Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 355
EAN: 9780195125016
ISBN: 0195125010
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: January 28, 1999
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Sales Rank: 136109
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA

---

Related Items:

• Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution In A Divided Vietnam
• A Rumor of War
• Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays (Major Problems in American History)
• A Time for Peace: The Legacy of the Vietnam War
• The Things They Carried
• see more

---

Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Even after two decades, the memory of the Vietnam War seems to haunt our culture. From Forrest Gump to Miss Saigon, from Tim O'Brien's Pulitzer Prize-winning Going After Cacciato to Robert McNamara's controversial memoir In Retrospect, Americans are drawn again and again to ponder our long, tragic involvement in Southeast Asia. Now eminent historian Robert D. Schulzinger has combed the newly available documentary evidence, both in public and private archives, to produce an ambitious, masterful account of three decades of war in Vietnam--the first major full-length history of the conflict to be based on primary sources.

In A Time for War, Schulzinger paints a vast yet intricate canvas of more than three decades of conflict in Vietnam, from the first rumblings of rebellion against the French colonialists to the American intervention and eventual withdrawal. His comprehensive narrative incorporates every aspect of the war--from the military (as seen in his brisk account of the French failure at Dienbienphu) to the economic (such as the wage increase sparked by the draft in the United States) to the political. Drawing on massive research, he offers a vivid and insightful portrait of the changes in Vietnamese politics and society, from the rise of Ho Chi Minh, to the division of the country, to the struggles between South Vietnamese president Diem and heavily armed religious sects, to the infighting and corruption that plagued Saigon. Schulzinger reveals precisely how outside powers--first the French, then the Americans--committed themselves to war in Indochina, even against their own better judgment. Roosevelt, for example, derided the French efforts to reassert their colonial control after World War II, yet Truman, Eisenhower, and their advisers gradually came to believe that Vietnam was central to American interests. The author's account of Johnson is particularly telling and tragic, describing how president would voice clear headed, even prescient warnings about the dangers of intervention--then change his mind, committing America's prestige and military might to supporting a corrupt, unpopular regime. Schulzinger offers sharp criticism of the American military effort, and offers a fascinating look inside the Nixon White House, showing how the Republican president dragged out the war long past the point when he realized that the United States could not win. Finally, Schulzinger paints a brilliant political and social portrait of the times, illuminating the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary Americans and Vietnamese. Schulzinger shows what it was like to participate in the war--as a common soldier, an American nurse, a navy flyer, a conscript in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, a Vietcong fighter, or an antiwar protester.

In a field crowded with fiction, memoirs, and popular tracts, A Time for War will stand as the landmark history of America's longest war. Based on extensive archival research, it will be the first place readers will turn in an effort to understand this tragic, divisive conflict.

Amazon.com Review:
Taking a more extensive view of the American war in Indochina than have many other historians, Robert Schulzinger begins his well-crafted account at the end of World War II. The collapsing Japanese and French empires had created a political vacuum that could be filled only by a nationalist movement--one that, in Vietnam's case, was also communist. American involvement, he writes, was questionable from the start. He quotes Dean Rusk, an architect of Kennedy and Johnson administration war policies, as saying that his greatest mistake was overestimating the patience of the American people and underestimating that of the Vietnamese. That was but one in a long series of miscalculations over three decades, and Schulzinger's book admirably relates the sad history of that conflict.




Rating: - Solid historical overview of Vietnam and U.S. involvement
This is worth while reading for anyone interested in how the U.S. and it's political leaders, step by step, led the country into the tragedy that was Vietnam. The antecedents really go back to the end of WW II and is a long complicated story that involves the administrations of six presidents. Although this book is a fairly high level look at Vietnam (it would take more than one book to do otherwise), the author does do a good job of pulling the many threads together in to a fairly coherent story. ... Read More

---

Rating: - Revisionist History With Right-Wing Bias
In his account of the war in the last months of 1963, the author contradicts himself and reveals a right-wing bias. He acknowledges that Kennedy never committed combat troops to Vietnam, and never committed to commit them, and says rather that Kennedy simply "retained the option of ordering just such a deployment at a later date." But the author then contradicts himself and reveals his anti-Kennedy bias by asserting that "Kennedy bequeathed a terrible legacy to his successor, Lyndon Johnson. The ... Read More

---

Rating: - Good, depending on what you're looking for
This book is a very good political (not military) history of the war. It's based on U.S. archives, so it's told entirely from the perspective of U.S. policymakers, even when discussing French or Vietnamese events. Also, although the book is about as objective as possible, you really can't leave politics behind when you write about Vietnam. Schulzinger believes that the United States could not have won the war; that we got involved out of misguided good intentions rather than evil motives; and that the ... Read More

---

Rating: - A much-needed study of the Vietnam War
The conflict in Vietnam was one of the most divisive foreign policy issues in our nation's history. The events which led up to full-scale American involvement in Vietnam vividly illustrated this divisiveness; a divisiveness which would change politics in America and the way in which Americans would look at their government. Robert D. Schulzinger's book, "A Time for War:The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975", presents a comprehensive and analytical narrative on a war which is still hard for historians ... Read More

---

Rating: - A clear-cut history of the rationale for the Vietnam debacle
Dr. Schulzinger's book is the first of a two-part series on the history of Vietnamese resistance. While A Time For Peace is still being written, the prequel, A Time for War clearly describes the hows and whys that caused, first the French, and then the Americans to become embroiled in a controversial conflict that would divide their nations. Although some of Shulzinger's conclusions can be considered suspect (who could ever say that President Diem was not corrupt?), overall, the treatment is well-done.

---

Browse for similar items by category:

• Amazon Upgrade - Custom Stores - Specialty Stores - Books - All Amazon Upgrade
• Amazon Upgrade - Custom Stores - Specialty Stores - Books - History
• Amazon Upgrade - Custom Stores - Specialty Stores - Books - Nonfiction
• Qualifying Textbooks - Custom Stores - Specialty Stores - Books - General AAS
• 20th Century - United States - Americas - History - Subjects - Books - General