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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Erin Lin, "When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rural Cambodia" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Erin Lin, "When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rural Cambodia" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tons of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country. Fifty years after the las...

28 Kesä 202453min

J. Megan Greene, "Building a Nation at War: Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China during and after World War II" (Harvard UP, 2022)

J. Megan Greene, "Building a Nation at War: Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China during and after World War II" (Harvard UP, 2022)

Building a Nation at War: Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China during and after World War II (Harvard UP, 2022) argues that the Chinese Nationalist g...

27 Kesä 20241h 20min

Donald Stoker, "Purpose and Power: US Grand Strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Donald Stoker, "Purpose and Power: US Grand Strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

In our interview, I spoke with Donald Stoker about the changes in American grand strategy over the past 250 years and the major themes from his new book: Purpose and Power: US Grand Strategy from the ...

25 Kesä 202446min

M. Girard Dorsey, "Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II" (Cornell UP, 2023)

M. Girard Dorsey, "Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II" (Cornell UP, 2023)

In Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II (Cornell UP, 2023), M. Girard Dorsey uncovers just how close Britain, the United States, and Canada ca...

21 Kesä 202457min

William W. Hagen, "Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914-1920" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

William W. Hagen, "Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914-1920" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Widespread anti-Jewish pogroms accompanied the rebirth of Polish statehood out of World War I and Polish-Soviet War. In Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914-1920 (Cambridge UP, 2018), William W. Hagen...

19 Kesä 20241h 34min

Shannon Bontrager, "Death at the Edges of Empire: Fallen Soldiers, Cultural Memory, and the Making of an American Nation, 1863-1921" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

Shannon Bontrager, "Death at the Edges of Empire: Fallen Soldiers, Cultural Memory, and the Making of an American Nation, 1863-1921" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

Hundreds of thousands of individuals perished in the epic conflict of the American Civil War. As battles raged and the specter of death and dying hung over the divided nation, the living worked not on...

11 Kesä 20241h 41min

Eugene Rogan, "The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World" (Basic Book, 2024)

Eugene Rogan, "The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World" (Basic Book, 2024)

The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World (Basic Book, 2024) recreates one of the watershed moments in the history of the Middle East: the ferocious outbreaks...

8 Kesä 202443min

David Stahel, "Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942" (FSG, 2019)

David Stahel, "Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942" (FSG, 2019)

Germany’s winter campaign of 1941–1942 is commonly seen as the Wehrmacht's first defeat. In Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942 (FSG, 2019), David Stahel argues ...

7 Kesä 20241h 15min

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