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)

Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023)

Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023)

Guangxi, a region on China's southern border with Vietnam, has a large population of ethnic minorities and a history of rebellion and intergroup conflict. In the summer of 1968, during the high tide o...

9 Mar 20251h 22min

Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)

Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)

On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army in the Sinai, had hobbled their British and US al...

8 Mar 20251h 4min

Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024)

Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024)

Mass violence comes not only from states, but also from people. By analyzing mass violence as social interaction through survivor accounts and other sources, Conditions of Violence (de Gruyter, 2024) ...

6 Mar 202536min

Janam Mukherjee, "Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2015)

Janam Mukherjee, "Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2015)

The years leading up to the independence and accompanying partition of India mark a tumultuous period in the history of Bengal. Representing both a major front in the Indian struggle against colonial ...

6 Mar 202558min

John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerbated existing and created new problems of piracy ac...

4 Mar 202546min

Jack Dempsey, "Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans" (Michigan Civil War Association, 2024)

Jack Dempsey, "Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans" (Michigan Civil War Association, 2024)

Michigan's African Americans played critical roles in winning the Civil War and setting millions of fellow Americans forever free. The 1st Michigan Colored Infantry Regiment, more than 1,500 strong, h...

4 Mar 202536min

Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920" (Edwin Mellen, 2015)

Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920" (Edwin Mellen, 2015)

Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War discusses how anti-Jewish violence began during the revolution and civil war 1917-1920 raising questions of responsibility of civil and military aut...

1 Mar 20251h 15min

Matthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

Matthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

In this complete military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Britain's Pacification of Palestine (Cambridge UP, 2019), Matthew Hughes shows how the British Army was so ...

28 Feb 20251h 24min

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