The Columbia History of the Vietnam War

Rooted in recent scholarship, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War offers profound new perspectives on the political, historical, military, and social issues that defined the war and its effect on the United States and Vietnam. Laying the chronological and critical foundations for the volume, David L. Anderson opens with an essay on the Vietnam War's major moments and enduring relevance. Mark Philip Bradley follows with a reexamination of Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism and the Vietminh-led war against French colonialism. Richard H. Immerman revisits Eisenhower's and Kennedy's efforts at nation building in South Vietnam, and Gary R. Hess reviews America's military commitment under Kennedy and Johnson. Lloyd C. Gardner investigates the motivations behind Johnson's escalation of force, and Robert J. McMahon focuses on the pivotal period before and after the Tet Offensive. Jeffrey P. Kimball then makes sense of Nixon's paradoxical decision to end U.S. intervention while pursuing a destructive air war.

John Prados and Eric Bergerud devote essays to America's military strategy, while Helen E. Anderson and Robert K. Brigham explore the war's impact on Vietnamese women and urban culture. Melvin Small recounts the domestic tensions created by America's involvement in Vietnam, and Kenton Clymer traces the spread of the war to Laos and Cambodia. Concluding essays by Robert D. Schulzinger and George C. Herring account for the legacy of the war within Vietnamese and American contexts and diagnose the symptoms of the "Vietnam syndrome" evident in later debates about U.S. foreign policy. America's experience in Vietnam continues to figure prominently in discussions about strategy and defense, not to mention within discourse on the identity of the United States as a nation. Anderson's expert collection is therefore essential to understanding America's entanglement in the Vietnam War and the conflict's influence on the nation's future interests abroad.

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The Columbia History of the Vietnam War

Rooted in recent scholarship, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War offers profound new perspectives on the political, historical, military, and social issues that defined the war and its effect on the United States and Vietnam. Laying the chronological and critical foundations for the volume, David L. Anderson opens with an essay on the Vietnam War's major moments and enduring relevance. Mark Philip Bradley follows with a reexamination of Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism and the Vietminh-led war against French colonialism. Richard H. Immerman revisits Eisenhower's and Kennedy's efforts at nation building in South Vietnam, and Gary R. Hess reviews America's military commitment under Kennedy and Johnson. Lloyd C. Gardner investigates the motivations behind Johnson's escalation of force, and Robert J. McMahon focuses on the pivotal period before and after the Tet Offensive. Jeffrey P. Kimball then makes sense of Nixon's paradoxical decision to end U.S. intervention while pursuing a destructive air war.

John Prados and Eric Bergerud devote essays to America's military strategy, while Helen E. Anderson and Robert K. Brigham explore the war's impact on Vietnamese women and urban culture. Melvin Small recounts the domestic tensions created by America's involvement in Vietnam, and Kenton Clymer traces the spread of the war to Laos and Cambodia. Concluding essays by Robert D. Schulzinger and George C. Herring account for the legacy of the war within Vietnamese and American contexts and diagnose the symptoms of the "Vietnam syndrome" evident in later debates about U.S. foreign policy. America's experience in Vietnam continues to figure prominently in discussions about strategy and defense, not to mention within discourse on the identity of the United States as a nation. Anderson's expert collection is therefore essential to understanding America's entanglement in the Vietnam War and the conflict's influence on the nation's future interests abroad.

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The Columbia History of the Vietnam War

The Columbia History of the Vietnam War

The Columbia History of the Vietnam War

The Columbia History of the Vietnam War

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Overview

Rooted in recent scholarship, The Columbia History of the Vietnam War offers profound new perspectives on the political, historical, military, and social issues that defined the war and its effect on the United States and Vietnam. Laying the chronological and critical foundations for the volume, David L. Anderson opens with an essay on the Vietnam War's major moments and enduring relevance. Mark Philip Bradley follows with a reexamination of Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism and the Vietminh-led war against French colonialism. Richard H. Immerman revisits Eisenhower's and Kennedy's efforts at nation building in South Vietnam, and Gary R. Hess reviews America's military commitment under Kennedy and Johnson. Lloyd C. Gardner investigates the motivations behind Johnson's escalation of force, and Robert J. McMahon focuses on the pivotal period before and after the Tet Offensive. Jeffrey P. Kimball then makes sense of Nixon's paradoxical decision to end U.S. intervention while pursuing a destructive air war.

John Prados and Eric Bergerud devote essays to America's military strategy, while Helen E. Anderson and Robert K. Brigham explore the war's impact on Vietnamese women and urban culture. Melvin Small recounts the domestic tensions created by America's involvement in Vietnam, and Kenton Clymer traces the spread of the war to Laos and Cambodia. Concluding essays by Robert D. Schulzinger and George C. Herring account for the legacy of the war within Vietnamese and American contexts and diagnose the symptoms of the "Vietnam syndrome" evident in later debates about U.S. foreign policy. America's experience in Vietnam continues to figure prominently in discussions about strategy and defense, not to mention within discourse on the identity of the United States as a nation. Anderson's expert collection is therefore essential to understanding America's entanglement in the Vietnam War and the conflict's influence on the nation's future interests abroad.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231509329
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 11/26/2010
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 480
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

David L. Anderson is professor of history emeritus at California State University, Monterey Bay, and past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. His books include Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam and The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War.

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Vietnam War and Its Enduring Historical Relevance
David L. Anderson
Part I. Chronological Perspectives
1. Setting the Stage: Vietnamese Revolutionary Nationalism and the First Vietnam War, by Mark Philip Bradley
2. "Dealing with a Government of Madmen": Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Ngo Dinh Diem, by Richard H. Immerman
3. South Vietnam Under Siege, 1961–1965: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Question of Escalation or Disengagement, by Gary R. Hess
4. Lyndon Johnson and the Bombing of Vietnam: Politics and Military Choices, by Lloyd C. Gardner
5. Turning Point: The Vietnam War's Pivotal Year, November 1967–November 1968, by Robert J. McMahon
6. Richard M. Nixon and the Vietnam War: The Paradox of Disengagement with Escalation, by Jeffrey P. Kimball
Part II. Topical Perspectives
7. American Strategy in the Vietnam War, by John Prados
8. The Village War in Vietnam, 1965–1973, by Eric Bergerud
9. Fighting for Family: Vietnamese Women and the American War, by Helen E. Anderson
10. Vietnamese Society at War, by Robert K. Brigham
11. "Hey, Hey, LBJ!": American Domestic Politics and the Vietnam War, by Melvin Small
12. Cambodia and Laos in the Vietnam War, by Kenton Clymer
Part III. Postwar Perspectives
13. The Legacy of the Vietnam War, by Robert D. Schulzinger
14. The Vietnam Syndrome, by George C. Herring
List of Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Joseph G. Morgan

The Columbia History of the Vietnam War provides an excellent overview of the major issues and events of the war while paying great attention to both American and Vietnamese perspectives. Written by some of the most outstanding scholars of the conflict, this history is accessible to both the specialist and the general reader.

Joseph G. Morgan, Iona College

Seth Jacobs

The Columbia History of the Vietnam War is a tremendously valuable collection of essays, presenting the insights of some of the best Vietnam War scholars of the past two generations. David L. Anderson has assembled a lineup of the field's heavyweights.

Seth Jacobs, Boston College

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