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Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975, by A. J. Langguth
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Winner of the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius J. Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book, the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal for Nonfiction, and the PEN Center West Award for Best Research Nonfiction
Twenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, historian and journalist A. J. Langguth delivers an authoritative account of the war based on official documents not available earlier and on new reporting from both the American and Vietnamese perspectives. In Our Vietnam, Langguth takes us inside the waffling and deceitful White Houses of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon; documents the ineptness and corruption of our South Vietnamese allies; and recounts the bravery of soldiers on both sides of the war. With its broad sweep and keen insights, Our Vietnam brings together the kaleidoscopic events and personalities of the war into one engrossing and unforgettable narrative.
- Sales Rank: #1255416 in Books
- Color: Grey
- Brand: Brand: Simon n Schuster
- Published on: 2002-03-12
- Released on: 2002-03-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 2.10" w x 6.12" l, 2.03 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 768 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
By the evidence former New York Times war correspondent A. J. Langguth presents in Our Vietnam, that long conflict can be seen as a steadily accumulating series of missteps, misinterpretations, and mistakes. Some had their origins in earnest attempts to bring scientific method to bear on the business of killing, such as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's belief in the theory of "statistical control," a cost-benefit accounting procedure that, hitherto confined to factories, was applied to the battlefield with tragic result. Some, such as the endless argument at the Paris peace talks over the shape of the conference table, were born in the endless struggle to win the war on the propaganda front. And some, like the CIA's misreading of events that led to the 1963 coup against South Vietnamese leader Diem, arose from an almost willful refusal to recognize the realities of Vietnamese society.
In this thoroughgoing history of America's adventure in Vietnam, Langguth shows a clear appreciation for the war's many ironies--Lyndon Johnson's plan to build a huge dam on the Mekong River while bombing the neighboring countryside into submission, Ho Chi Minh's distress at having to battle the Americans, whose ally he had once been--while charting a clear narrative course through a dauntingly complex series of events. His highly readable book, ranking alongside Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History, promises to become a standard history of the era, and it is superb in every respect. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
The New York Times Vietnam correspondent and sometime Saigon bureau chief during the war, Langguth has since written eight books (including Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution) and now teaches journalism at USC's Annenberg School of Communications. Short on analysis yet with the comprehensiveness of a long-term, slow-cooked project, his new book sets out the politically charged policy-making story of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War completely and seamlessly. Four sections pair leaders from each sideDKennedy and Ho Chi Minh (long); Vo Nguyen Giap and Lyndon Johnson (longer); Nixon and Le Duc Tho; Le Duan and FordDcreating a personality-driven saga via dozens of individual stories. Langguth has interviewed many of the major players and mined the best primary and secondary accounts, but his interviews with lesser known but consequential American and Vietnamese eyewitnesses prove the most revelatory: William Kohlmann of the CIA; Viet Cong Lt. Ta Minh Kham; Foreign Service Officer Paul Kattenburg; former State Department director of intelligence Thomas Hughes; Nguyen Dinh Tu, a one-time South Vietnamese newspaper reporter; and many others. The result is a well-crafted and adroitly balanced account that tells a long, compelling story and sets itself apart from the Vietnam War pack. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Lynn Nesbit. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The Vietnam War was and still is, next to the Civil War, one of the most divisive wars in U.S. history. By looking at the key decision makers on both sides, Langguth chronicles why the outcome was inevitable. In the U.S., there was an outgoing beloved president who warned against a "military-industrial" complex that could influence foreign policy through costly investments in winless conflicts. It was a warning that went unheeded. Into office came a young president elected by the narrowest of margins who found himself deferring to the "wisdom" of elder statesmen, many of whom still retained the view of the U.S. as an invincible power. Finally, there was an old-line former Senate leader swept into the Oval Office because of an assassination's bullet. On the other side, there was Ho Chi Minh, the quiet revolutionary, and Diem, a corrupt leader backed by the U.S., who handled his opposition by silencing them with such weapons as a resurrected guillotine. This book may be compared somewhat to David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, but it is unique in its perspective of the major players on both sides and is reinforced by newly released documents and the interviews Langguth undertook to sort through detail by detail where everything went so wrong in our war, our Vietnam. Marlene Chamberlain
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
36 of 76 people found the following review helpful.
