For an even-handed history of the Kennedy years, see Herbert Parmet’s JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (1983). Bruce Miroff’s Pragmatic Illusions: The Presidential Politics of John F. Kennedy (1976) is a New Left critique. Two works that specialize on Kennedy and Vietnam are R. B. Smith, An International History of the Vietnam War, volume 2, The Kennedy Strategy (1985) and William J. Rust, Kennedy in Vietnam (1985). Among the books by administration officials, see George T. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern (1982) and Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (1967). Also see Walt W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power, 1957–1972 (1972); Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., The Storm Has Many Eyes: A Personal Narrative (1973); and Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Ploughshares (1972). Warren Cohen’s Dean Rusk (1980) looks at the secretary of state. For the events in South Vietnam during the Kennedy years, see Mieczyslaw Maneli, War of the Vanquished (1971) and John Mecklin, Mission in Torment: An Intimate Account of the US. Role in Vietnam (1974). Joseph Buttinger’s second Vietnam volume is also good, as is David Halberstam’s The Making of a Quagmire. Frederick Nolting, the United States ambassador to South Vietnam in the early 1960s, wrote From Triumph to Tragedy: The Political Memoirs of Frederick Nolting (1988). For the events leading up to Diem’s assassination, see Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963 (1987). Also see John Newman, John F. Kennedy and Vietnam (1992).
A number of books look at counterinsurgency. The best survey is Larry E. Cable, Conflict of Myths: The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War (1986). Douglas S. Blauburg’s The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance 1950 to the Present (1977) is also excellent. Robert W. Komer discusses how badly the United States underestimated the insurgency in Bureaucracy Does Its Thing (1972). Milton E. Osborne’s Strategic Hamlets in South Vietnam (1965) is an early study of that disaster. Sir Robert Thompson discusses his role in Defeating Communist Insurgency (1966) and Peace Is Not at Hand (1974). For a look at the Marine Corps pacification programs, see Michael E. Petersen’s The Combined Action Platoons: The U.S. Marines’ Other War in Vietnam (1989). Shelby L. Stanton’s Green Berets at War (1985) and Charles M. Simpson III’s Inside the Green Berets: The First Thirty Years (1983) provide descriptions of Special Forces pacification efforts. Andrew F. Krepinevich’s The Army and Vietnam (1986) has an excellent chapter on army counterinsurgency.
Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to escalate the war, of course, enjoys a voluminous literature. Although flawed by a self-serving defensiveness, Johnson’s The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (1971) is a necessary starting point. Vaughn Robert’s The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (1983) is the best history of the administration. For a revealing portrait of Johnson, see Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976). Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (1982) and The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (1990) are a savage critique. For the events surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin incident, see John Galloway, The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1970) and Eugene C. Windchy, Tonkin Gulf (1971). There are several excellent books that describe the decision-making process in Washington. Especially good are Henry Graff’s interviews with administration officials, published as The Tuesday Cabinet: Deliberation and Decision on Peace and War under Lyndon B. Johnson (1970). Equally good are two books by Larry Berman—Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (1982) and Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (1989). Also see Henry Brandon, Anatomy of Error: The Inside Story of the Asian War on the Potomac, 1954–1969 (1969). There is no really good biography on McNamara, but see Henry L. Trewhitt, McNamara: His Ordeal in the Pentagon (1971). Alain Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith provide an inside look at McNamara in How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961–1969 (1971). Gregory Palmer’s The McNamara Strategy and the Vietnam War: Program Budgeting in the Pentagon, 1960–1968 (1978) is highly critical of the secretary of defense. For the role played by such elder statesmen as Dean Acheson and W. Averell Harriman, see Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). David Di Leo’s George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking of Containment (1991) is excellent. Also see Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995).
The question of strategy remains highly controversial. David Richard Palmer’s Summons for a Trumpet (1978) argues that the attrition strategy was hopelessly inadequate, while Guenter Lewy’s America in Vietnam claims that the United States should have focused on pacification.
