Select Bibliography: the United States and the Vietnam War

Select Bibliography: The United States and the Vietnam War

Let me start with giving you what is the single best bibliography on the war. The Vietnam War Bibliography by Edwin Moise. Moise is a professor at Clemson University and the author of the best book on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. His bibliography contains over 4,000 entries, and it is carefully divided by chronology and subject matter. It is primarily a bibliography of books, but a moderate number of articles are listed. He makes a special effort to list articles for which the full texts are available online. He keeps this bibliography up-to-date, and if you can’t find a book here about a topic you’re interested in, the chances are that it hasn’t been written yet. http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/EdMoise/bibliography.html

Let me also recommend the web site of my friend and the history bibliographer at Vanderbilt, Peter Brush. Peter is a proud Marine veteran of one of Vietnam’s most famous battles, Khe Sanh, and writes on a variety of topics connected with the war. I still recommend his article about the rats at Khe Sanh to anyone wanting to get a good sense of what that siege was like. http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/central/Brush/brush.htm

What follows below are some of my favorite books on the Vietnam War. This is by no means a comprehensive look at the war, and I’m sure I will leave some important books out. And please feel free to tell me about ones you feel enhanced your understanding of the war.

General histories:

Mark Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) This is my favorite among the short histories of the war, primarily because Lawrence is able to balance the American and Vietnamese perspectives.

James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, Where the Domino Fell (St. Martin’s Press, most recent edition) This book is rooted firmly in the American issues of the war, but does a good job talking about the home front.

George Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (McGraw Hill, 4th edition, 2002) Herring was the leading American historian of the war, and this is the book I used to write most of my lectures when I started teaching Vietnam. It is best on the period before 1968.

Gary R. Hess, Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War (Wiley Blackwell, 2008). This book identifies the key controversies among historians about the war in Vietnam and does a reasonably fair job of presenting each side.

Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam 2

(Random House, 2012) A fascinating book about the end of French role and the beginning of America’s involvement in Vietnam by a prominent historian of the war.

William J. Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam (McGraw Hill, 1995) Although somewhat academic in language, it poses the question of why the communists won, not why America lost. Also the author of Ho Chi Minh: A Life (Hyperion pb., 2000) the most authoritative biography of Ho, although very long and not the easiest read.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War (UNC press, 2012) The first document-based examination of North Vietnamese policy from the late 1960s to the Paris Peace Accords. Written by a Yale- Ph.D. Vietnamese American who now teaches at the University of Kentucky.

Lewis Sorley, A Better War (Harcourt pb.) A somewhat controversial book which has contributed to the revisionist view that General Creighton Abrams had come up with a strategy that could have won the war if given time and support from the American people.

Michael Hunt, Lyndon John’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968 (Hill and Wang, 1996) A short and authoritative account of the escalation of the war by one of the best U.S. historians of East Asia.

Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (Vintage pb. 1989) This Pulitzer Prize winning book is about one of the war’s most fascinating characters, John Paul Vann, and is written by one of the war’s most famous journalists.

David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Random House, 1972) Although it is more than 40 years old, this book had a tremendous influence on interpretations of the war.

Harry Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Dell pb. 1982) A popular book when it appeared, it is less interesting for its history than for its insight into how the Army came to interpret the lessons of Vietnam.

Michael Herr, Dispatches (Avon pb. 1977) A classic work of journalism about the war.

David Maraniss, They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 (Simon and Schuster pb. 2003) A story that interweaves events in Vietnam and the protests at the University of Wisconsin in October 1967.

Some early classics:

Graham Greene, The Quiet American (Penguin classics, 2004; originally published 1955) This novel by one the 20th century’s greatest British writers is often celebrated for its prophetic view of America’s fate in Vietnam. It’s also a great read. 3

William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American (Norton edition, originally published 1958) This book captures the ideological sense of mission that Americans brought to Asia in the 1960s. It was an inspiration to President Kennedy in setting up the Peace Corps.

Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy (Stackpole books, originally 1961) Although chronicling the French debacle in Vietnam, Colin Powell would later write that he wished President Kennedy or President Johnson had read it before they ordered more troops to Vietnam.

Vietnamese memoirs and accounts

Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (Plume pb. 1990) This memoir of a Vietnamese peasant girl became the basis for Oliver Stone’s film, “Heaven and Earth.”

Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War (Riverhead books, 1996) This book is a stunningly powerful narrative of the war from the North Vietnamese perspective. It has been compared to All Quiet on the Western Front in terms of its impact.

Duong Thu Huong, Paradise of the Blind (Perennial books, 2002) This is a novel from one of Vietnam’s leading dissident writers. It captures some of the disillusionment with the communist regime.

Kien Nguyen, The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood (Back Bay Books, 2001) A child’s view of the fall of South Vietnam and the aftermath of the war.

Duong Van Mai Elliott, The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (Oxford University Press, 1999) The saga of a Vietnamese family whose members ended up on different sides of the war. (Strange coincidence - Elliott is married to the son of William Yandell Elliott, Vanderbilt class of 1919 and Henry Kissinger’s dissertation adviser.)

The Antiwar Movement

Rhodi Jeffreys-Jones, Peace Now! (Yale Univ. Press pb.) This is a very solid account of a very diverse movement.

Melvin Small, Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002) This is a coherent narrative from a historian who participated in the movement.

American Soldiers – both fictional and memoir literature

Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone (Broadway books, 1975). Anything by Tim O’Brien is worth reading. This one happens to be my favorite, although The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato, and In the Lake of the Woods are also engaging and powerful works. 4

Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (Grove press, 2010) This story of a Marine fighting in northern South Vietnam in late 1968, early 1969 is one of the most powerful and harrowing accounts of the war.

Eric M. Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning: The World of a Combat Division in Vietnam (Penguin pb. 1993). This is a collection of interviews as well as documents by a historian who served with this division.

James J. Kirschke, Not Going Home Alone: A Marine’s Story (Ballantine pb. 2001) A moving account by a Marine lieutenant who despite severe wounds came back to the United States and became a professor of English at Villanova University. (He spoke in my Vietnam class in May 2003.)

Keith Walker, A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of Twenty Six American Women Who Served in Vietnam (Ballantine pb., 1985) This is the book that became the basis for the television series, “China Beach.”

Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July (Simon and Schuster, 1976). Although it has been criticized for some of its claims, it remains a powerful story that became the basis for Oliver Stone’s award winning film.

Leo Thorsness, Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey (Encounter Books, 2011) One of the best of the POW books – comparable to John McCain, Faith of Our Fathers.

Harold G. Moore and Joseph Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once…And Young (Harper pb. 1993) Made into the Mel Gibson movie, “We Were Soldiers,” this is a powerful work about one of the Vietnam War’s first major battles.

Miscellaneous

Taking charge : the Johnson White House tapes, 1963-1964. and Reaching for Glory: The Johnson Tapes 1964-1965. Edited and with commentary by Michael R. Beschloss. New York : Simon & Schuster, 1997, 2001. There is much here that doesn’t deal with Vietnam, but the tapes are one of the best ways to understand Lyndon Johnson.

Christian G. Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides (Viking, 2003) This is a collection of interviews from both Americans and Vietnamese, and does try to take into account “all sides,” although it still has a pronounced antiwar slant. But the interviews are well worth reading.

Meredith H. Lair, Armed with Abundance: Consumerism and Soldiering in the Vietnam War (UNC Press 2011) A fascinating book which looks at the consumer culture which American soldiers brought with them to Vietnam.