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)

Carlotta Gall, “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)

Carlotta Gall, “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)

Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan for almost the entire duration of the American invasion and occupation, beginning shortly after 9/11...

23 Okt 20141h 21min

Beth Linker, “War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)

Beth Linker, “War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America” (University of Chicago Press, 2014)

Beth Linker is the author of War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (University of Chicago Press, 2011).  As she reveals, the story of individual rehabilitation from war-related injury was...

23 Sep 20141h 4min

Guy Chet, “The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688-1856” (U of Massachusetts Press, 2014)

Guy Chet, “The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688-1856” (U of Massachusetts Press, 2014)

Guy Chet, Associate Professor of early American and military history at the University of North Texas, in his book The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688-18...

22 Sep 201454min

Willard Sunderland, “The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution” (Cornell UP, 2014)

Willard Sunderland, “The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution” (Cornell UP, 2014)

The Russian Empire once extended from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan and contained a myriad of different ethnicities and nationalities. Dr. Willard Sunderland‘s The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the...

4 Sep 20141h 7min

Mark Mazzetti, “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth” (Penguin, 2013)

Mark Mazzetti, “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth” (Penguin, 2013)

There are many movies about evil CIA agents assassinating supposed enemies of the US. Those who saw the latest Captain America movie will have witnessed the plan by Hydra (a fascist faction within a s...

8 Aug 201434min

Tom Weiner, “Called to Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the Vietnam War Draft” (Levellers Press, 2011)

Tom Weiner, “Called to Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the Vietnam War Draft” (Levellers Press, 2011)

In 1969, the United States created and implemented a new method of drafting young men for military service–the “draft lottery.” The old system, whereby local draft boards selected those to enter servi...

31 Jul 20141h 2min

Jacqueline E. Whitt, “Bringing God to Men: American Military Chaplains and the Vietnam War” (University of North Carolina Press, 2014)

Jacqueline E. Whitt, “Bringing God to Men: American Military Chaplains and the Vietnam War” (University of North Carolina Press, 2014)

In this original and innovative study of the American military chaplaincy, Jacqueline E. Whitt examines the institution’s challenges and struggles in the post-World War II era, with the Vietnam War ac...

5 Jul 20141h 9min

Filip Slaveski, “The Soviet Occupation of Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2013)

Filip Slaveski, “The Soviet Occupation of Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2013)

For over three years, from June 1941 to late 1944, the German Army and related Nazi forces (the SS, occupation troops, administrative organizations) conducted a Vernichtungskrieg–a war of annihilation...

2 Jul 20141h 10min

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