to check.
Another GI who told Lane of atrocities went AWOL, was captured and then discovered to be wanted for a murder in Denver. He was then committed to a hospital for the criminally insane. And he had never been in Vietnam.
The publisher Simon and Shuster was embarrassed by their lack of due diligence and admitted they had failed to follow up on Lane's research.
Sheehan was upset as he believed that atrocities probably were being committed and that Lane's book did more harm than good. In short, Lane's book was thoroughly debunked. Hardly the impression one would get in reading Nicosia's account. But then Nicosia is trying to validate VVAWs Winter Soldier Investigations and Lane's work was an integral part of the build up to this investigation. Nicosia's treatment fails to debunk Lane's work which casts some serious doubts on Nicosia's work.
As to VVAW, there were 9.6 million GIs who served during the Vietnam War.VVAW had no more than 8,000 members and not all were even military. No VVAW protest ever garnered more then about 2,000 Vets and from experience, we know not all the vets were in fact vets. Hardly the voice of Vietnam Vets.

Home From The War
I started reading this book and in the first thirty minutes I had to stop.When a book starts off about Bush's spotty military career and Kerry's glorious heroism it makes me wonder if there is an agenda (I'm sure Kerry throwing his medals over the fence did a lot of justice for many Vietnam Vets#.The author goes on to talk to the parallels of the Iraq War and Vietnam and I got to say it started to sound like a load of crap.As a Marine that has deployed to Iraq three times and Afghanistan once it's not the war that is killing our morale it is the fact that we have mindless drones that voted to go to war and then all of a sudden have a change of heart (how come we elect and pay someone that doesn't have the courage to speak up but would rather go with the flow and cry later that they didn't know what was going on# that talk of how the military has failed this war.The only reason why men and women in the Iraq War may not be as bad off as the Vietnam Vets is because there are a large number of people, whether they are for or against the war, knows what a great job the men and women are doing.We aren't being spit at or being called baby killers by the likes of Jane Fonda and Sean Penn #YET).
If you are a liberal and want to enrage your hate for Bush this is your book however if you are in the military and understand the ways of the world then don't waste your money.

Useful history of the Veteran's Movement
This book offers a comprehensive view of the veterans movement, giving very detailed accounts of the forces that helped swing public opinion, force acceptance of PTSD, and began the investigation into the effects of agent orange.While some of the events are detailed far beyond their impact, this book presents a human face on the leaders of the movement.

Engrossing book despite some notable flaws
Nicosia provides a history of the Vietnam war veterans movements, particularly those concerned with ending the War. The reviewer who was surprised by the "leftward" tilt either didn't read the book cover, any of the published reviews or the book, itself.

The book has several significant flaws, which I'll get out of the way first. Like seemingly most contemporary nonfiction, it could have used assertive editing. The chronology of events in the book gets confusing particularly during the last third of the book, where one lurches back and forth in time and it's easy to lose track of where various people fit and how their actions are linked across time. A better organized text probably could have been a bit shorter. Another significant problem is that Nicosia's funding by the Vietnam Veterans of America is buried in the acknowledgments, although he appears to freely criticize the actions of that organization and its past leadership. Finally, Nicosia relies on secondary sources for his data on medical, social and psychiatric problems among Vietnam era veterans and it is unclear whether his interviews with relevant people like psychiatrist Arthur Blank would have helped in interpreting these data. As it is, correlation seems to get confused with causation and some of the data simply seem inconsistent or include studies which were well known to be "outliers". It's been said that journalists don't like numbers, unfortunately, concepts simple enough to teach in an introductory social science course seem to get by them.

Although I was too young to serve in Vietnam, I knew many who did, including some who died there. Some of them (including the dead) opposed the war but went into the military, anyway, for a variety of reasons. In my later life, I knew people who had been active in the antiwar movement. I also briefly worked in the VA system and with Vietnam vets in the Department of Defense, and later went to Vietnam as a tourist and as a consultant (under the supervision of a US Army veteran of the Vietnam War). As it happens, I've also crossed paths with a couple minor figures in the book, who played significant roles in the veterans peace movement (although I hadn't known about that part of their lives). So, despite my age and lack of service, the book deals with a world that is very real to me. I can recall the skepticism of claims about PTSD by VA clinicans (ditto the skepticism about Gulf War syndrome) and can easily identify with many of the controversies here. Despite my own work, my visits to Vietnam and my extensive past reading on the subject, I was moved anew by the stories of returning vets, what they had seen in Vietnam, and what they experienced in the US.

On a less personal and more journalistic/historical level, the book vividly describes the political schisms in the antiwar movement: veteran-related and otherwise. Despite Nicosia's obvious passsions, he recognizes shortcomings and destructive actions of many in the movement. For those of us who recall the stereotype of the "crazed" Vietnam Vet, he vividly describes how this evolved from slow emergence of PTSD and the various public faces of stressed and strung out veterans, as well as the grassroots efforts to address Veterans' needs. Nicosia also describes the courage and tenacity of veterans who worked tirelssly as advocates and as service providers to their peers. He points out the legislative contributions of Vietnam Vets such as Tom Daschle and John Kerry as well as the showboating of supposed friends of veterans such as Alan Cranston and Sonny Montgomery. There are poignant parallels to our own time as Nixon cut veteran's benefits to help pay for the war. Nicosia chronicles the tensions with traditional veterans' organizations and the ways in which organizations dominated by WWII and Korean War veterans fought against efforts to address Vietnam War veterans' needs, in part to protect their own entitlements. He also describes how veterans of the different wars began to come together over time and how one-time protesters like Kerry built bridges to more conservative politicans for the benefit of Vietnam vets. The book, thankfully, does not get bogged down in subjects that have been extensively treated elsewhere like Watergate's Vietnam-related events (e.g., the Ellsberg burglary) and the drama surrounding the Vietnam War memorial. OTOH, people unfamiliar with SDS, Another Mother for Peace (an organization where tv mom and ex-Republican Donna Reed, played a role) the Weathermen, etc. would benefit from a little more description of these organizations. One activist who plays an interesting role here is Jane Fonda, who seemed to take a genuine interest in the veterans concerns. Perhaps it was a penance for her reign as "Hanoi Jane" or maybe something else. I hadn't been aware of that side of her and the book contains enough little surprises like this to interest even the well read reader and overcome the shortcomings of the book.

At Times We VeteransWere OurOwn Worst Enemy
Well researched and documented book regarding the struggles and victories, mostly minor very few major,experienced by Viet Nam Veterans as they returned and attempted assimilation into the greater society. Describes in detail the politics that confronted them, the sham that was or may still be the Veterans Administration and other government agencies who all seemed to be operating in denial during the era.Must reading for all Viet Nam Era Veterans to understand and gain an appreciation for those who continued to fight for uson the home front not only to end the war but to be properly compensated by a government and politicians who would not accept responsibility for their actions of sending us to war. ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

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The war in Indochina as seen by those who fought on both sides.

