Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars
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Description
Making sense of the wars for Vietnam has had a long history. The question "why Vietnam?" dominated American and Vietnamese political life for much of the length of the wars and has continued to be asked in the decades since they ended. This volume brings together the work of eleven scholars to examine the conceptual and methodological shifts that have marked the contested terrain of Vietnam War scholarship. Editors Marilyn Young and Mark Bradley's superb group of renowned contributors spans the generations--including those who were active during wartime, along with scholars conducting research in Vietnamese sources and uncovering new sources in the United States, former Soviet Union, China, and Eastern and Western Europe. Ranging in format from top-down reconsiderations of critical decision-making moments in Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon, to microhistories of the war that explore its meanings from the bottom up, these essays comprise the most up-to-date collection of scholarship on the controversial historiography of the Vietnam Wars.Features
- Inaugural volume in National History Center's Reinterpreting History series, which looks at how interpretations of key events change over time
- New essays on Vietnam from every perspective written by a renowned, multigenerational group of contributors
Reviews
"Many of the 11 articles in Making Sense present wide-ranging examples of new and less conventional approaches to examining the war, with a particular focus on Vietnamese and international perspectives.... Essential."--K. Blaser, CHOICE
"This is a path-breaking, exceptionally well-researched book by both distinguished scholars who link and reinterpret the entire 1940s to 1970s series of conflicts, and leading scholars who have explored new archival sources for the first time--not least in Vietnam itself--to provide fresh, significant, and revealing insights into key aspects of a many-layered, and ever-haunting, war."--Walter LaFeber, author of America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006
"Examining the topic from local, national, and international perspectives, this important volume provides a superb introduction to the most recent scholarship on the Vietnam War."--George Herring, author of America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975
"The cutting-edge research in this volume constitutes a crucial addition to the library of anyone interested in the histories of the Vietnam Wars."--Patrick Hagopian, The Journal of American History
"There is little doubt that Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars will influence how future students of the war move forward in their efforts to understand the conflict."--James McAllister, History: Reviews of New Books
"Important and stimulating...succeeds splendidly in its goal of making sense of the various dimensions of the Vietnam War. Indeed, this is an excellent volume: a must read for first-year students and scholars alike." -- The European Legacy
"Living up to its billing, the book offers a view of the Vietnam Wars from a very wide variety of perspectives with essays covering the more-or-less typical high politics, a variety of Vietnamese views, some microhistory of the revolution, and even offerings on international history and myth making."-James M. Carter, Journal of World History
About the Author(s)
Edited by Mark Philip Bradley, Associate Professor of History, University of Chicago, and Marilyn B. Young, Professor of History, New York University
