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(1615)

Putin's War on Ukraine in Historical Perpective

Putin's War on Ukraine in Historical Perpective

With the war in Ukraine showing no signs of stopping anytime soon, it was thought a worthwhile idea to have an informed discussion with four expert historians of 19th and 20th century European and Eas...

24 Mai 20221h 8min

Jim Downs, "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine" (Harvard UP, 2021)

Jim Downs, "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine" (Harvard UP, 2021)

Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence Nightingale...

23 Mai 202259min

Elizabeth Oyler and Katherine Saltzman-Li, "Cultural Imprints: War and Memory in the Samurai Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)

Elizabeth Oyler and Katherine Saltzman-Li, "Cultural Imprints: War and Memory in the Samurai Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)

Elizabeth Oyler and Katherine Saltzman-Li's book Cultural Imprints: War and Memory in the Samurai Age (Cornell UP, 2022) draws on literary works, artifacts, performing arts, and documents that were cr...

20 Mai 202251min

Paddy Docherty, "Blood and Bronze: The British Empire and the Sack of Benin" (Hurst, 2022)

Paddy Docherty, "Blood and Bronze: The British Empire and the Sack of Benin" (Hurst, 2022)

The Benin Bronzes are among the British Museum’s most prized possessions. Celebrated for their great beauty, they embody the history, myth and artistry of the ancient Kingdom of Benin, once West Afric...

17 Mai 20221h 15min

Jaclyn Granick, "International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

Jaclyn Granick, "International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

Today I talked to Jaclyn Granick about her book International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War (Cambridge UP, 2021).  In 1914, seven million Jews across Eastern Europe and the Easter...

6 Mai 202249min

Heather Jones, "For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

Heather Jones, "For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a ground-breaking history of the British monarchy in the First World War and of the social and cultural funct...

3 Mai 202242min

Michael Mackenzie, "Otto Dix and the First World War: Grotesque Humor, Camaraderie and Remembrance" (Peter Lang, 2019)

Michael Mackenzie, "Otto Dix and the First World War: Grotesque Humor, Camaraderie and Remembrance" (Peter Lang, 2019)

Otto Dix fought in the First World War for the better part of four years before becoming one of the most important artists of the Weimar era. Marked by the experience, he made monumental, difficult an...

3 Mai 202247min

Joseph Fewsmith, "Forging Leninism in China: Mao and the Remaking of the Chinese Communist Party, 1927–1934" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

Joseph Fewsmith, "Forging Leninism in China: Mao and the Remaking of the Chinese Communist Party, 1927–1934" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

Forging Leninism in China: Mao and the Remaking of the Chinese Communist Party, 1927–1934 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) is a re-examination of the events of the Chinese revolution and the transfo...

29 Apr 202255min

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