Synopses & Reviews
Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling and sure to be controversial history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were "isolated incidents" in the Vietnam War, carried out by a few "bad apples." However, as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this pioneering investigation, violence against Vietnamese civilians was not at all exceptional. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."
Drawing on a decade of research into secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals the policies and actions that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. He lays out in shocking detail the workings of a military machine that made crimes in nearly every American unit all but inevitable. Kill Anything That Moves takes us from archives filled with Washington's long-suppressed war crime investigations to the rural Vietnamese hamlets that bore the brunt of the war; from boot camps where young American soldiers learned to hate all Vietnamese to bloodthirsty campaigns like Operation Speedy Express, in which a general obsessed with body counts led his troops to commit what one participant called "a My Lai a month."
Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.
Review
"An indispensable new history of the war....Kill Anything That Moves is a paradigm-shifting, connect-the-dots history of American atrocities that reads like a thriller; it will convince those with the stomach to read it that all these decades later Americans, certainly the military brass and the White House, still haven't drawn the right lesson from Vietnam."
San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"A powerful case....With his urgent but highly readable style, Turse delves into the secret history of U.S.-led atrocities. He has brought to his book an impressive trove of new research — archives explored and eyewitnesses interviewed in the United States and Vietnam. With superb narrative skill, he spotlights a troubling question: Why, with all the evidence collected by the military at the time of the war, were atrocities not prosecuted?"
Washington Post
Review
"There have been many memorable accounts of the terrible things done in Vietnam — memoirs, histories, documentaries and movies. But Nick Turse has given us a fresh holistic work that stands alone for its blending of history and journalism, for the integrity of research brought to life through the diligence of first-person interviews....Here is a powerful message for us today — a reminder of what war really costs."
Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company
Review
"In Kill Anything that Moves, Nick Turse has for the first time put together a comprehensive picture, written with mastery and dignity, of what American forces actually were doing in Vietnam. The findings disclose an almost unspeakable truth... Like a tightening net, the web of stories and reports drawn from myriad sources coalesces into a convincing, inescapable portrait of this war — a portrait that, as an American, you do not wish to see; that, having seen, you wish you could forget, but that you should not forget."
Jonathan Schell, The Nation
Review
"Nick Turse's explosive, groundbreaking reporting uncovers the horrifying truth."
Vanity Fair
Review
"Explosive....A painful yet compelling look at the horrors of war."
Parade
Review
"Astounding....Meticulous, extraordinary, and oddly moving."
Bookforum
Review
"Meticulously documented, utterly persuasive, this book is a shattering and dismaying read."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"If you are faint-hearted, you might want to keep some smelling salts nearby when you read it. It's that bad....The truth hurts. This is an important book."
Dayton Daily News
Review
"Kill Anything that Moves argues, persuasively and chillingly, that the mass rape, torture, mutilation and slaughter of Vietnamese civilians was not an aberration — not a one-off atrocity called My Lai — but rather the systematized policy of the American war machine. These are devastating charges, and they demand answers because Turse has framed his case with deeply researched, relentless authority....There is no doubt in my mind that Kill Anything that Moves belongs on the very highest shelf of books on the Vietnam War — up there with the non-fiction of Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, Jonathan Schell, and Frances FitzGerald, the memoirs of Michael Herr and Philip Caputo, the fiction of Bobbie Ann Mason, Robert Stone, Jayne Anne Phillips, Tim O'Brien, Ward Just, and, of course, Graham Greene."
The Millions
Review
"Nick Turse reminds us again, in this painful and important book, why war should always be a last resort, and especially wars that have little to do with American national security. We failed, as Turse makes clear, to deal after the Vietnam War with the murders that took place, and today — four decades later — the lessons have yet to be learned. We still prefer kicking down doors to talking."
Seymour Hersh, staff writer, The New Yorker
Review
"In the sobering Kill Anything that Moves, Nick Turse provides an exhaustive account of how thousands upon thousands of innocent, unarmed South Vietnamese civilians were senselessly killed by a military that equated corpses with results....Kill Anything that Moves is a staggering reminder that war has its gruesome subplots hidden underneath the headlines — but they're even sadder when our heroes create them."
Bookpage
Review
"An in-depth take on a horrific war....A detailed, well-documented account."
Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Nick Turse, an award-winning journalist and historian, is the author of The Complex and the research director for the Nation Institutes TomDispatch.com. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Nation. Turses investigations of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam have gained him a Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship at Harvard Universitys Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. He lives near New York City.