Andrew F. Krepinevich argues in The Army and Vietnam that United States military policy should have focused on light infantry formations, firepower restraint, and solving political and social problems, not conventional warfare. The best survey of the army effort is Shelby L. Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965–1973 (1985). For arguments that the American command and control function during the war was badly designed, see Robert L. Gallucci, Neither Peace Nor Honor: The Politics of American Military Policy in Vietnam (1975) and George S. Eckhart, Command and Control, 1950–1969 (1974). Another school of thought argues that the United States should have isolated North Vietnam from South Vietnam. See Harry G. Summers, Jr., On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context (1981) and Bruce Palmer, Jr., The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam (1984). Finally, some argue that the United States did not apply enough firepower. This point of view is clearly expressed in two memoirs: William Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (1976) and Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (1978). Also see William Colby and Alexander Burnham, Lost Victory (1990). Wilbur Morrison summarizes this argument in Vietnam: The Winnable War (1990). Also see H. G. Moore and Joseph Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once and Young (1992); Christian Appy, Working-Class War (1993); and Eric Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning: The World of a Combat Division in Vietnam (1993).
The literature on American women in Vietnam is just beginning to grow. For a look at the role played by nurses in the war, see Dan Freedman and Jacqueline Rhoads, Nurses in Vietnam: The Forgotten Veterans (1987) and Elizabeth Norman, Women at War (1990). Also see Lynda Van Devanter, Home before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam (1983). The best oral history is Kathryn Marshall’s In the Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1965–1975 (1987). Also see Shelley Saywell, Women in War (1985); Keith Walker, A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 American Women Who Served in Vietnam (1985); and Patricia Walsh, Forever Sad the Hearts (1982). For a more recent description of American women in Vietnam, see Winnie Smith, American Daughters Gone to War (1992).
The effectiveness of the air war over Vietnam is quite controversial. For general surveys see Raphael Littauer and Norman Uphoff, eds., The Air War in Indochina (1972) and Bernard C. Nalty et al., The Air War over Vietnam (1971). William Momyer’s Air Power in Three Wars praises the air force from an insider’s perspective. In a similar vein is John B. Nichols and Barrett Tillman, On Yankee Station: The Naval Air War over Vietnam (1987). William A. Buckingham, Jr.’s Operation Ranch Hand: The United States Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia, 1961– 1971 (1982) is important reading. Criticisms of the air war can be found in James Clay Thompson, Rolling Thunder: Undertaking Policy and Program Failure (1980) and Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (1989).
For the Vietnamese perspective on the American military effort, there are a number of valuable works. Jon M. Van Dyke’s North Vietnam’s Strategy for Survival (1972) describes how North Vietnam adjusted to the strategy of attrition. Also see Patrick J. McGarvey, ed., Visions of Victory: Selected Vietnamese Communist Military Writings, 1964–1968 (1969), which describes North Vietnamese debates over military strategy. William Duiker’s The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam is excellent. North Vietnam’s official history of the conflict is entitled The Anti-U.S. Resistance for National Salv
ation 1954–1975 (1980). For discussions of communist strategy, see Vo Nguyen Giap’s Big Victory, Big Task and Banner of People’s War: The Party’s Military Line (1970). Tran Van Tra’s Ending the Thirty Years War (1982) is also revealing. Douglas Pike’s PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (1986) is an outstanding portrait of the North Vietnamese army. An excellent survey of the war from the communist perspective is Nguyen Khac Vien, The Long Resistance 1958–1974 (1975). Nguyen Thi Dinh’s No Other Road to Take (1976) describes the efforts of the People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam. For descriptions of South Vietnamese politics, see Charles A. Joiner, The Politics of Massacre (1974) and Allen E. Goodman, Politics in War (1973). The best survey of South Vietnam is the book by Anthony James Joes, The War for South Viet Nam, 1954–1975 (1989). The best series of oral histories collected from ordinary people in South Vietnam is Don Luce and John Sommer, Vietnam: The Unheard Voices (1969). For Vietnamese recollections, see Cao Van Vien and Dong Van Khuyen, Reflections on the Vietnam War (1980); Hoang Ngoc Lung, The General Offensives of 1968–69 (1981); Tran Van Don, Our Endless War (1978); and Nguyen Cao Ky, Twenty Years and Twenty Days (1976).
