A Companion to the Vietnam War

by Young, Marilyn B.; Buzzanco, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780631210139
• ISBN10: 063121013X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-11-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

A Companion to the Vietnam War contains twenty-four definitive essays on America's longest and most divisive foreign conflict. These historiographical and narrative essays by leading historians examine the war in its most important contexts. The broad thematic coverage of the book includes the political strategy of three American presidents, the American military tactics and their consequences, the adjoining wars in Laos and Cambodia, the American home front and antiwar movement, and the intersections of race, class, and gender in both America and Vietnam. This volume represents the best current scholarship on one of the most controversial and influential episodes in modern American history. It also contains an expanded bibliography of hundreds of secondary sources to guide further research. For students, scholars, and general readers of Vietnam War studies, this Companion is a vital resource.

Author Biography

Marilyn B. Young is Professor of History at New York University. She is the author of Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy (1969) and The Vietnam Wars (1991), winner of the Berkshire Women’s History Prize. She is the co-author of Transforming Russia and China: Revolutionary Struggle in the 20th Century (with William Rosenberg, 1980), Promissory Notes: Women and the Transition to Socialism (with Rayna Rapp and Sonia Kruks, 1983), and Vietnam and America (with Marvin Gettleman, Jane Franklin, and Bruce Franklin, 1995), and is the co-editor of Human Rights and Revolutions (with Lynn Hunt and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, 2000).

Robert Buzzanco is Associate Professor of History at the University of Houston. He is the author of Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (1996), winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Prize, and Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life (Blackwell, 1999).

Table of Contents

About the Contributors	viii
Introduction	xi
Hanoi's Long Century	1	(16)
Stein Tønnesson
Part I The Vietnamese in Context	17	(96)
In Search of Ho Chi Minh	19	(18)
William Duiker
Belated Asian Allies: The Technical and Military Contributions of Japanese Deserters (1945--50)	37	(28)
Christopher E. Goscha
The Realities and Consequences of War in a Northern Vietnamese Commune	65	(14)
Shaun Malarney
The My Tho Grapevine and the Sino-Soviet Split	79	(14)
David Hunt
``Vietnam'' as a Women's War	93	(20)
Karen G. Turner
Part II The Americans in Southeast Asian Context	113	(202)
Before the War: Legacies from the Early Twentieth Century in United States--Vietnam Relations	115	(15)
Anne Foster
Franklin Roosevelt, Trusteeship, and US Exceptionalism: Reconsidering the American Vision of Postcolonial Vietnam	130	(16)
Mark Bradley
Dreaming Different Dreams: The United States and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam	146	(16)
Robert K. Brigham
JFK and the Myth of Withdrawal	162	(12)
Edwin E. Moise
The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam During the Johnson Years	174	(24)
Robert Buzzanco
A Casualty of War: The Break in American Relations with Cambodia, 1965	198	(31)
Kenton Clymer
The Last Casualty? Richard Nixon and the End of the Vietnam War, 1969--75	229	(31)
Lloyd Gardner
Remembering Nixon's War	260	(23)
Carolyn Eisenberg
America's Secret War in Laos, 1955--75	283	(32)
Alfred W. McCoy
Part III Americans at Home and Abroad	315	(155)
Missing in Action in the Twenty-First Century	317	(16)
Bruce Franklin
African Americans and the Vietnam War	333	(15)
James Westheider
Mexican Americans and the Viet Nam War	348	(19)
George Mariscal
``They'll Forgive You for Anything Except Being Weak'': Gender and US Escalation in Vietnam 1961--65	367	(17)
Robert Dean
The Antiwar Movement	384	(19)
Barbara Tischler
The Veterans Antiwar Movement in Fact and Memory	403	(13)
John Prados
Sanctuary!: A Bridge Between Civilian and GI Protest Against the Vietnam War	416	(18)
Michael S. Foley
Knowledge at War: American Social Science and Vietnam	434	(16)
Michael E. Latham
The War on Television: TV News, the Johnson Administration, and Vietnam	450	(20)
Chester J. Pach, Jr.
Select Bibliography	470	(21)
Amy E. Blackwell
Index	491