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

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Jonathan Marc Gribetz, "Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Jonathan Marc Gribetz, "Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy" (Princeton UP, 2024)

How the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center informed the PLO's relationship to Zionism and Israel In September 1982, the Israeli military invaded West Beirut and Israel-allied Lebanese m...

15 Jul 202429min

Alfred Peredo Flores, "Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962" (Cornell UP, 2023)

Alfred Peredo Flores, "Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962" (Cornell UP, 2023)

In Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962 (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Alfred Peredo Flores argues that the US occupation of the island of Guåhan (Guam)...

14 Jul 202447min

Mark L. Haas, "Frenemies: When Ideological Enemies Ally" (Cornell UP, 2022)

Mark L. Haas, "Frenemies: When Ideological Enemies Ally" (Cornell UP, 2022)

Alliances among ideological enemies confronting a common foe, or "frenemy" alliances, are unlike coalitions among ideologically-similar states facing comparable threats. Members of frenemy alliances a...

13 Jul 202445min

Huan Jin, "The Collapse of Heaven: The Taiping Civil War and Chinese Literature and Culture, 1850-1880" (Harvard UP, 2024)

Huan Jin, "The Collapse of Heaven: The Taiping Civil War and Chinese Literature and Culture, 1850-1880" (Harvard UP, 2024)

The Collapse of Heaven: The Taiping Civil War and Chinese Literature and Culture, 1850-1880 (Harvard UP, 2024) investigates a long-neglected century in Chinese literature through the lens of the Taipi...

13 Jul 20241h 6min

Laura Robson, "Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work" (Verso, 2023)

Laura Robson, "Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work" (Verso, 2023)

When Americans and other citizens of advanced capitalist countries think of humanitarianism, they think of charitable efforts to help people displaced by war, disaster, and oppression find new homes w...

9 Jul 202451min

Karine Varley, "Vichy's Double Bind: French Collaboration between Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Karine Varley, "Vichy's Double Bind: French Collaboration between Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Karine Varley's book Vichy's Double Bind: French Collaboration between Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War (Cambridge UP, 2023) advances a significant new interpretation of French collabo...

9 Jul 20241h 18min

Rachel Williams, "Tabernacles in the Wilderness: The US Christian Commission on the Civil War Battlefront" (Kent State UP, 2024)

Rachel Williams, "Tabernacles in the Wilderness: The US Christian Commission on the Civil War Battlefront" (Kent State UP, 2024)

Examining how a civilian organization used the Civil War to advance their religious mission. Tabernacles in the Wilderness: The US Christian Commission on the Civil War Battlefront (Kent State UP, 202...

30 Jun 202441min

Maryna Shevtsova, "Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices" (Lexington Books, 2024)

Maryna Shevtsova, "Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices" (Lexington Books, 2024)

Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices came out with Lexington Books at the two-year’s mark of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in February 2024. This volume undertak...

30 Jun 202445min

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