Search Results: History - Vietnam War from I Cannot Live Without Books

Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam by H.R. McMaster
Dereliction of Duty is a groundbreaking analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Meticulously researched and based on transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations, and decisions, it is the only book that fully recreates what happened and why. H.R. McMaster pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and the excuses of the participants.
A page-turning narrative, Dereliction of Duty focuses on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy, and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress, and the American public.
McMaster's only… Read More

Drawn Swords in a Distant Land: South Vietnam's Shattered Dreams by George J. Veith
Drawn Swords in a Distant Land showcases the fascinating, untold story of the rise and fall of the Republic of Vietnam. Putting aside outdated ideological debates, it offers the first in-depth review of the South Vietnamese successes and failures in building and defending their state. Drawn Swords highlights the career of President Nguyen Van Thieu, who in many ways embodied the hopes, dreams, and innumerable tragedies of the South Vietnamese people. It details the extent to which the Vietnamese Nationalists under his leadership built a viable state after the 1968 Tet Offensive; weaves together the policy decisions made in Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon that significantly determined the course of the war; and explains why South Vietnam was defeated in April 1975.
Equally important, it provides stunning new details about how the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem was almost halted, describes the backroom maneuvering that chose… Read More

Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War by James Wright
THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES.
The Vietnam War is largely recalled as a mistake, either in the decision to engage there or in the nature of the engagement, or both. Veterans of the war remain largely anonymous figures, accomplices in the mistake. Critically recounting the steps that led to the war, this book does not excuse the mistakes, but it brings those who served out of the shadows.
Enduring Vietnam recounts the experiences of the young Americans who fought in Vietnam and of families who grieved those who did not return. By 1969, nearly half of the junior enlisted men who died in Vietnam were draftees, and their median age was twenty-one; among the non-draftees it was only twenty.
The book describes the baby boomers growing up in the 1950s, why they went into the military, what they thought of the war, and what it was like to serve in "nam." And to come home. With a vivid narrative of the… Read More

In Good Faith: A History of the Vietnam War, Volume 1, 1945 - 1965 by Sergio Miller
American involvement in Vietnam was more a matter of unfolding accident than deliberate strategy. Washington was first drawn in to support France in its postwar bid to reestablish French Indochina as a bulwark against communism. But with the growth of nationalist sentiment in the region, the U.S. began to favor self-determination. When the French withdrew in 1954, America found itself committed to supporting the South Vietnamese regime against the growing threat of the communist North.
Determined to ensure that Hanoi's communist government led by Ho Chi Minh would not expand beyond the 17th parallel, America uneasily propped up the brutal and corrupt regime of Ngo Dinh Diem and accommodated subsequent political coups in South Vietnam. This support was initially limited to aid and the deployment of military advisors to help keep the communist Viet Cong at bay, but gradually escalated as the conflict deepened.
Deftly… Read More

No Wider War: A History of the Vietnam War, Volume 2, 1965-75 by Sergio Miller
On March 8, 1965, 3/9 Battalion Landing Team of the U.S. Marine Corps came ashore on a South Vietnamese beach at Da Nang to "conduct security missions, reconnaissance operations, and offensive/defensive operations as directed." This was the first deployment of American ground combat forces and, although there were already 23,000 Americans serving under the auspices of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), it was a pivotal moment in the escalation of the conflict. A decade on, at 7:35AM on the morning of April 30, 1975, it was a marine who became the last American to leave South Vietnam, when Master Sergeant Juan Valdez carried the neatly folded Stars and Stripes into the final helicopter to lift off from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Six hours later the capital of the Republic of South Vietnam fell to the invading forces of the North Vietnamese Army.
This marked the end of an American commitment to Vietnam that had, at… Read More

A Noble Cause: American Battlefield Victories in Vietnam by Douglas Niles
Celebrating the skill and bravery of the United States armed forces and their South Vietnamese allies, A Noble Cause presents a gripping chronicle of both large-and small-unit successful combat engagements, including the Battle of Ia Drang Valley (1965), the first major ground battle of the Vietnam War; the Battle of Loc Ninh (1967) by the Cambodian border; the Battle of Khe Sanh (1967-1968 leading up to the Tet Offensive; the Battle of Dong Ha (1968); the bloody siege on Hamburger Hill (1969); and the Battle of An Loc (1972), sixty-five miles north of Saigon, which contributed to the failure of the Vietcong's Eastertide Offensive.
Documenting the invaluable role of a tireless and determined infantry, as well as air cavalry divisions and B-52 "Arc Light" air strikes, chronicles the crucial strategic decisions that led to victory -- often against steep odds -- and honors the bravery of every soldier who stood his ground, faced… Read More

Road to Disaster: A New History of America's Descent into Vietnam by Brian Van DeMark
THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES.
Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, no historian has been able to full explain why such decent, brilliant, and previously successful men failed so badly. With this book -- more than twenty years in the making -- that changes.
In Road to Disaster, acclaimed historian Brian Van DeMark draws upon decades of archival research, his own exclusive interviews with many of the officials involved with the war, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, who served as defense secretaries for presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Beyond that, Road to Disaster is the first account of the war to look at the cataclysmic decisions of those in the Kennedy and… Read More

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945 - 1975 by Max Hastings
THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES.
Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the last three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dien Bie Phu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido -- where a U.S. Marine battalion was almost wiped out -- together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh's warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.
Many writers treat the war as a U.S. tragedy, yet Hastings sees it overwhelmingly as one for… Read More