Nothing new; bloated and trivial
By D. C. Carrad
A quick litmus test for the accuracy and even-handedness of Vietnam War books is to compare the author's treatment of the massacre of 3,000-5,000 innocent Vietnamese civilians (teachers, religious figures, etc.) by the NVA and VC in Hue during the Tet Offensive with the treatment of the My Lai massacre where several hundred innocents were killed. One was a deliberate official act (the NVA and VC were given lists of names and addresses to target prepared by their intelligence people) and the other an aberration (every two-bit Seymour Hersh wanna be has been looking for other US Army massacres since 1969 and finding only dry wells) which was investigated and punished. Langguth fails this test miserably, misinterpreting both events. His fly-on-the-wall attempts to reconstruct insider politics doesn't come across credibly either. It is particularly shameful that he abruptly ends his book in May 1975 ingnoring the Cambodian holocaust, the Vietnamese boat people and other tragic consequences of his reporting. (I spent a year in Vietnam as an Army officer in 1968-69 and four years doing aid work in Cambodia in 1996-2000 so I have seen it firsthand). This book is just more tired, establishment press late hits and piling on...save the trees and buy "Stolen Valor" instead.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Detailed narration of war
By Frank
This book is a must-read for anyone wanting an in-depth history/ chronology of the Vietnam war. It's primarily a political history, documenting the motivations and actions of leaders and those who advised them, and then how those decisions played out on the ground.
One early event from the book is telling: in May 1962, McNamara was making his first trip to Vietnam for a detailed briefing on the situation, particularly on Communist strength. There were, in fact, an estimated 40,000 in local Communist battalions and identifiable guerrilla units. His briefers tightened their criteria, and reduced that to 20,000 - 25,000. THAT number had to be reduced, and was cut to 17,500. By the time McNamara arrived in Vietnam, he was told the number was 16,305. The night before the briefing, the colonel doing the briefing removed one-third of "enemy-controlled areas" from McNamara's briefing map.
This book details not only how our government deceived the public, but also itself -- and goes into the motivations of the South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, and their relations with China, Soviet Union, and the French.
I do not see "lack of analysis" as a fault of this book, as a previous reviewer did. The book does a great job of presenting what each actor said, wrote, and did -- in plenty of detail so that the reader can think for him/herself. For instance, Langguth spells out exactly how Jack Kennedy SAID privately that he was planning on pulling out of Vietnam in his second term. Would that have happened? Would it have been prevented by Congress, and the need for conservatives' support on domestic issues? Did Kennedy really mean what he said? That's all interesting, but it's essentially speculation outside the scope of the book.
I do think the book would have benefited from somehow presenting an overview of the war along with the detailed "novel" approach, which trusts the reader with independent knowledge of the war. Also, the binding in my library copy was weak.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Power and failure
By E. Grabianowski
This work shows exactly how the United states gradually became involved in Vietnam from the details on up. Other reviews have commented on Langguth's objectivity and accuracy. I will mention the most lasting impression this book left on me:
Most of us have the perception that the great men of power throughout history are made of something different from ourselves. We only see them on the world's stage, made up and prepared; speeches rehearsed; ceremony and station lending gravity to their every word and action. We don't think of them sleepless; with a bit of popcorn stuck in their teeth; complaining to their wives; or any of the other everyday situations that even these men of power experience. And so we assume their minds are always bent to grand designs. We think they hold a certain wisdom that lets them maneuver through politics and war, making decisions based on facts or morality.
Langguth's tale tells a different story. Decisions that cost tens of thousands of lives and reshape the world are made by men as sweaty and itchy as you and I. Wars are started because of ego, petty squabbles, and job security. Elections! How many have died so that one man could keep his job? So we see Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon, and all the well-dressed men around them, chewing their lips and eyeing one and other with mistrust, stabbing one and other in the back, lying and cheating, making mistakes.
Wars are started all because we make the mistake of investing such power in mere humans.
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