Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 - Softcover

Young, Marilyn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060921072 ISBN 13: 9780060921071

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1991

Synopsis

The first book to give equal weight to the Vietnamese and American sides of the Vietnam war.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This book is a work of synthesis that could not have been attempted without the extraordinary work of scholars and writers on both the history of American war and the history of the Vietnam war of resistance.

From Library Journal:

Two new books join the many which try to summarize and analyze the Vietnam War, its precedents, and its epilog, with differing approaches and results. Young (history, NYU) coauthored, along with William G. Rosenberg, Transforming Russia & China ( LJ 1/1/82). Her current study focuses on the American experience, while touching on the periods before and after direct American involvement. She provides some useful insights, and details debates among American leaders, but she draws predominantly on published sources and offers little new information. More significantly, her arguments are heavily biased (she seems to think that only the American and South Vietnamese military and governments demonstrated cruelty, corruption, deception, and destruction), leading to some troubling conclusions (e.g., that U.S. bombing of Cambodia may have been responsible for the later horrors of the Khmer Rouge), and leaving the reader unable to place events in any kind of valid historical perspective. In stark contrast to Young's black-and-white picture, Olson and Roberts (history, Sam Houston State Univ. and Purdue Univ., respectively) paint a picture of many colors. This successful popular history of the war is less scholarly, less detailed than The Vietnam Wars , but the better-balanced coverage throughout yields a more insightful, instructive history. At times the authors' emotionalism (e.g., the account of the My Lai massacre) clouds their presentation, and the otherwise fascinating discussion of the postwar media's depiction of the war is not up to date, but general readers will find their book to be a helpful and accessible introduction to the complexities of the Vietnam experience.
- Kenneth W. Berger, Duke Univ. Lib., Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0060921072
• ISBN 13: 9780060921071
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448