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The Vietnam War remains a topic of extraordinary interest, not least because of striking parallels between that conflict and more recent fighting in the Middle East. In The Vietnam War, Mark Atwood Lawrence draws upon the latest research in archives around the world to offer readers a superb account of a key moment in U.S. as well as global history.
While focusing on American involvement between 1965 and 1975, Lawrence offers an unprecedentedly complete picture of all sides of the war, notably by examining the motives that drove the Vietnamese communists and their foreign allies. Moreover, the book carefully considers both the long- and short-term origins of the war. Lawrence examines the rise of Vietnamese communism in the early twentieth century and reveals how Cold War anxieties of the 1940s and 1950s set the United States on the road to intervention. Of course, the heart of the book covers the "American war," ranging from the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem to the impact of the Tet Offensive on American public opinion, Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the 1968 presidential race, Richard Nixon's expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos, and the problematic peace agreement of 1973, which ended American military involvement. Finally, the book explores the complex aftermath of the war--its enduring legacy in American books, film, and political debate, as well as Vietnam's struggles with severe social and economic problems.
A compact and authoritative primer on an intensely relevant topic, this well-researched and engaging volume offers an invaluable overview of the Vietnam War.
- Sales Rank: #46135 in Books
- Published on: 2010-07-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 5.45" h x .60" w x 8.10" l, .54 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
From Publishers Weekly
In this history, University of Texas associate history professor Lawrence (Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam), sifts through centuries of struggle in the small Southeast Asian nation, beginning with the Trung sisters' first century fight to throw off Chinese domination, to illustrate how America, for the Vietnamese, was just another in a long line of ultimately vanquished enemies. Lawrence locates the Trung sisters' spiritual heir in Ho Chi Minh, the communist revolutionary who quoted the Declaration of Independence before finding himself at war with a U.S.-backed South Vietnamese insurgency. The book lives up to its brief and accessible billing, but overall there is little new regarding the "international" players, France, China, and the Soviet Union; largely American-centric, the narrative rests on major U.S. developments from the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution to the fall of the American Embassy in 1975. That said, the author ably encapsulates the uses and abuses of American power, which should prove familiar to anyone following news of the current war.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Crisply concise.... Delves into the 'whys' of the war: why the Vietnamese fought against the United States, why the great powers were involved, why the war turned out as it did and why legacies of the war linger."--Philip Seib,Dallas Morning News
"[A] succinct history of a frustrating war that raised several painful issues America's leaders are now encountering for a second time.... A pithy and compelling account of an intensely relevant topic."--Kirkus Reviews
"Distills the US's longest war into a short, readable narrative.... This brief summary of the tangled negotiations that prolonged the suffering caused by the war is perhaps Lawrence's most valuable contribution, since it covers an area that more extensive histories overlook.... A valuable addition to any academic library.... Essential."--C.C. Lovett, CHOICE
"The book lives up to its brief and accessible billing...."--Publishers Weekly
"In an elegant, almost elegiac prose style, Mark Lawrence takes us through the history of the Vietnam War in a narrative that transcends the usual focus on Vietnam and the United States. There is no other one volume history of the war that so thoroughly captures the war as an event in world history."--Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990
"A succinct and persuasive account of the Second Indochina War in its global context. At a time when the current U.S. involvement in Iraq evokes uneasy memories of America's controversial 'war of choice' in Vietnam, Mark Lawrence's thoughtful analysis of that previous conflict is highly welcome."--William J. Duiker, author of Ho Chi Minh: A Life
"In this concise history of the Vietnam War, Mark Lawrence does a masterful job of transforming a highly complex and controversial subject into a brilliant and balanced histoire synthèse. A rare feat."--Christopher Goscha, Université du Québec à Montréal
"It takes skill to condense a massive subject into a concise, entertaining, and accessible book. This is what Mark Atwood Lawrence accomplishes in his 224 page book The Vietnam War: A Concise International History.... This book might be even more attractive than the larger volumes on the subject because it is succint and focuses on the primary issues of the war."--Shelton Woods, Resources
'In less than two hundred pages of clear, crisp prose, Mark Atwood Lawrence succeeds in 'examining the American role within a broadly interntional conext....' The information Lawrence packs into such a short volume is most impressive: his 'introductory study' is both comprehensive and economical.... Lawrence achieves his principal objective reminding us that the geopolitical environment decisively shaped the Vietnam experience in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries."--Gregory A. Daddis, Michigan War Studies Review
"Lawrence has produced a general survey of the war that will likely become a standard resource in undergraduate courses.... One cuold not ask for a better 'concise' history than the survey Lawrence has written. His prose style is always clear and often elegant.... For a subject that has all too often inspired overwrought critiques of the various parties involved in the conflict, it is refreshing to have a synthesis that adopts a more neutral and dispassionate view of the Vietnam War."--James McAllister, History: Reviews of New Books
About the Author
Mark Atwood Lawrence is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam, which won the 2006 George Louis Beer Prize and Paul Birdsall Prize of the American Historical Association. He is also the co-editor of The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis, and the editor of The New York Times Twentieth Century in Review: The Vietnam War.
