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(1613)

Janet E. Croon, “The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865” (Savas Beatie, 2018)

Janet E. Croon, “The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865” (Savas Beatie, 2018)

Sit alongside a disabled teenage Southerner as he records his experience in The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2018). This unique document—...

31 Mai 20181h 1min

Jonathan Boff, “Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front” (Oxford UP, 2018)

Jonathan Boff, “Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front” (Oxford UP, 2018)

There has been historiographical revolution in the literature of the war on the Western Front in the past thirty years. In Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front (...

28 Mai 20181h 3min

Simeon Man, “Soldiering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific” (U California Press, 2018)

Simeon Man, “Soldiering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific” (U California Press, 2018)

Simeon Man‘s book Soldiering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific (University of California Press, 2018) focuses on the role of Asians who worked within the making of U.S. g...

25 Mai 201845min

Tarak Barkawi, “Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II” (Cambridge UP, 2017)

Tarak Barkawi, “Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II” (Cambridge UP, 2017)

Tarak Barkawi, a Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics, has written an important book that will cause many of us to rethink the way we understand the relationships betwee...

25 Mai 201838min

James Wright, “Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and its War” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017)

James Wright, “Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and its War” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017)

There’s been something of a revival of interest in the Vietnam War in the past years.  Perhaps it’s the influence of Ken Burns’ documentary miniseries, perhaps it’s just the distance from the wars in ...

17 Mai 201850min

Jessica Elkind, “Aid Under Fire: Nation Building and the Vietnam War” (U Kentucky Press, 2016)

Jessica Elkind, “Aid Under Fire: Nation Building and the Vietnam War” (U Kentucky Press, 2016)

As any scholar of the Vietnam War can tell you, the field doesn’t lack for study: it’s one of the most-studied fields for both military and diplomatic historians. And yet, for all of the scholarly att...

9 Mai 201857min

Steven L. Ossad, “Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI General, 1893-1981” (University of Missouri Press, 2017)

Steven L. Ossad, “Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI General, 1893-1981” (University of Missouri Press, 2017)

Steven L. Ossad joins New Books at Military History to talk about his award-winning biography, Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI General, 1893-1981 (University of Missouri Press, 2017).  Following the...

4 Mai 20181h 13min

Harlan Ullman, “Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Every War It Starts” (Naval Institute Press, 2017)

Harlan Ullman, “Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Every War It Starts” (Naval Institute Press, 2017)

Since 1945, the United States has lost every war it started. Why? A Vietnam War veteran, Tufts University Ph. D. and intimate of many of the leading figures in the American national security apparatus...

2 Mai 20181h 8min

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