This latest addition to The New Press's People's History series offers an incisive account of the war America lost, from the perspective of those who opposed it on both sides of the battlefront as well as on the homefront.

The protagonists in Neale's history of the "American War" (as the Vietnamese refer to it) are common people struggling to shape the outcome of events unfolding on an international stage —American foot soldiers who increasingly opposed American military policy on the ground in Vietnam, local Vietnamese activists and guerrillas fighting to build a just society, and the American civilians who mobilized to bring the war to a halt.

His narrative includes vivid, first-person commentary from the ordinary men and women whose collective actions resulted in the defeat of the world's most powerful military machine. 11 black-and-white photographs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Important Reading
"A People's History of the Vietnam War" is important reading because it provides a new perspective on why the war happened and what we should learn from it.Probably many people still want to forget that war.Schools seem to give little time to discussing it and trying to learn from it.This book should be in all libraries and it should be required reading.Even if you do not agree with lthe analysis Jonathan Neale makes, it is important to read the book and seriously think about his analysis.Let us not treat the war in Viet Nam with too much simplicity because simple answers leads to poor conclusions and that means often repeating the same mistakes that leads to more loss of life.Read the book and consider carefully what Neale is saying.

Max Ediger, author Friendships of Gold

When you thought nothing more could be said...
This book is part of the "People's History" series, conceived of by Howard Zinn. The most famous and well-read in the series is the one on the United States, and it is a shame that this one has not been more widely read, since, as Faulkner famously said, "The past is not dead; it is not even the past," and a significant aspect of this book is to relate the actions and events surrounding this war to contemporary ones. The "People's History" series is the antithesis of the "Big Man" theory of history, which attributes historical outcomes to a few; instead, it looks at how history is shaped by the broad actions of the many. Views of the Vietnam War are still a highly polarizing aspect of American society, hence the dispersion in the voting at Amazon, between the one and the five stars. The power elites in America can take some comfort in the fact that whenever someone wants to address the concentration in power and decision making, there are people willing to denounce the attempt as a "Trotskyite account." Communism may very much be dead, as it should be, but class divisions in American society have only grown.

I spent a year in Vietnam, in the field, September '68 to August '69, as a Medic, in a tank unit with the 4th Infantry Division. Since then I have read some 50 books on the war. No one book tells the whole story, for sure, and I've always admired the accounts of both Sheehan and Karnow, and certainly Greene's prescient "The Quiet American." Neale's account is in the same category: an essential read, and a prime reason is some of the unique aspects of the account.

Neale allocates an entire chapter to one of the "under covered" aspects of the war, entitled "The G.I.'s Revolt." It conforms largely to what I witnessed: a unit going from gung-ho to quiet mutiny within a year. Neale starts with Ron Kovic, who wrote "Born on the 4th of July," and who went from gung-ho to a wheelchair, from which he became one of the leaders of the veteran's anti-war movement.Neale wisely defuses the "Trotskyite rant" charge by quoting an article written in the "Armed Forces Journal" in June, 1971 by Colonel Robert Heinl, a Marine Corps historian, who compared the morale of American troops with those of the Nivelle Mutinies in the French army during World War I, and the disintegration of the Russian Army in the same war (as graphically depicted in the movie, Dr. Zhivago).

To the best of my knowledge his book is the only one to debunk one of the perennial"urban myths" spawned by the "spin doctors" of the war, that veterans were `spit on' by anti-war demonstrators when they returned home, and points to the movie "Coming Home" as a prime source, based on the work of Jerry Lembcke. He also looks at the other Hollywood fare which promoted the image of a "troubled Vietnam War veteran," the polite phrase for a psychotic. Another haunting aspect which he recalls, a quintessential searing image of the war, is the "improvements" made to napalm, first by adding polystyrene (so it would stick to the skin), and then the addition of "Willie Pete," (white phosphorous).

Overall though, it is a history of the war, starting with the French denouement, and he repeats aspects that are reported in other books, for example, the oft-quoted statement by Dwight D. Eisenhower that if elections were held, 80% of the Vietnamese would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. Thus elections had to be avoided, which they were, diminishing our purported advocacy of democracy. War deaths are placed at three million, and 20% of the G.I. war deaths are the result of "friendly fire." He quotes Halberstam on how a marine colonel spoofed McNamara, then the Secretary of Defense, with a routine involving "hard" numbers and percentages that was so comical that Jack Raymond, a NYT reported started laughing and had to leave, but McNamara bought the whole thing, highly praising the colonel.
(p 89)

He also covers the war in Cambodia, starting with the murderous B-52 bombings which almost certainly gave rise to one of the cruelest and most fanatical regimes of all time, the rule by the Khmer Rouge. Less we forget, Neale reminds us that the US allied itself with China for numerous years, promoting this government as the "legitimate rulers" of Cambodia so as to punish the Vietnamese for winning the war.

He brings the legacy of the Vietnam War forward through America's more recent wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq. An egregious mistake is made here, when he attributes the motivation behind the attacks of 9-11 to the "political situation in their own countries," and says: "Saudi Arabia... is one of the most brutal and reactionary dictatorships on earth."Ironic for someone trying to debunk so many of the myths of the Vietnam War that he is so willing to swallow the current "party line" by the promoters of the war on terror. Saudi Arabia is no Khmer Rouge, and even dictatorship does not apply to velvet-gloved authoritarianism.

But when he sticks to his main subject, he has provided a valuable 5-star contribution to our understanding of that tragic mistake.

Vietnam War from a Class struggle point of view
Very interesting analysis of the class struggles both in Vietnam and the US, that as a consequence leaded to the Vietnam war. Recommended.

very good.
The war in Iraq and September 11th probably will be the defining event of the youth of the United States today when we look back in a few decades, in much the same way the war in Vietnam defined a generation of youth in the 1960s and 1970s. In a war that ended place a decade before most of those youth were born, what lessons can we take back? How exactly did the Vietnamese win? What were the social movements in the US that arose out of this conflict? Why are the myths of the American-Vietnamese War?

The trick to understanding a lot of history is that a lot of what was taught us growing up was simply wrong and just a particular point of view. "A People's History of the Vietnam War", by Jonathan Neale, does a fantastic job of presenting an excellent history that skips over the usual hoop-la about certain elite leaders of the war, and instead concentrates on a more systematic analysis of the war that took so many millions of lives. He sees the world in terms of class and therefore argues that the American ruling class got into Vietnam as a continuation of their policies aiming at domination of the globe. They needed to save South Vietnam, which was about a brutal a dictatorship as there gets, in order to shore up their support of other dictators throughout the world.

