Suggestions for a history of the war in Vietnam?

[Raenelle]

I'd like a couple of good books about the cause and course of this war to beef up my lectures on this. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

[Aristus]

1. The Time-Life series 'The Vietnam Experience' is very good

and volumes of the series are available in just about every library. I personally own every volume in the series, so you could come over to my house to do your research. :-)

[flamingyouth]

2. Here's a new book:

They Marched Into Sunlight, by David Maraniss

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743217802/qid=1068590967/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-6759026-8240838?v=glance&s=books

I received this as a gift and I thought it was very well done.

[chaumont58]

3. Three books turned my thinking on that war

I'm not sure about the total acuracy of the titles, but close enough for government work.

1. A Bright Shining Lie, John Paul Vann and the VietNam Experience.

2. About Face by David Hackworth

3. The Best and the Brightest by Halberstam.

Something from Best and Brightest that sticks in my mind: the Pentagon ran war games on the war, early on, in 1964 or so. Army Chief of Staff General Wheeler played and his side seem to alway win. General Wheeler said that he didn't think the US Army and the South Vietnamese could attrite the North faster than their birth rate would replace loses. The body-count was but the face of war of attrition. The US Army has mostly fought wars of attrition since US Grant. They tried to fight such a war in VietNam and it didn't work.

4. overview of period

America in Our Time by Godfrey Hodgson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0394725174/qid=1068593061/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/104-2270919-1464740?v=glance&n=507846
This is a good overview of the period with some cogent theses about the left or the nonexistence of the left in America from the point of view of a Brit.

[Journeyman]

5. "Fire in the Lake. . .

The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, by Frances Fitzgerald, is an excellent historical and political accounting of the Vietnam experience dating from the end of the Second World War through late 1972. It was awarded the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize the year of publication.

For a flavor of what life was like for the grunts in country, Michael Herr's Dispatches is extraordinary.

There are more, but these should keep you occupied 'til Thursday.

[BrotherBuzz]

6. The Cat from HuŽ

By John Laurence

Laurence was a CBS news correspondent who covered the war from 1965 to 1970. The book begins with the brutal Tet Offensive in 1968, with Laurence in the burned-out vestige of HuŽ, where he finds a feisty kitten that doesn't seem to like Americans. Laurence flashes back to 1965, when the war got into full swing and large numbers of American troops first arrived on the scene. He deftly charts how and when--if not why--the American objective of "winning the hearts and minds of the people" comes to require burning villages, killing farmers, and having as their closest allies a corrupt South Vietnamese regime. More and more he finds that in order to report the war he must put himself increasingly at risk, and he does so, at no small physical and psychological danger.

A good read, and some interesting insight into what is required to report honest war news, something that is sorely missing in Iraq.

on edit: I can't even speil correctly with cut and paste!

[vdeputy]

7. Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day by Rod Kane is not strictly a technical history book but but my husband and most of his friends were combat Vietnam vets and when I read this book, it was the closest thing I'd ever read that really described who they were. As I read it, I felt like, "I know this guy". A terrific book.