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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Michael Gorra, "The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War" (Liveright, 2020)

Michael Gorra, "The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War" (Liveright, 2020)

Today I talked to Michael Gorra about his new book The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War (Liveright, 2020). This episode touches on two of William Faulkner’s novels in particular: The Sound ...

21 Tammi 202136min

D. Barno and N. Bensahel, "Adaptation Under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime" (Oxford UP, 2020)

D. Barno and N. Bensahel, "Adaptation Under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime" (Oxford UP, 2020)

Few human enterprises are as complex, dynamic, and unpredictable as war. Armed conflict substitutes the relatively ordered reality of peace with the undeniably chaotic reality of combat. Militaries, b...

8 Tammi 20211h 2min

Jeremy Black, "A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

Jeremy Black, "A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

The First World War was marked by an exceptional expansion in the use and production of military cartography. But World War II took things even further, employing maps, charts, reconnaissance, and the...

6 Tammi 202128min

Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)

Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)

The 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim population and how best to write them into a new pan-As...

30 Joulu 202059min

Donald F. Johnson, "Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)

Donald F. Johnson, "Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)

When we read the Declaration of Independence, what tends to jump off the page are the lofty propositions concerning natural rights. Yet over a third of the brief document is taken up with a set of cha...

28 Joulu 202034min

Mark Cornwall, "Sarajevo 1914: Sparking the First World War" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

Mark Cornwall, "Sarajevo 1914: Sparking the First World War" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. This key event in 20th-century history continues to fascinate the public imagination, yet few historians hav...

17 Joulu 202042min

Jeremy Black, "Tank Warfare" (Indiana UP, 2020)

Jeremy Black, "Tank Warfare" (Indiana UP, 2020)

The story of the battlefield in the 20th century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of tanks. In Tank Warfare (Indiana UP, 2020), promine...

16 Joulu 202052min

Jiří Hutečka, "Men Under Fire: Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918" (Berghahn Books, 2019)

Jiří Hutečka, "Men Under Fire: Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918" (Berghahn Books, 2019)

In historical writing on World War I, Czech-speaking soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian military are typically studied as Czechs, rarely as soldiers, and never as men. As a result, the question ...

9 Joulu 20201h 2min

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