The watershed event in the war was the Tet offensive of 1968. Don Oberdorfer’s Tet! (1971) is a highly readable account by a journalist who was there. Also see his Tet: The Turning Point of the War (1983). Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas in The Wise Men provide excellent descriptions of the frustration in Washington. For the political implications of Tet, see Herbert Y. Schandler, The Unmaking of a President: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam (1977). Peter Baestrup’s Big Story (1977) criticizes the press for its reporting of Tet. For histories of two key battles, see Keith W. Nolan, Battle for Hue: Tet, 1968 (1983) and Robert Pisor, The End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh (1982). In The Viet Cong Tet Offensive (1969), Pham Von Son and Le Van Duong provide a local perspective. Ronald H. Spector’s After Tet (1993) is especially illuminating.
For a survey of the antiwar movement, see Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975 (1984). Also see Thomas Powers’s two books, The War at Home: Vietnam and the American People (1973) and Vietnam, the War at Home: The Antiwar Movement, 1964–1968 (1984). On the issue of draft resistance, see Lawrence M. Baskir and William A. Strauss, Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation (1978) and David S. Surrey, Choice of Conscience: Vietnam Era Military and Draft Resisters in Canada (1982). For two recent books on the antiwar movement, see Kenneth Heineman, Campus Wars (1993) and Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (1994).
The available sources on the Nixon administration are more limited than for Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. For Richard Nixon’s perspective, see his memoirs, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978) and In the Arena (1990). Also see his No More Vietnams (1985). Kissinger’s point of view is expressed in his memoirs, White House Years (1979) and Years of Upheaval (1983). Also see William Safire, Before the Fall (1975); U. Alexis Johnson, The Right Hand of Power (1984); John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power (1982); and H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978). For an evenhanded version of Nixon’s early years, see Stephen E. Ambrose Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913–1962 (1987). Nixon’s approach to foreign policy is explained in C. L. Sulzberger, The World and Richard Nixon (1987) and Robert S. Litwack, Detente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969–1976 (1984). For a highly sympathetic view of Henry Kissinger, see Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb, Kissinger (1974). Contrast it with Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983). Also see Robert D. Schulzinger, Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy (1989); Roger Morris, An Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (1977); and John Stoessinger, Kissinger: The Anguish of Power (1976).
Vietnam as an international issue is surveyed in R. B. Smith, An International History of the Vietnam War, volume 1, Revolution versus Containment, 1955–61 (1983) and volume 2, The Kennedy Strategy (1985). Also see Paul M. Kattenburg’s The Vietnam Trauma in American Foreign Policy. Douglas Pike’s Vietnam and the Soviet Union: Anatomy of an Alliance (1987) analyzes Soviet foreign policy, as does Leif Rosenberger’s The Soviet Union and Vietnam (1986). For the impact of the Vietnam War on China, see Robert G. Sutter, Chinese Foreign Policy after the Cultural Revolution: 1966–1977 (1978) and Ray Hemen, China’s Vietnam War (1983). Also see Daniel S. Papp, Vietnam: The View from Moscow, Peking, and Washington (1981). Two books deal with Canada: Douglas A. Ross, In the Interests of Peace: Canada and Vietnam, 1954–1973 (1984) and Charles Taylor, Snow Job: Canada, the United States and Vietnam, 1954–1973 (1984). For the Japanese perspective, see Thomas R. H. Havens, Fire across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan 1965–1975 (1987). On the British, see George Rosie, The British in Vietnam (1970). For the Australians, see Peter King, Australia’s Vietnam (1983). Also see Robert Larsen and James Lawton Collins, Jr., Allied Participation in Vietnam (1975).