At the same time, he doesn't commit the same blunder that many other left-wing historians make in supporting elite cadre of the Communist Party either. He correctly identifies that the majority of the party leadership were the sons and daughters of the ruling landlord class, and though they wanted a better world and sought to destroy the class of their ancestors, they also made sure that they, the CP, stayed on as rulers. They did lead a mass mobilization of peasants which liberated their land and carried out a revolution, and life was much better under the CP than it was under the French, but at the same time as Vietnam liberalizes its economy, it is the Party which mainly benefits from it.

Neale makes a pretty convincing argument that three main factors led to the defeat of the United States military in Vietnam by the Vietnamese forces. 1) The main one was the peasants revolt, led by the Communists and guerillas, in which hundreds of thousands of fighters gave their lives to bring a new future to their country. Millions of peasants died in bombings, slaughters, and executions, but they never gave up. When the Viet Cong (the South Vietnamese guerrilla group) was nearly annihilated following the Tet offensive and Operation Phoenix by US special forces, North Vietnamese units filled the void and gave everything until the truce of 1973 five years later. By the time of that truce, the guerrillas of the south and soldiers of the north were completely exhausted.

The second factor for why the US could not win the war (which it could have done given a few more hundred thousand dead soldiers, a few more million dead civilians, and a few more years of death and war) was because of the US Peace movement. This is where Neale does a masterful job of shattering myths. He points out that the Peace movement is remembered mainly as being fought on campuses by middle-class students and that white workers usually were pro-war. This is simply not true. In fact, a greater percentage of middle-class Americans supported the war, and the great majority of working-class Americans were against the war, mainly because it was they who were dying in the war and returning home maimed and psychologically damaged because of the atrocities they were forced to commit. In this atmosphere of civil rights struggles, black and white workers were at the forefront of joint struggles against the war. In fact, Neale argues that a big limit of the student anti-war organizers was that they did not reach out to working class people as much because they had built-in assumptions about racist white working class people being pro-war. In fact, because of the large scale of the anti-war movement, it became hard to mobilize the country's military resources without facing political defeats at home.

There's a great passage here about President Johnson listening to a Pentagon whiz kid in 1966, two years before the war became hugely unpopular, saying the carpet-bombing Hanoi and several key North Vietnamese ports would end the war early, and argues that after feeding numbers into a computer,the Pentagon knowsthat the atoms bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. Johnson responds:

"I have one more problem for your computer- will you feed into it how long it would take five hundred thousand angry Americans to climb the White House wall out there and lynch their President if he does something like that?"

The third factor argued by Neale which lead to the victory of the Vietnamese resistance was the GI revolt. By the end of the war, soldiers refusing to fight, fragging their officers who led them into dangerous missions or other stuff like racism towards black soldiers, and everyday acts of resistance by a huge chunk of the GIs in Vietnam led to an impossible task of the generals pushing forward when they were not even sure they could trust their own soldiers. On nearly every military base in the world, there was a radical underground soldiers newspaper which wrote articles about their dangerous superiors and anti-war material in general. Towards the end of the war, President Nixon switched to almost exclusively air war by carpet bombing North Vietnam and the countryside's of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, supporters of the Communists.

Neale does a great job explaining the huge effect on post-war Vietnam and United States. The United States proceeded to isolate Vietnam with its alliance with China and the Khymer Rouge in Cambodia. China even invaded Vietnam because of it's occupation of Cambodia after after the Khymer Rouge proceeded to destroy what was left of Cambodia after the massive firebombing of 1973 by the US air force. Gradually, the state rolled back the communal lands that the peasants had won in the war from the landlord class, until the point where today Vietnam is becoming a massive sweatshop in conjunction with large multinational corporations. In the United States, the ruling class learned not to commit to a long ground war, and instead embarks on a big counter-offensive against the gains of marginalized people (People of color, women, gay movements, working people) beginning in the 1980s. They learned the lessons of not letting a large amount of soldiers commit to ground operations, else that breeds massive dissent. The book was written right before the invasion of Iraq in early 2003, and aptly predicted a long ground war in Iraq.

Anyway, this was a great read and very well done. I can't recommend it enough.

History should not be fact based
Amazon forces you to give stars. I would have given none.

While the history parts of the book appear accurate, (because it is all based on the research of others) a history book should be factual and not opinionated. The author uses the excuse of the subject to get on his soap box and go on about the angst of the worker. This book gets predictable and boring fast. I appreciate books and the written word and will almost always pass a book on rather than see an author's work wasted. However, I am tossing this book in the recycling bin to avoid it falling into the hands of someone who might listen to this nonsense and take it is as fact rather than an angry man's opinion. No one should be fooled by the word history in the title. This is an essay by a cold war Trotskyisk looking to make waves.

I have no anomosity towards the Vietnamese people as my wife is Vietnamese and I have a lot of family there. However, the author fails to point out how the people of Vietnam prefer to forget about the war and look to the future. He also fails to point out that the U.S. is now one of the leading trading partners with Vietnam. But, I imagine that is current affairs and not history, so it does not fit into the author's scope of work.

I am disappointed in this publisher and will be wary of spending money on any of their publications in the future. What a waste of money! If you are really interested in a history of Vietnam, read Stanley Karnow. Thank you. ... Read more

Product Description
The anti-Vietnam War movement marked the first time in American history that record numbers marched and protested to an antiwar tune—on college campuses, in neighborhoods, and in Washington. Although it did not create enough pressure on decision-makers to end U.S. involvement in the war, the movement’s impact was monumental. It served as a major constraint on the government’s ability to escalate, played a significant role in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision in 1968 not to seek another term, and was a factor in the Watergate affair that brought down President Richard Nixon.

At last, the story of the entire antiwar movement from its advent to its dissolution is available in Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds.Author Melvin Small describes not only the origins and trajectory of the anti-Vietnam War movement in America, but also focuses on the way it affected policy and public opinion and the way it in turn was affected by the government and the media, and, consequently, events in Southeast Asia.

Leading this crusade were outspoken cultural rebels including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, as passionate about the cause as the music that epitomizes the period.But in addition to radical protestors whose actions fueled intense media coverage, Small reveals that the anti-war movement included a diverse cast of ordinary citizens turned war dissenter: housewives, politicians, suburbanites, clergy members, and the elderly.

The antiwar movement comes to life in this compelling new book that is sure to fascinate all those interested in the Vietnam War and the turbulent, tumultuous 1960s. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Protests!!!
This book was very informative but not as good as "The Battle of Otok" concerning political turmoil of the time.

Once More Into The Breach, Dear Readers!
From the time I climbed back into civil society from my military duty, I stepped exactly into the vortex of the turmoil and raging debate over the so-called anti-war movement. In this well-written and eminently readable book, author Melvin Small precisely captures the tenor of the times, and recapitulates the ongoing arguments against our misguided and massively tragic military adventure in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. Small is well qualified for such a discussion; as an active academic he has lectured on the subject for over thirty years. He is also a noted author on different aspects of the Vietnam war, having penned several books related to Nixon's prosecution of the war, Johnson's conflicted but ever deepening commitments to the war, and the roles of anti-war doves in the overall history of the war.

