Synopses & Reviews
The first book to give equal weight to the Vietnamese and American sides of the Vietnam war.
Synopsis
When looking back at the long history of United States involvement in Vietnam, many have asked the question "Why were we there?" There have been a number of answers; a U.S. presence in Vietnam was instrumental in opening up trade for Japan, creating a more capitalist world after 1945, and even stabilizing France during World War II. Of course, as war dragged on and more and more Americans were wounded or killed, many felt that there was no possible justification for the horrors taking place in this small Southeast Asian country.
Marilyn Young's award-winning The Vietnam Wars does not so much address the question of why we were in Vietnam, instead focusing on the question of how. How did we get there? How did we keep expanding the war? And how did we finally manage to get out? The Vietnam Wars is a comprehensive, balanced view of our troubled history with Vietnam, one that is vividly echoed in world events today.
Marilyn Young is a professor of history at New York University. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. at Harvard University, and her B.A. at Vassar College. She is the author of many books, including Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895-1901, Transforming Russia and China: Revolutionary Struggle in the 20th century (with William Rosenberg), and Promissory Notes: Women and the Transition to Socialism (with Rayna Rapp and Sonia Kruks). She was awarded the Berkshire Women's History Prize for The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990.
"This is the history of the war in Vietnam we have been waiting for. This is a marvelous achievement -- meticulously documented, excitingly narrated, written with grace, wit, and passion." -- Howard Zinn
Synopsis
This is the history of the war in Vietnam we have been waiting for. This is a marvelous achievement--meticulously documented, excitingly narrated, written with grace, wit, and passion.- Howard Zinn
This terrible history is told with such clarity and passion, detail, intelligence it's hard to stop reading. The tension in the writing keeps your sadness in some kind of check as you read about opportunities for peace lost again and again, and think of today's newspapers and how we are, with some differences, modification, and more firepower, once again half the world away confusing credibility with honor. - Grace Paley
In this remarkably researched account of the American and Vietnamese political and diplomatic sides of the Vietnam War, Marilyn Young offers some correctives to pervasive myths that surround the conflicts leading up to the first clashes, pertaining to popular terms found in American rhetoric when discussing the enemy, and the impact of American interference in foreign affairs.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 375-382) and index.