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Recommended Reading:
- Powerpoint presentation
- Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 4th ed. (2001). A standard text on the war emphasizing diplomatic elements of the conflict.
- Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam (1978). This insightful book criticizes U.S. military strategy (especially under Westmoreland) but also attacks the arguments of anti-war activists.
- Sorley, Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (2007). Sorley served under General Creighton Abrams, the man who replaced Westmoreland and embarked on a policy of counterinsurgency rather than a “body count” war. A Better War opened the debate over whether Vietnam could have been won if the U.S. military had adopted COIN (counterinsurgency) tactics earlier. Based on hundreds of oral interviews with military officers between 1968 and 1972, along with other sources.
- Lind, Michael. Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict (2002). This intriguing and provocative book argues that the U.S. fought the wrong kind of war before 1968 but that it was “necessary” to forestall wider communist expansion. At the same time, Lind argues that it was “necessary” to cut losses and withdraw. In this narrative, he explores a range of dynamics at play, including the longstanding regional differences in support for overseas wars (New England and the Northeast, for example, remains a bastion of antiwar sentiment).
- Schreadely, R.L. From the Rivers to the Sea: The U.S. Navy in Vietnam (1992). A basic history of the naval aspects of the Vietnam war, particularly the little-understood riverine warfare.
- McMelvey, Robert S. A Gift of Barbed Wire: America’s Allies Abandoned in South Vietnam (2002). What happened to the South Vietnamese left behind by the United States? Suffering under the new communist regime, many Vietnamese made the dangerous flight to sea as “boat people.” Far more remained and their prospects were dim as the North occupied the “reunited” South as a conquered province for years to come. This book tells the story of those lives ruined by the U.S. exit. For more on communist rule post-1975 see works by William J. Duiker, including The Communist Road To Power In Vietnam 2d ed. (1996).