The History of the Vietnam War

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Rooted in recent scholarship, The History of the Vietnam War offers profound new perspectives on the political, historical, military, and social issues that defined the war and its effect on Vietnam and the United States.
Laying the chronological and critical foundations for the volume, David L. Anderson opens with an essay on the Vietnam War’s major moments and enduring relevance. Other contributors in this volume discuss topics such as Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism, the Viet Minh-led war against French colonialism, the war’s impact on Vietnamese women and urban culture, the domestic tensions created by America’s involvement in Vietnam, the spread of the war to Laos and Cambodia, the legacy of the war within Vietnamese and American contexts, Eisenhower’s and Kennedy’s efforts at nation building in South Vietnam, the pivotal period before and after the Tet Offensive, Nixon’s paradoxical decision to end U.S. intervention while pursuing a destructive air war, and a diagnosis of the symptoms of the “Vietnam syndrome” evident in later debates about U.S. foreign policy. Anderson’s expert collection is essential to understanding America’s entanglement in the Vietnam War.