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

Episoder(1612)

Anthony Tucker-Jones, "The Secret War: Spies, Lies and the Art of Deception in World War II" (Sirius, 2025)

Anthony Tucker-Jones, "The Secret War: Spies, Lies and the Art of Deception in World War II" (Sirius, 2025)

Written by British former intelligence officer, Anthony Tucker-Jones, this fascinating, illustrated guide takes a deep dive into the secret operations which shaped World War II. Most of the great mil...

27 Okt 20251h 41min

Roger Moorhouse, "Wolfpack: Hitler’s U-Boat War 1939-45" (HarperCollins, 2025)

Roger Moorhouse, "Wolfpack: Hitler’s U-Boat War 1939-45" (HarperCollins, 2025)

Winston Churchill famously remarked that the threat of the German U-Boats was the only thing that had “really frightened” him during World War Two. The U-Boats certainly claimed a bitter harvest among...

26 Okt 20251h 5min

Selena Daly, "Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Selena Daly, "Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

During the First World War, over 300,000 Italian emigrants returned to Italy from around the world to perform their conscripted military service, a mass mobilisation which was a uniquely Italian pheno...

24 Okt 20251h 3min

Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War" (U California Press, 2025)

Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War" (U California Press, 2025)

The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the...

23 Okt 202545min

Aileen Teague, "Policing on Drugs: The United States, Mexico, and the Origins of the Modern Drug War, 1969-2000" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Aileen Teague, "Policing on Drugs: The United States, Mexico, and the Origins of the Modern Drug War, 1969-2000" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Today, images of cartels, security agents donning face coverings, graphs depicting egregious murder rates, and military guards at US border crossings influence the world's perception of Mexico. Mexico...

22 Okt 202555min

Stephen Fritz, "The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader" (Yale UP, 2018)

Stephen Fritz, "The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader" (Yale UP, 2018)

In his new book, The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader (Yale University Press, 2018), Stephen Fritz professor of history at East Tennessee State University reexamines Hitler as a military com...

21 Okt 20251h 16min

Angelos Chaniotis, "Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian" (Harvard UP, 2018)

Angelos Chaniotis, "Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian" (Harvard UP, 2018)

The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. In Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian(Harvard University Press, 2018), Angel...

20 Okt 20251h 11min

Danny Orbach, "Plots Against Hitler" (Mariner, 2016)

Danny Orbach, "Plots Against Hitler" (Mariner, 2016)

In his new book, Plots Against Hitler (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), Danny Orbach, Senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem offers a profound and complete examination of t...

19 Okt 20251h 3min

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