Given the fact that the war in Vietnam represented a new milestone for the history of our republic, the first time that an absolute majority of its citizens were actively against the war in one fashion or another, it is an absorbing history that reveals just how such massive public antipathy for the war was either ignored or spun politically by the media and the policymakers in order to continue their active pursuit of the country's war goals. Small carefully describes and explains exactly where the loci of dissent were to be found, and much more importantly, why. For although the revolutionary levels of active opposition to the war never actually ended the war, which dragged on for more than a decade, it did indeed profoundly influence the conduct of the war. From its import in President Johnson's decision not to seek a second term to Nixon's own involvement in the Watergate imbroglio, the political import of the high levels of active dissent to the war played a major part in how the government proceeded to conduct the war, and in the way it was explained and justified publicly.

Another endlessly absorbing aspect to the book is its treatment of the entire anti-war movement itself, tracing it from its origins in the civil rights and free speech movements to its eventual dissolution as the war spun down in the mid 1970s. One of the most amazing things we learn is just how little heed the elected leaders paid to public opinion on the one hand, yet at the same time recognizing the power of public antipathy to the war as a constraint they increasingly had to recognize in their machinations, especially under the Nixon administration, when anti-war views were held to be both unpatriotic and traitorous. Gee, does any of this stuff sound familiar?This is a wonderful book that one can learn a great deal about concerning the nature of the anti-war movement in the 1960s, and the wide variety of people who manned the barricades against the war with such consistency and energy for so long a period of time. I recommend this book. Enjoy! ... Read more

Product Description
Hundreds of memoirs, novels, plays, and movies have been devoted to the American war in Vietnam. In spite of the great variety of media, political perspectives and the degrees of seriousness with which the war has been treated, Katherine Kinney argues that the vast majority of these works share a single story: that of Americans killing Americans in Vietnam. Friendly Fire, in this instance, refers not merely to a tragic error of war, it also refers to America's war with itself during the Vietnam years. Starting from this point, this book considers the concept of "friendly fire" from multiple vantage points, and portrays the Vietnam age as a crucible where America's cohesive image of itself is shattered--pitting soldiers against superiors, doves against hawks, feminism against patriarchy, racial fear against racial tolerance. Through the use of extensive evidence from the film and popular fiction of Vietnam (e.g. Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, Didion's Democracy, O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, Rabe's Sticks and Bones and Streamers), Kinney draws a powerful picture of a nation politically, culturally, and socially divided, and a war that has been memorialized as a contested site of art, media, politics, and ideology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A great author and a great teacher
Katherine Kinney's book is a miniature first class education.Having taken classes from Dr.Kinney I was eager to read her book and found every chapter a satisfying line of criticism.Ignore all negative or unappreciative reviews of this book or this author.

a fascinating read
In "Friendly Fire," Katherine Kinney offers a fascinating cultural analysis of the Vietnam conflict as it has been represented through popular media.Writing in a style accessible to the casual reader and the serious Vietnam scholar alike, she explores America's involvement in Vietnam by paying particular attention to how certain cultural fears and desires have been reflected through the portrayal of this historical conflict.

You may have read the only other Amazon review of this book, an embarrassing and cowardly hatchet-job by a disgruntled ex-graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, the university at which the book's author is a well-respected professor and scholar.As a former student at this university, I immediately recognized the author of this character assassination (despite the cowardice of the unsigned post), a student whose shoddy performance on their doctoral examinations was one of the truly embarrassing moments in recent, departmental history (the gulf between expectation and actuality was enormous).My recommendation would be to ignore this vindictive attack from an arrogant and unstable person who is pretty much viewed as a joke in the English Department at UC Riverside.

Oxford University Press, long noted for publishing interesting, relevant, and cutting-edge work, has done so yet again with "Friendly Fire."For those interested in the Vietnam War, post-WWII masculinity, or media studies, this book will provide a fascinating read.

Signed,

Andrew Howe

An interesting and important book
In "Friendly Fire," Katherine Kinney offers a fascinating cultural analysis of the Vietnam conflict as it has been represented through popular media.Writing in a style accessible to the casual reader and the serious Vietnam scholar alike, she explores America's involvement in Vietnam by paying particular attention to how certain cultural fears and desires have been reflected through the portrayal of this historical conflict.

You may have read the only other Amazon review of this book, an embarrassing and cowardly hatchet-job by a disgruntled ex-graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, the university at which the book's author is a well-respected professor and scholar.As a former student at this university, I immediately recognized the author of this character assassination (despite the cowardice of the unsigned post), a student whose shoddy performance on their doctoral examinations was one of the truly embarrassing moments in recent, departmental history (the gulf between expectation and actuality was enormous).My recommendation would be to ignore this vindictive attack from an arrogant and unstable person who is pretty much viewed as a joke in the English Department at UC Riverside.

Oxford University Press, long noted for publishing interesting, relevant, and cutting-edge work, has done so yet again with "Friendly Fire."For those interested in the Vietnam War, post-WWII masculinity, or media studies, this book will provide a fascinating read.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Vietnam War
This book illustrates the importance of the courage of the men in the Vietnam War.The author was a journalist in the war, and he records everything he sees and hears.Your mind will be filled with detailedscenes from the actual war, you might even find yourself checking yourshoulder for mortars! ... Read more

Product Description
AMERICAN BOYS AT WAR IN VIETNAM--AND INVOLVED IN INCIDENTS YOU WON'T FIND IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

In this compelling, highly unusual collection of amazing but true stories, U.S. soldiers reveal fantastic, almost unbelievable events that occurred in places ranging from the deadly Central Highlands to the Cong-infested Mekong Delta.

"Finders Keepers" became the sacred byword for one exhausted recon team who stumbled upon a fortune worth more than $500,000--and managed, with a little American ingenuity, to relocate the bounty to the States. Jorgenson also chronicles Marine Sergeant James Henderson's incredible journey back from the dead, shares a surreal chopper rescue, and recounts some heart-stopping details of the life--and death--of one of America's greatest unsung heroes, a soldier who won more medals than Audie Murphy and Sergeant York.

Whether occurring in the bloody, fiery chaos of sudden ambushes or during the endless nights of silent, gnawing menace spent behind enemy lines, these stories of war are truly beaucoup dinky dau . . . and ultimately unforgettable.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Anything is Possible, but....
I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but this book was not for me. I'm a fan of the more traditional narratives or first person accounts of soldiers. The author state that he interviewed fellow Vietnam Vets that after a couple of beers, they admitted seeing some crazy, unbelievable things that they never dared tell anyone before. Not the sensationalistic baby killing stuff you might read in liberal press, but tales of ghosts, phantoms, big foot kind of things.

