Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives

by Bradley, Mark Philip; Young, Marilyn B.

• ISBN13: 9780195315134
• ISBN10: 0195315138
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Making sense of the wars for Vietnam has had a long history. The question "why Vietnam?" dominated American and Vietnamese political life for much of the length of the wars and has continued to be asked in the decades since they ended. This volume brings together the work of eleven scholars to examine the conceptual and methodological shifts that have marked the contested terrain of Vietnam War scholarship. Editors Marilyn Young and Mark Bradley's superb group of renowned contributors spans the generations-including those who were active during wartime, along with scholars conducting research in Vietnamese sources and uncovering new sources in the United States, former Soviet Union, China, and Eastern and Western Europe. Ranging in format from top-down reconsiderations of critical decision-making moments in Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon, to microhistories of the war that explore its meanings from the bottom up, these essays comprise the most up-to-date collection of scholarship on the controversial historiography of the Vietnam wars. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Mark Philip Bradley is Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago, and the author of Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950. Marilyn B. Young is Professor of History at New York University. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars

American Intervention and the Cold War Consensus

Explaining the Early Decisions: The United States and the French War, 1945-1954

"No Place to Fight a War:" Laos and the Evolution of U.S. Policy toward Vietnam, 1954-1963

Explaining the Vietnam War: dominant and Contending Paradigm

"There Ain't No Daylight:" Lyndon Johnson and the Politics of Escalation

The Coming of War in VietnamSophie Quinn-Judge (Temple University): Through a Glass Darkly: Reading the History of the Vietnamese Communist Part, 1945-1975

Vision, Power and Agency: The Ascent of Ngo Dinh Diem, 1945-1954

Taking Notice of the Everyday

Co So Cach Mang and the Social Network of War

War's End and Endless WarsLien

Cold War Contradictions: Toward an International History of the Second Indochina War, 1969-1973

"Help Us Tell the Truth about Vietnam:" POW/MIA Politics and the End of the American War

Official History, Revisionist History and Wild History

Suggested Readings

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