Most helpful customer reviews
32 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Good Concise History and Overview
By Conor Cunneen
Attempting to write a history of The Vietnam War in less than 200 pages of text (supported by good notes) is not an easy task. The keen student of Vietnam will find nothing new in this, but if you are looking for a generally well written concise history of this horrible conflict - read Lawrence's work.
Vietnam is a story of broken promises by world powers - United States, France, Soviet Union and China. After a brief exploration of the early history of the country, the author shows how Vietnam was but a pawn for the major powers. He paints quite clearly an inexorable slow drive to inevitable war as the US / Soviet Union / China perceive a country virtually unknown to the West as a key geo-political battle ground.
The tragedy for the United States is that Vietnam was also a domestic political football and US Presidents Kennedy and Johnson got deeper involved in the conflict "not because they were confident of victory but because they feared the consequences of defeat." The Vietnam War broke LBJ, a man who always seemed to only go half-way in implementing any advice from advisors.
I can't agree with a previous reviewer who castigates the author for his profile of Nixon. It is well documented that Nixon interfered with Johnson's peace overtures prior to the 1968 election which is a much more cynical act than his Watergate escapades. An excellent picture of Nixon and Kissinger is painted in Robert Dallek's book Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Powerand does neither of them little credit.
Very concise but good overviews of the Tet offensive and other key battles are provided. If you want a military history of Vietnam, this is not the book for you, but if you want a good general picture and understanding of how the most powerful nation got involved in one terrible mess, this is a short enjoyable read.
One qualm - author Lawrence suggests that from "January 29 to March 31 (1968), the NLF and the North Vietnamese army suffered as many as fifty-eight thousand dead," but later suggests that in the full year 1968 "the communists lost an estimated sixty thousand killed." Better proof reading needed here I think.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Good overview
By John Baesler
This book will be of great service for laypeople interested in a concise and wide-ranging overview of the Vietnam War. In fact, it would also be a good, safe choice for college history instructors looking for a short text to use in undergraduate classes on the Vietnam War or U.S. foreign relations. A big plus of this book is that Lawrence frames his story widely, giving considerable room for discussion of French colonialism in Vietnam, World War II, and the origins of U.S. involvement, which make up about 1/3 of the book. A second plus is that he provides views from all sides of the conflict, not just the view from Washington. We learn quite a bit about power struggles and disagreements over strategy within the North Vietnamese communist party and with its allies in China and the Soviet Union. For example, it was the big communist powers who pushed Hanoi to accept the 1954 Geneva accord out of fear of provoking U.S. intervention at a time they felt they could not match U.S. power. In his judgment of U.S. policies, Lawrence is solidly in the orthodox camp, repeatedly pointing out that despite short-term successes of U.S. economic aid to the Diem regime, it was doomed due to its internal corruption. The same argument is used to evaluate U.S. military tactics: Successes on the battlefield petered out due to a fundamental flaw in strategic assumptions. Revisionists such as Mark Moyar will surely disagree, but Lawrence does represent the majority opinion among U.S. historians at the moment.
The book has no major flaws, but Lawrence's prose isn't exactly lively. At times "The Vietnam War" reads like a textbook. Given its brevity, the book merely alludes to topics such as the experience of soldiers, the effects of chemical warfare, the war in American and Vietnamese memory, etc. But then again, that's when the "for further reading" essay comes in extremely handy. As a solid foundation for further exploration of this major conflict--whether in a classroom or at private leisure--this short text does the job well.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Summary, but Not Thorough
By S. Robison
This book is a good choice for those seeking introductory information on the Vietnam War. It does a good job at presenting the political dynamics of the war, yet it is deficient in that it largely ignores the later repercussions of the war for the world as well as the huge importance (whether contrived or real) the war had on the Cold War. Furthermore, the book does not delve deeply into battles occurring during the war, largely confining itself to those political factors. However, I would recommend this book as a refresher, yet it's not for those already familiar with the conflict.
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