The author and those he interviewed all agree & admit that if you're on guard duty at night, tired and afraid of the VC attacking you (very common things for grunts), you'll think you heard or saw some wild things. I don't doubt that the guys telling the stories were there, it's just a matter of disbelief at what they claim is real.Some will find it funny, for some it will bring back memories.

The book is definitely a different look at Vietnam Veterans experiences in the `Nam. If you want to read about battles, ambushes, historical events, then I would not recommend this book.

What a good book!
This book is made up of many short stories that are non-fiction. Easy to read and very well written. This gives us a glimpse into life in Vietnam.Highly recommend it.

Another Good Book from Jorgenson
Jorgenson has put out several great pieces of literature about the Vietnam War and this is another one to add to his list. Although not action-packed on every page, it is full of interesting tid-bits about the war that are humerous and comical. A must read for 'Nam Fan's.

steve I.
Its Ok, not like I thought .? Seems to have a few short rabbit trails?

Very Crazy GI
My husband is enjoying the book so far. Definite recommend for those who were there and for others who want some funny, but cold hard truths about Vietnam. ... Read more

Product Description
Some warriors are drawn to the thrill of combat and find it the defining moment of their lives. Others fall victim to fear, exhaustion, impaired reasoning, and despair. This was certainly true for twentieth-century American ground troops. Whether embracing or being demoralized by war, these men risked their lives for causes larger than themselves with no promise of safe return.

This book is the first to synthesize the wartime experiences of American combat soldiers, from the doughboys of World War I to the grunts of Vietnam. Focusing on both soldiers and marines, it draws on histories and memoirs, oral histories, psychological and sociological studies, and even fiction to show that their experiences remain fundamentally the same regardless of the enemy, terrain, training, or weaponry.

Peter Kindsvatter gets inside the minds of American soldiers to reveal what motivated them to serve and how they were turned into soldiers. He recreates the physical and emotional aspects of war to tell how fighting men dealt with danger and hardship, and he explores the roles of comradeship, leadership, and the sustaining beliefs in cause and country. He also illuminates soldiers' attitudes toward the enemy, toward the rear echelon, and toward the home front. And he tells why some broke down under fire while others excelled.

Here are the first tastes of battle, as when a green recruit reported that "for the first time I realized that the people over the ridge wanted to kill me," while another was befuddled by the unfamiliar sound of bullets whizzing overhead. Here are soldiers struggling to cope with war's stress by seeking solace from local women or simply smoking cigarettes. And here are tales of combat avoidance and fraggings not unique to Vietnam, of soldiers in Korea disgruntled over home-front indifference, and of the unique experiences of African American soldiers in the Jim Crow army.

By capturing the core "band of brothers" experience across several generations of warfare, Kindsvatter celebrates the American soldier while helping us to better understand war's lethal reality--and why soldiers persevere in the face of its horrors.

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

Customer Reviews (2)

Good read
As a member of the military I feel this book is a very good explanation of what it is like to be a soldier.It covers many things as to how it feels to be there and that makes it different then every other book out there. My only complaint is that it uses a few fiction books as "sources."Now these fiction books are supposed to be real life stories told in the fiction venue but still, not credible sources.But beyond that I feel the book is a great read for anyone interested in what is is like to be a soldier.

TerrificExploration of Combat's EffectsOn Individuals!
Wow! It isn't often that I actually feel a little shaken by virtue of what I have read, but if anything can conjure up for one an unforgettable yet eminently non-fictional picture of the modern battlefield in the post-WWII era, then this book by retired U. S. Army historian Peter Kindsvatter does so. What the author offer is literally a phenomenological exploration into the heart of darkness of modern combat, one into which young soldiers have been sucked into the vortex of the experience with wildly inaccurate and romanticized notions regarding their own fallacious expectations of the experience. As the dust jacket appropriately remarks, this is a journey into the hearts and minds of the average soldier, in Korea, Vietnam and since, and shows how popular "John Wayne" colorized fictions set our kids up for a fateful slam into the brick wall of a much more horrible reality. Thus, beginning with such unrealistic ideas of what to expect, Kindsvatter argues quite forcefully that such inaccurate conceptualizations aided the solders in creating what he refers to as a "fictionalized" set of images of war.

Therefore, despite the relatively intensive military training the young recruits received, the author contends nothing could succeed in disabusing them of these fallacious notions or completely prepare them for the horror of actual combat. The nature of that combat, with its extreme emotional stress, physical hardships, and bloodthirsty graphics, spawned a kind of emotional syndrome that the author argues progresses fairly predictably from initial shock and disbelief through a period of confusion toward a perpetual state of much more hyperawareness, a state in which their immediate performance becomes maximal while the effects on their long-term mental health becomes progressively more dangerous. Critical to the success of this progression of this 'pilgrim's progress' from disbelief through confusion and into a battle-weary hyper-vigilance was the camaraderie of their fellow soldiers, their belief systems, and each soldier's individual will to survive. Obviously, Kindsvatter observes, in situations such as Vietnam, where the belief systems came into serious question both within the ranks and in the culture back home, successful maintenance of this state of combat readiness was more and more imperiled.

What the author contends is that once such belief systems are destroyed, few things can repair or sustain them. For some, the excitement of battle turns them into "combat junkies", and it is these guys who may succeed in surviving only to find readjustment to civil society later is extremely hazardous. For the majority, it was integration into the unit and the friendships within it that sustained them, and allowed them to continue under some of the most extreme continuing conditions modern humans can experience.Yet eventually, for most soldiers the ability to function slowly eroded, to the point that many casualties occurred for "burned out" grunts who had more than enough savvy to protect themselves, but who has lost the kind of emotional edge they needed to continue. In these cases, many of them suffered emotional breakdowns and/or total physical exhaustion. This is an important book, and one that anyone with either a friend or relative in the military would do well to read. I hope it gains wider readership, as it is a serious, enlightened, and worthwhile entry into the field of military history. Enjoy! ... Read more

Product Description
"Simply the most powerful and moving book that has emerged on this topic." UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
The national bestseller that tells the truth of about Vietnam from the black soldiers' perspective. An oral history unlike any other, BLOODS features twenty black men who tell the story of how members of their race were sent off in disproportionate numbers and the special test of patriotism they faced. Told in voices no reader will soon forget, BLOODS is a must-read for anyone who wants to put the Vietnam experience in historical, cultural, and political perspective.
Cited by THE NEW YORK TIMES as One of the Notable Books of the Year
"Superb."
TIME
... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

Why the truth hurts.....
This book covers many aspects of the American War in Vietnam through stories told by young men who undoubtedly were there. It seems not to be written with any whish to be sensational. The book is nevertheless captivating and sometimes shocking to say the least. I really don't think it's focused on black people per se, the stories are universal. The racial issues are just sad and hopefully something buried forever with that generation. Having read many books on the Vietnam War I would have to put this on my must read top five list.
I know books, just like art, might have a different appeal to different people so if you like to read about unfiltered personal experiences seemingly without a hidden agenda this is for you.
Also I would challenge anyone Gung Ho about going to war to read this first, it ain't pretty!