A number of books deal with the end of the war. For negotiations leading to the Paris agreements of 1974, see the memoirs of Nixon and Kissinger as well as Gareth Porter’s A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam, and the Paris Agreement (1975). Allan Goodman’s The Lost Peace (1978) is critical of the treaty. On the Christmas bombing of 1972, see Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power, as well as Martin F. Herz, The Prestige Press and the Christmas Bombing (1980). For the offensive that inspired the bombing campaign, see G. H. Turley, The Easter Offensive: Vietnam, 1972 (1985). Ngo Quang Truong, The Easter Offensive of 1972 (1980) provides a Vietnamese perspective. Also see A.J.C. Lavelle, ed., Airpower and the 1972 Spring Invasion (1976).
P. Edward Haley’s Congress and the Fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia argues that Congress severely limited the effectiveness of Presidents Nixon and Ford. Two works highly critical of the settlement are William F. LaGro, Vietnam from Cease-Fire to Capitulation (1981) and Stuart A. Herrington, Peace with Honor? (1983). A.J.C. Lavelle’s Last Flight from Saigon (1978) describes the hectic final hours at the end of April 1975. John Pilzer’s The Last Day (1976) is highly readable. For a scathing attack on Ambassador Graham Martin’s failure to anticipate the communists’ final offensive, see Frank Snepp, Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End (1977). Three books deal with the spring 1975 offensive: Alan Dawson, 55 Days: The Fall of South Vietnam (1977); Tiziano Terzani, Giai Phong! The Fall and Liberation of South Vietnam (1977); and David Butler, The Fall of Saigon (1985). Stephen T. Hosmer’s The Fall of South Vietnam (1980) consists of interviews with former South Vietnamese officials. See Cao Van Vien’s The Final Collapse (1982) for another South Vietnamese account. Tran Van Tra’s Ending the Thirty Years War and Van Tien Dung’s Our Great Spring Victory (1977) give the communist view.
Laos and Cambodia have also received considerable attention. Charles Stevenson offers a highly critical account in The End of Nowhere: American Policy Toward Laos Since 1954 (1973). For histories of the 1971 invasion of Laos, see Nguyen Duy Hinh, Lam Son 719 (1981) and Keith William Nolan, Into Laos: The Story of Dewey Canyon/Lam Son 719 (1986). An outstanding look at communist insurgency in Laos is MacAlister Brown and Joseph J. Zasloff, Apprentice Revolutionaries: The Communist Movement in Laos, 1930–1985 (1986). Perala Ratnam’s Laos and the Super Powers (1980) summarizes the diplomatic issues. The catastrophe in Cambodia is the subject of David P. Chandler’s A History of Cambodia (1983). For the background to the struggle, see Wilfred Burchet, The China-Cambodia-Vietnam Triangle (1982) and Michael Leifer, Cambodia: The Search for Security (1967). The 1970 invasion is covered in Shelby L. Stanton’s The Rise and Fall of an American Army and Tran Dinh Tho, The Cambodian Incursion (1979). Arnold Isaacs deals with the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in Without Honor, as does Craig Etcheson in The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea (1984). Also see Michael Vickery, Cambodia, 1975–1982 (1984). For a critique of American policy, see William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (19
79). Several books deal with the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal assault on Cambodia in the late 1970s. See William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and the Modern Conscience (1984); George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution (1976); and Francois Ponchaud, Cambodia: Year Zero (1978). For the most recent books on the holocaust in Cambodia, see Usha Welarafua, Beyond the Killing Fields (1993) and David A. Chandler, Brother Number One: A Biography of Pol Pot (1992).
The steady decline of Vietnam after the final victory is the subject of Nguyen Van Canh’s Vietnam under Communism, 1975–1982 (1983) and Nguyen Long’s After Saigon Fell (1981). William Duiker describes the state of Vietnam in the late 1970s in Since the Fall of Saigon (1980). For post–1975 conflict in Indochina, see Ray Hemen, China’s Vietnam War. Also see David P. Elliott, ed., The Third Indochina Conflict (1981). The best general survey is Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (1986).
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