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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Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)

Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous―and easier to share...

3 Dec 201957min

Andrew Roberts, "Leadership in War: Lessons From Those Who Made History" (Allen Lane, 2019)

Andrew Roberts, "Leadership in War: Lessons From Those Who Made History" (Allen Lane, 2019)

Andrew Roberts is one of our most distinguished biographers and historians, and the author of the magisterial work, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (2018). Today we talk to Andrew about his most recen...

27 Nov 201933min

Mila Dragojević, "Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War" (Cornell UP, 2019)

Mila Dragojević, "Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War" (Cornell UP, 2019)

How does violence against civilians become permissible in wartime? Why do some communities experience violence while others do not? In her new book, Mila Dragojević develops the concept of amoral comm...

27 Nov 201944min

Stephen R. Taaffe, "Washington’s Revolutionary War Generals" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)

Stephen R. Taaffe, "Washington’s Revolutionary War Generals" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)

When George Washington led the United States to victory in the American Revolution, he did so in collaboration with seventy-three other men who served as major and brigadier generals in the Continenta...

27 Nov 201944min

Jeremy Yellen, "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War" (Cornell UP, 2019)

Jeremy Yellen, "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War" (Cornell UP, 2019)

Jeremy Yellen’s The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a challenging transnational exploration of the Greater East Asia Co-Pros...

25 Nov 20191h 17min

Serhii Plokhy, "Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front" (Oxford UP, 2019)

Serhii Plokhy, "Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front" (Oxford UP, 2019)

What happened when Americans and Soviets fought alongside one another against Hitler? How did relations at Poltava airbase reveal cracks in the Grand Alliance? Serhii Plokhy tells the story of persona...

20 Nov 201958min

Mike Duncan, "The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic" (PublicAffairs, 2017)

Mike Duncan, "The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic" (PublicAffairs, 2017)

The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. Beginning as a small city-state in central Italy, Rome gradually expanded into a wider world filled with ...

19 Nov 20191h 23min

Appeasement Eighty Years On

Appeasement Eighty Years On

According to one dictionary definition, the term means: “to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of justice...

18 Nov 201953min

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