Our Vietnam; The War 1954-1975
New York, N.Y. Simon & Schuster, 2000. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. 766, [2] pages. DJ is in a plastic sleeve. Illustrations. Includes Cast of Characters in South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, United States, China, and the USSR. Part One discusses John F. Kennedy and Ho Chi Minh. Part Two discusses Vo Nguyen Giap and Lyndon B. Johnson. Part Three discusses Richard M. Nixon and Le Duc Tho. Part Four discusses Le Duan and Gerald R. Ford. Also contains Chronology; Notes; Bibliography, Acknowledgments; and an Index. There are also three full page black and white maps: Indochina, 1954-1975; Ho Chi Minh Trail; and The Tet Offensive, 1968. Employing new sources and up-to-date scholarship, Jack Langguth has written an excellent and accessible history of the war in Vietnam. His fast-paced narrative and his vivid portraits of the central characters will allow new generations of Americans to understand the drama of the war and the intensity of the emotions on both sides. Arthur John Langguth (July 11, 1933 – September 1, 2014), known as A. J. Langguth, was an American author, journalist and educator. He was Professor Emeritus of the Annenberg School for Communications School of Journalism at the University of Southern California. Langguth was the author of a biography of the English short story master Saki, and lively histories of the Trail of Tears, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, Afro-Brazilian religion, the Vietnam War, the political life of Julius Caesar and U.S. involvement with torture in Latin America. Langguth received the Freedom Forum Award, honoring the nation's top journalism educators, in 2001. Derived from a Kirkus review: An epic account of America’s involvement in Vietnam by a historian who covered much of the war for the New York Times. Langguth uses the same technique he employed in his previous military histories: a painstakingly constructed narrative described through the eyes of participants. In the case of Vietnam, he has the advantage of having witnessed the events himself, and he was also able to interview various policymakers (from Saigon, Hanoi, and Washington) who set the course of the war, as well as to examine thousands of declassified documents. The result is a revision of the Vietnam revisionists—those who would argue that the war could have been won if the US had been able to commit all its resources and an unrelenting will to the war effort. The major events of the period are all here: the 1954 collapse of French control over its former colony at Diên Biên Phú; the flawed leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem that ended in a coup, ambivalently abetted by the Kennedy administration; the comic-opera succession of short-lived, corrupt South Vietnamese regimes that followed; the grueling guerrilla warfare; the My Lai massacre; the stop-and-start attempts at peace negotiations; and, finally, the April 1975 Communist takeover. A sprawling cast of characters is revealed with complexity and, sometimes, great sympathy: North Vietnamese Communists, as resentful toward their Chinese and Soviet allies as toward their American foes; American political and military leaders, starting out ignorant of the inept and corrupt regime they back, increasingly certain that the war effort is doomed, but thrashing about in the quagmire for craven electoral considerations; and common soldiers on all sides, enduring harrowing conditions and often fighting heroically for years. A grimly powerful procession of folly and tragedy. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Vietnam War, Ngo Dinh Diem, Chester Bowles, Henry Cabot Lodge, Harrison Salisbury, Sihanouk, Ellsberg, Le Duan, Antiwar Movement, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Ho Chi Minh, Robert McNamara, Paris Peace, Dean Rusk, Nguyen Van Thieu, Le Duc Tho
ISBN: 0684812029
[Book #80029]
Price: $75.00