Gripping
People who like this book, or are interested in it, may also like to check out the following: The Slaves' War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves.

I'm surprised that the "most-helpful" unfavorable review says that "Bloods" is "repetitive and boring", and that "every time I turned the page, ... it was basically the same story almost every time". As other reviewers have noted, Mr. Terry interviews veterans from an astonishing range of backgrounds. Their wartime experiences and post-war opinions are equally diverse.

For example, one soldier was inducted in handcuffs, while Fred Cherry was a no-nonsense career officer who spent much of the war in a North Vietnamese prison camp. Some veterans were proud of their service, while one said, "I feel used. I feel violated."

I got my copy of Bloods from Mr. Terry himself, at the University of Illinois in the 1980s, when he did a tour promoting the book. I left my copy with a black co-worker named David Snell, when I changed jobs in 1990. I'm very happy to see that it's still available, and plan to buy it again.

if you liked the movie "dead presidents"
I saw the movie "dead presidents" before i read this book. After i read one of the stories in the book, i realized the hughes brothers basically stole there idea for there movie from this book. Don't get me wrong, i love the movie and this book is an amazing read. I'm feeling the hughes brothers should have given credit where it is due though. If you liked the movie, this book is a must read and vice versa.

Illuminating, painful, and memorable
This fascinating collection of concise, first person accounts of fighting in Vietnam provides many surprises and more sighs. Focusing on the struggles of "Bloods", the African-American soldiers, these personal stories reflect the entire gamut of reactions to racism, war, and poverty. Some found solace, meaning, and purpose in the war effort; others felt crushed, betrayed, and lose limbs. All convey their passions, insights, and experiences in a compelling manner.

As America fights yet another unpopular war abroad and minorities once again shoulder an exceptional burden, this powerful book should find new audiences. School libraries, American history teachers, ROTC members, and African Americans will want to read, or should read, this classic oral history. So should any American interested in making sure that Dr. Martin Luther King's dream comes true - for all Americans!
Wallace Terry, by the way, has written a masterpiece!

I give the book five stars, and that is not because I am in it!!!!
I would love to respond to all of the comments and customer reviews. My name is Traci Daniels, and my father Robert L. Daniels, one of the soldiers profiled in this book, just passed away on January 3rd, 2008. I was in the picture with him in the book and am now a 27 year old successful businesswoman. My father and I were fiercely close, and the pain, mental and physical anguish that he suffered due to Vietnamstill lives on with the current conflict in Iraq. I, too, would also love to know what happened to some of the other participants in the book. Please respond if you are out there, and God bless you. ... Read more

Product Description
In this unique and significant addition to Vietnam studies, Memories of a Lost War analyzes the poems written by American veterans, protest poets, and Vietnamese, within political, aesthetic, and cultural contexts. Drawing on a wealth of material often published in small presses and journals, the book highlights the horrors of war and the continuing traumas of veterans in post-Vietnam America. In its inclusion of Vietnamese perspectives, the book marks a departure from earlier works that have largely concentrated on Vietnam as a war rather than a country. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Stateside Poetry versus Veteran Poetry in Memories of a Lost War
Subarno Chattarji introduces his book with historical and political information about the rising struggles within Vietnam and the United States that ultimately lead to war, briefly introducing American fears of the domino theory, where one Southeastern Asian country falling to communism would result in the rest following suit.Chattarji quickly divides the poetry of the Vietnam War era into three categories: stateside poetry, which largely focuses on the anti-war movement, and veteran (or soldier) poetry, and Vietnamese poetry.Chattarji’s division focuses mainly on the stateside poetry and veteran poetry, and, by clearly demarcating the strict line that separates the two, he upholds the division that veteran poets such as W.D. Ehrhart regard as essential: “‘The few poems I read about Vietnam after I came back only made me angry: What the hell did these people know about it, for chrissake?’” (92). Chattarji furthers his divisions by dividing veteran poetry into three categories: protest and anguish, combat experience, and the aftermath, with each chapter highlighting poetry representative of the chapter’s title.The final chapter, dealing with Vietnamese poetry translated into English, is Chattarji’s attempt to represent all different sides of the Vietnam War: American soldiers and protestors and Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, though Chattarji cannot directly correlate Vietnamese poetry to traditional western poetic influences evident in stateside and veteran poetry.Chattarji emphasizes American soldier poetry, establishing it as the crux of the book, but also introduces a hint of resentment by soldier poets against stateside poetry figureheads such as Ginsberg, Levertov, and Bly.Carefully straddling the fence on whether one holds more impact over the other, Chattarji introduces and juxtaposes the ever-changing stances of Erhart, a prominent soldier poet of the Vietnam war, on the stateside poets: “Although the essay [of Erhart’s] does stress the problems with stateside poetry, it is largely an endorsement of protest poetry in times of crisis such as the one represented by Vietnam” (93) and “[Erhart] stated that poetry by Bly, Levertov, Ginsberg, and others, had ‘served a political purpose,’ but it ‘doesn’t work’ as poetry and is ‘not durable’” (93).Therefore with the line established between veteran poetry and stateside poetry, Chattarji draws a connection between the two (i.e. the poetry that both sub-genres draw from) and uses the poetic background and influences of each to found the principal that the two—though in opposition—work toward a similar poetic expression, or goal, that uniquely identifies the horrors of the Vietnam War in order to prevent their reoccurrence in future wars.

Chattarji avoids associating stateside poetry, and its traditional anti-military sentiment, with the awe-inspiring images of the terror of first-hand experience associated with veteran poetry, but he links the two by drawing their poetic roots and foundations to earlier American/British wars (i.e. World War I and II) and poets such as Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Howard Nemerov, and Randall Jarrell.By tying the two somewhat opposing types of poetry together, specifically emphasizing the rich poetic background from which anti-war and soldier poets draw, Chattarji extends his idea that, “American poetry on Vietnam does not exist in a critical, literary vacuum” (25).Chattarji clearly establishes Bly, Levertov, Ginsberg, and Nemerov as strong stateside poets during the Vietnam War.Chattarji opens his chapter on stateside poetry by introducing several of Nemerov’s poems about World War II, which actually provide connections to his later poems: “The connections are interesting and evident, particularly the ways in which Nemerov highlights the instrumentalist nature of state language in his poems on Vietnam” (31).Nemerov, whose main work is emblematic of the combat he experienced in World War II, also writes about the Vietnam War, drawing specifically from influential poets such as William Butler Yeats.Chattarji introduces Nemerov’s poem, “On Being Asked for a Peace Poem,” and then quickly points to the title’s allusion to Yeats’s poem, “On Being Asked for a War Poem.”Nemerov uses the title to depict the social advancement from a focus on war to a focus on peace, borrowing from Yeats and expanding his own poem into, “a less terse, more complex and humorous insight into the relationship between a poet and war” (70).Nemerov is the only major stateside poet, who had actually experienced combat, which Chattarji addresses in his chapter on stateside poetry.Chattarji uses Nemerov as a transitional figure between soldier poets and stateside (or anti-war) poets.Chattarji shifts focus from Nemerov to other stateside poets whose poetry is clearly based on a political agenda such as Bly’s poem in his book The Teeth Mother Naked at Last:

This is what it’s like for a rich country to make war
this is what it’s like to bomb huts (afterwards describedas ‘structures’)
this is what it’s like to kill marginal farmers (afterwards
described as ‘Communists’). (53)

Chattarji points out that, “The agenda is not one of unearthing ‘true’ or ‘authentic’ information, it is one of highlighting the proliferation of the war, and the polyphony of that spread.The poem counterpoints brutal destruction with clinical military jargon” (53).Bly’s poetic enjambments and his mingling of “military jargon” combined with overarching statements of destruction prove his poetic talents, but his poem strays in effectiveness because of the lack of gruesome details prevalent in soldier poetry.Chattarji defends Bly’s poem by stressing that the poem’s agenda is different from the traditional authenticity of soldier poetry, but W.D. Ehrhart’s statement that the political poetry “doesn’t work” rings true when comparing Bly’s poem to the vivid images, smells; sounds of soldier poetry.Erhart’s statement that the political poetry is “not durable” is clearly evident from post-war perspective of over thirty years.Bly’s poetry, like most stateside political poetry, clearly loses its impact when taken out of the time period in which it was written, whereas soldier poetry, with its grisly portrayals of atrocities, stands out past its historical context, actually gaining popularity as the years of the war sink further into the past.

Chattarji introduces the same poetic influences in soldier poetry as in stateside poetry early in the first section of veteran poetry with a quote from W.D. Ehrhart: “The main thing that happened in the early writing when I was trying to figure out how to write about the Vietnam War, was the influence of other writers I read—some of Sassoon, but everything of Owen…I knew his work very well…so when I began to write about my war, that was my reference point…So, early on, you find me completely missing all the rich imagery of my own war and, instead, inserting images about blood dripping like tears from the blade of a bayonet” (113).Chattarji even goes as far as comparing the trenches at Khe Sanh to the stalemated trench warfare of World War I, but he emphasizes that, despite the loose historical correlation between the trenches, the early images in the poetry of the Vietnam War come directly from the soldier poets like Owen and Sassoon of World War I—images borrowed to express the horrors of a new war until soldier poets of the Vietnam War could find their “own language” (113) and “come to grips with the peculiar reality of Vietnam” (113).Chattarji’s first chapter on veteran poetry mainly deals with protest and anguish, though he includes some immature poetry in support of the war, and Chattarji accentuates his emphasis on protest and anguish by pointing out the soldier poet’s early inability to create a unique images of the Vietnam war, simply relying on and borrowing poetic devises popularized by earlier poets.

In Chattarji’s second chapter of veteran poetry, he underlines combat experiences, where the soldier poets have found their unique poetic voices and expressions, often dealing with internal struggles of morality and ethics and the basic human struggle to stay alive. The first poem Chattarji introduces in this section is David Connolly’s “After the Firefight,” where Connolly clearly uses images unique to the Vietnam War and also deals with the soldier’s ability or inability to deal with the horrors of a new kind of warfare:

Afterwards, with the gunfire
still ringing loudly in our ears,
but not so loudly
that it drowned out the screams.
And afterwards,
still blinded by the tracers’ flashes,
but not blinded enough
by the pumping or sucking or gaping wounds;
we’d come to our sense,
what sense were left.
When the rush of adrenaline,
and the haste to stop the life
from spilling out of a Brother,
and the hesitancy to touch
what was human,
was over,
we’d strut and brag and bluster
for each other.
Later, we would weep,
separately,
for the little
that was left of us.
Much later
we would weep together,
when it appeared
there would be nothing left. (122)

Chattarji addresses the poem’s message that the struggle doesn’t end once the fighting is over:“At the end of the battle there is ‘nothing left’ except the awareness that one has lost everything; the long, lonely nightmare of life after war has just begun” (123).Connolly’s poem deals with the American soldier’s outward expression of pride in being a good soldier: “we’d strut and brag and bluster / for each other.”Here Connolly expresses the immediate relief after battle, set off with the comic relief of bragging between soldiers, but Connolly furthers the poem by expressing the idea that bragging was a means by which the soldiers could delay their expressions of sorrow—“Later, we would weep.”Connolly’s poem, in comparison to the earlier poem by Bly, maintains a multi-faceted message with deep-seated undertones of grief felt by the surviving soldiers.Poetically, Connolly’s poem stands up to (and outweighs in my opinion) Bly’s poem.Connolly develops rich lingual texture within his lines such as the alliteration and repetition of the ‘w’ sound in “we would weep.”Connolly also uses enjambment (or line-breaks) to emphasize and tweak out ambiguities and alternate meanings; specifically, Connolly breaks line 12 at the word “life” so that the line reads “and the haste to stop the life,” which hints at killing, but Connolly extends his enjambment to actually discuss the preservation of life in line 13: “from spilling out of a Brother[.]”The veteran poetry clearly touches on ideas, fears, realities, and grieves that the stateside poetry lacks, which again echoes Ehrhart’s statement that political poems are “not durable.”

Chattarji’s final chapter on veteran poetry deals with the aftermath of the war and the struggle of the American soldier to return to civilian life after encountering the horrors and atrocities of Vietnam.Horace Coleman’s poem “D-Day + 50; Tet + 25” deals with the soldier’s struggle as a survivor of war:

It’s been all my life since Normandy
and half my life since Tet.
And the scars my father and I
share in our minds are half-healed.
The shock of survival can be
worse than other wounds.
We didn’t know there would be
seams on our souls. (145).

In his analysis of Coleman’s poem, Chattarji focuses on the connection the speaker of Coleman’s poem makes to his father who “fought the ‘good war’” (145).Coleman’s poem clearly creates an irony by juxtaposing the D-Day invasion of Normandy and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam because American forces took the offensive on D-Day, whereas the Tet Offensive was a Viet Cong attack, where American forces fought a defensive battle across all sectors of Vietnam.The irony in Coleman’s poem serves as a vehicle to compare the aftermath of battle and the struggles of surviving in both Vietnam veterans and veterans of the ‘good war’—World War II.Coleman’s poem, like much of the poetry Chattarji explores in his aftermath chapter of veteran poetry, embodies the efforts of veterans to effectively deal with the trauma they experienced in war, clearly outweighing the political agendas of the stateside poetry by focusing on the individual instead of the country, the soldier instead of the military.

