Mark Bradley and Marilyn Young, “Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars” (Oxford UP, 2008)

Mark Bradley and Marilyn Young, “Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars” (Oxford UP, 2008)

What to think about the Vietnam War? A righteous struggle against global Communist tyranny? An episode in American imperialism? A civil war into which the United States blindly stumbled? And what of the Vietnamese perspective? How did they–both North and South–understand the war? Mark Bradley and Marilyn Young have assembled a crack team of historians to consider (or rather reconsider) these questions in Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Transnational and International Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). The book is part of the National History Center‘s Reinterpreting History series. The pieces in it are wide-ranging: some see the war from the heights of international diplomacy, others from the hamlets of the Mekong Delta. They introduce new themes, for example, the role of American racial stereotypes in the conflict. More than anything else, however, they are nuanced. Their authors provide no simple answers because there are none. You will not find easy explanations, good guys and bad guys, or ideological drum-beating in these pages. What you will find is a sensitive effort to understand an event of mind-boggling, irreducible complexity. There’s a lesson here: we may think we know what we are doing on far-away shores, but we are fooling ourselves. Reminds one a bit of Tolstoy’s thoughts on the philosophy of history at the end of War and Peace. Still worth a read, as is this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

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Susan Eisenhower, "How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions" (Thomas Dunne, 2020)

Susan Eisenhower, "How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions" (Thomas Dunne, 2020)

Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red S...

5 Heinä 20211h 21min

Margaret MacMillan, "War: How Conflict Shaped Us" (Random House, 2020)

Margaret MacMillan, "War: How Conflict Shaped Us" (Random House, 2020)

“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” -Isaiah 2:4 The instinct...

28 Kesä 202135min

Philip Zelikow, "The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917" (PublicAffairs, 2021)

Philip Zelikow, "The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917" (PublicAffairs, 2021)

During a pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War all sides-Germany, Britain, and America-believed the war could be concluded. Peace at the end of 1916 would have saved millions of live...

24 Kesä 202135min

Edward G. Longacre, "Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

Edward G. Longacre, "Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

Today I talked to Edward G. Longacre about his new book Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg (University of Nebraska Press, 2021). On the 3rd day of the Battle o...

24 Kesä 202132min

Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)

Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)

World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and...

23 Kesä 20211h 15min

Bradley Cesario, "New Crusade: The Royal Navy and British Navalism, 1884-1914" (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021)

Bradley Cesario, "New Crusade: The Royal Navy and British Navalism, 1884-1914" (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021)

In the years leading up to the First World War, a loose combination of serving naval officers, journalists, and politicians in Great Britain orchestrated a wave of support for the Royal Navy and an ex...

17 Kesä 202146min

Jelena Đureinović, "The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia" (Routledge, 2019)

Jelena Đureinović, "The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia" (Routledge, 2019)

Exploring the concepts of collaboration, resistance, and postwar retribution and focusing on the Chetnik movement, Jelena Đureinović's book The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contempora...

7 Kesä 202155min

Jeremy Black, "To Lose an Empire: British Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1758-90" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

Jeremy Black, "To Lose an Empire: British Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1758-90" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional understanding as to why the British Empire, at perhaps the height of its power, lost c...

2 Kesä 202143min

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