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(1614)

Lucian Staiano-Daniels, "The War People: A Social History of Common Soldiers during the Era of the Thirty Years War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Lucian Staiano-Daniels, "The War People: A Social History of Common Soldiers during the Era of the Thirty Years War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

In The War People: A Social History of Common Soldiers during the Era of the Thirty Years War (Cambridge UP, 2024), Lucian Staino-Daniles uses the transnational story of a single regiment to examine h...

15 Nov 202452min

D. M. Giangreco, "Truman and the Bomb: The Untold Story" (Potomac Books, 2023)

D. M. Giangreco, "Truman and the Bomb: The Untold Story" (Potomac Books, 2023)

Many myths have grown up around President Harry S. Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons against Imperial Japan. In destroying these myths, D. M. Giangreco’s Truman and the Bomb: The Untold Story (...

15 Nov 20241h 9min

Cathie Carmichael, "The Habsburg Garrison Complex in Trebinje: A Lost World" (CEU Press, 2024)

Cathie Carmichael, "The Habsburg Garrison Complex in Trebinje: A Lost World" (CEU Press, 2024)

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sits down with Cathie Carmichael (University of East Anglia) to talk about her new book with CEU Press, The Habsburg Garrison Complex in Trebinje: A Lo...

14 Nov 202434min

Maksim Goldenshteyn, "So They Remember: A Jewish Family’s Story of Surviving the Holocaust in Soviet Ukraine" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)

Maksim Goldenshteyn, "So They Remember: A Jewish Family’s Story of Surviving the Holocaust in Soviet Ukraine" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)

When we think of Nazi camps, names such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau come instantly to mind. Yet the history of the Holocaust extends beyond those notorious sites. In the former territory o...

13 Nov 20241h 27min

S4E14 Our Enemies Will Vanish: A Conversation with Yaroslav Trofimov

S4E14 Our Enemies Will Vanish: A Conversation with Yaroslav Trofimov

Join us as we discuss Yaroslav Trofimov’s recent publication, Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (Penguin, 2024). We dive into the history of his journalis...

13 Nov 202445min

Nandini Sundar, "The Burning Forest: India's War In Bastar" (Verso, 2019)

Nandini Sundar, "The Burning Forest: India's War In Bastar" (Verso, 2019)

The Burning Forest: India's War Against the Maoists (Verso, 2019) by Nandini Sundar is an empathetic, moving account of what drives indigenous peasants to support armed struggle despite severe state r...

12 Nov 202451min

Anne Berg, "Empire of Rags and Bones: Waste and War in Nazi Germany" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Anne Berg, "Empire of Rags and Bones: Waste and War in Nazi Germany" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Paper, bottles, metal scrap, kitchen garbage, rubber, hair, fat, rags, and bones--the Nazi empire demanded its population obsessively collect anything that could be reused or recycled. Entrepreneurs, ...

11 Nov 202459min

Jeremy Black, "Introduction to Global Military History: 1775 to the Present Day" (Routledge, 2018)

Jeremy Black, "Introduction to Global Military History: 1775 to the Present Day" (Routledge, 2018)

Introduction to Global Military History:: 1775 to the Present Day (Routledge, 2018) provides a lucid and comprehensive account of military developments around the modern world from the eighteenth cent...

9 Nov 202445min

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