The stateside poetry and veteran poetry which Chattarji outlines as opposing agendas, styles, and effectiveness serves to create a literary movement containing rough and fervent images of the effects of warfare technology on the individual.Stylistically, much of the early soldier poetry does match the poetic quality of the stateside poetry, but, as more soldiers returned from Vietnam, they found their voices and turned to poetry as an arguably therapeutic means to cope and deal with their own demons, providing a rich, unique poetic texture that strongly outweighs the political agendas of many of the stateside poets.Chattarji’s final chapter addresses the translated poetry of Vietnamese citizens, which draws from a different poetic background, largely emphasizing pastoral ideals and mixing them with language of the war, specifically images of bombings in Chattarji’s book.With different poetic backgrounds, the poetry of the Vietnamese people is largely incomparable to stateside and veteran poetry, simply because of the lingual and literary differences.Chattarji’s book carefully explores the poetic foundations of the poetry of the Vietnam War, pitting soldier poets, struggling to find a voice, against established, professional poets, who focus (inappropriately) on the political context of the Vietnam War instead of dealing with the psychological elements and the rude, narrow images staining America’s supposed moral and ethical superiority.Chattarji appropriately focuses the bulk of his book on the veteran poetry that came out of the Vietnam War, providing insight to the anguish and horrors expressed in the unabashedly crude poetry of the America’s crude war.
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Product Description

This best-selling text has now been updated to include previously unseen source material - it is an ideal companion for any student studying the Vietnam War.

Customer Reviews (1)

Great for students 15-18 perhaps. Otherwise, useful if brief
The book introduces the reader to Vietnam, including a brief history of Vietnamese heritage and histories, through the Geneva Conflict into 1964. Here Hall divulges a little more, breaking up the conflict evenly, managing to retain some sence of proceedings in the hectic chaos. Most useful of all is the documents (23) at the end of the book, constantly cross-referenced. The book is perfect for an introduction for the vietnam war, and gives historical interpretations near the close. American faliure lies with the post-revisionists.

Perfect for studentsm like myself. Stimulates further reading. ... Read more

Product Description
Welcome to Mobile Guerrilla Force (MGF):
Prepare to be outmanned, outgunned, and deep in enemy territory--with no chance of artillery support or medevac. . . .

In 1966, U.S. Army Captain and Green Beret Steven M. Yedinak volunteered to lead what became the Mobile Guerrilla Force, one of the most effective fighting forces ever assembled for duty in Vietnam. Now the top secret missions conducted by the MGF have finally been declassified, allowing him to reveal the secrets behind MGF's harrowing maneuvers.

Unlike the LRRPs' five-day "walks in the woods," the MGF Green Berets led well-trained, superbly disciplined Cambodian guerrillas deep into the North Vietnamese Army's secret base areas for four to six weeks at a time without artillery or close air support, and with damn little hope of a helicopter medevac. In the highly successful Blackjack-31 mission alone, the Mobile Guerrilla Force survived fifty-two enemy engagements while capturing prisoners, booby-trapping base camps, and gathering intelligence on NVA movements. Yedinak shares a heart-pounding, intensely personal account of the war they waged and the peace he ultimately sought. . . . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

very interesting book
I could not stop to read this book! Authentic and real. No stories from high rang officers working only in a office

Not Brilliant or Fascinating, but Interesting
Good news first; family, friends, and non-military should really like this book. Others like myself who are retired military, served in Vietnam (Pilot 192nd AHC 68-69), and have written a book about this war might question this author's intent. After "Kill Me If You Can, You SOB" came out, I started reading every book about the Vietnam War I could get my hands on. So far about half of them have screamed out, "I want to be in the movies." This is one of those books.

Oh, come on now!!!
Leave it up to the Special Forces to make a mountain out of a molehill. The Blackjack Operations were daily insertions of team into and out of the field. The entire time, only 8 teams managed to stay over night in the bush. The team that went to find the Blackbox, simply walked through War Zone D (Not the VC Secret Zone) and found the box, went to an lZ and were extracted. No POWs, no fighting into a enemy base camp, like this author writes. All the "war tales" arounds these operations are just that - Tales. This book is FICTION. Read the U.S. National Archives on what these men failed to do and they could not RON (Remain Over Night) because they were scared of the dark. Always back in before sundown with a lot of shadow shooting. The 54 enemy engagments the author claims is as bogus as Mexican water. Don't drink it and don't believe this book.

For a more honest book on what and who dominated this AO (area of operation) in Vietnam, read Don C. Hall's book, 'I SERVED.' These 220 Lurps kicked some serious butt and these SF have been jealous of this unit since 1967 along with a string of other "marginal units that could perform well."
Check out i-served.com

rayjoy@ipa.net
This a book that is a must read for anyone wanting to know what it was like in Nam. Being an Ex-Ranger this book put me right back in there. I just couldn't put it down. It made me laught,and cry. yes us Rangers do cry, for the lost of a friend.

Roadrunner 6 out

HARD TO PUT DOWN
I have read ,HARD TO FORGET, The book captures the smell ofdampvegetation rotten in the jungle, the sweat burning your eyes, the rucksackstraps digging into your shoulders and that ever-lasting ache, on yourhips, from the the burden of the pistol belt. The apprehension and fear, ofa too quiet jungle, resurface in your mind. Your heart beating so loud, youthink, everyone hears it. The hunter waiting to become the hunted. To themen who fought in Vietnam, "HARD TO FORGET". will bring thememories, flooding back.The good memories along with the bad.The bookalso deals with the effects of the war on the men who fought it. The bookshows the beauty of America along with her warts. One point the authormakes is, Soldiers do not fight wars by mistake.Soldiers fight warsbecause of mistake by politicians. In the end only soldiers and theirfamilies pay the piper. "HARD TO FORGET" ... Read more

Product Description

The racial tensions that have long plagued American society exist to a much lesser extent in the military where the bond of common pursuit and shared experience renders race less relevant. Or so conventional wisdom has long held.

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent Overview
The book is an excellent overview of the issues facing African Americans in Viet Nam.Westheider views the racism facing African Americans in the military at that time as being the result of both personal racism, primarily from a military heavily populated by whites from the southern US, and institutional racism, both deliberate and unintentional, from the military hierarchy.Westheider shows an interesting evolution of the attitude that African Americans toward the military.Before the Viet Nam war, African Americans held a generally positive attitude about the military and viewed the military as less racist than society in general.By the end of the war, African Americans viewed the military as more racist than society in general and suspected that the military was, in fact, a tool used by society to persecute African-Americans.He uses a number of statistics to make his case.For example, in 1964, thirty percent of the population of Alabama was African American and yet there was not a single African American on any Draft Board in Alabama.There is information on racial violence in the military, racially motivated "fragging" of officers and political and ethnic oriented organizations in the military.The book is an excellent overview and is a good introduction to the subject.I enjoyed the book but I finished the book thinking that there is much more of this story to be told ... Read more