The War that Never Ends: Historians and the Vietnam War

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139021760.009

8 - The War that Never Ends: Historians and the Vietnam War

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Robert K. Brigham

Edited by

Frank Costigliola and

Michael J. Hogan

Show author details

Robert K. Brigham: Affiliation:
Vassar College
Frank Costigliola: Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Michael J. Hogan: Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Springfield

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The Vietnam War remains the most significant political experience for an entire American generation. That same generation presided over two long and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and events there no doubt increased public interest and debate over the conduct, outcome, and meaning of the Vietnam War. The result has been a steady increase in the number of scholarly monographs published on Vietnam, making it the war that never ends. Some of this scholarship is simply an extension of the ideological debates that raged on during the conflict, but there has also been a number of recent studies that complicate the war and its meaning. It appears increasingly difficult for scholars to tell the entire story of the war. Its history is told more in fragments, and as a result, no overarching consensus on the contours of the war has developed. In addition, there are no easily discerned schools of thought – such as orthodox or revisionist – that help us parse out the vast literature on the war. It would be impossible, therefore, to review all the worthy scholarship on the Vietnam War or to place it neatly into “camps.” Instead, this essay attempts to survey representative works that point to larger trends in the intellectual landscape.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: America in the World
The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941
, pp. 167 - 187

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139021760.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Schell, Jonathan, The Village of Ben Suc (New York, 1968)

Buttinger, Joseph, A Dragon Defiant (New York, 1972)

Shaplen, Robert, The Lost Revolution (New York, 1966) and The Road from War (New York, 1970)

Kahin, George McT., The United States in Vietnam (New York, 1967)

Halberstam, David, The Best and the Brightest (New York, 1972)

FitzGerald, Frances, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam (Boston, 1972)

Logevall, Fredrik, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley, CA, 1999)

Gardner, Lloyd, Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago, 1997)

Herring, George C., LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War (Austin, TX, 1994)

McNamara, Robert S., In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York, 1995)

McNamara, Robert S., Blight, James G., and Brigham, Robert K., Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (New York, 1999)

Goldstein, Gordon, Lessons of Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam (New York, 2008)

Preston, Andrew, The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (Cambridge, 2006)

Milne, David, America’s Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (New York, 2008)

McMahon, Robert, The Limits of Empire (New York, 1999)

Kaiser, David, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Cambridge, 2000)

Bradley, Mark, Imaging Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000)

Tai, Hue-Tam Ho, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (Cambridge, 1992)

Marr, David, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley, CA, 1995)

Duiker, William, Vietnam: Revolution in Transition, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO, 1995), 123

Gardner, Lloyd, Approaching Vietnam (New York, 1989)

Ernst, John, Forging a Fateful Alliance: Michigan State University and the Vietnam War (East Lansing, Michigan, 1998)

Rotter, Andrew, The Path to Vietnam (Ithaca, NY, 1989)

Paterson, Thomas, Meeting the Communist Threat (New York, 1989)

Hess, Gary, The United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power (New York, 1987)

Patti, Archimedes, Why Vietnam? Prelude to America’s Albatross (Berkeley, CA, 1982)

Batholomew-Feis, Dixie, The O.S.S. and Ho Chi Minh (Lawrence, KS, 2009)

Lawrence, Mark, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley, CA, 2005)

Statler, Kathryn, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (Lexington, KY, 2007)

Logevall, Fredrik, Embers of War (New York, 2012)

Tonnesson, Stein, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (Berkeley, CA, 2010)

Fall, Bernard, Hell in a Very Small Place (New York, 1966)

Street Without Joy (New York, 1961), Vietnam Witness (New York, 1966), The Two Vietnams (New York, 1964)

Hammer, Ellen J., The Struggle for Indochina (Stanford, CA, 1954)

Lacouture, Jean, Vietnam: Between Two Truces (New York, 1966)

Anderson, David, Trapped by Success (New York, 1993)

Jacobs, Seth, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam (Durham, NC, 2005)

Immerman, Richard, John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princeton, NJ, 1992)

Morgan, Ted, Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu that Led America into the Vietnam War (New York, 2010)

Prados, John, The Sky Would Fall (New York, 1983)

Roy, Jules, Dien Bien Phu (London, 2004)

Giap, Vo Nguyen, Dien Bien Phu, Revised and Expanded Edition (Hanoi, 1964)

Windrow, Martin, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cambridge, 2004)

Cable, James, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (London, 1986)

Devillers, Philippe and Lacouture, Jean, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 (New York, 1969)

Journoud, Pierre, DeGaulle et le Vietnam (Paris, 2011)

Randle, Robert, Geneva, 1954: The Settlement of the Indochina War (Princeton, NJ, 1969)

Moise, Edwin, Land Reform in China and North Vietnam (Chapel Hill, NC, 1983)

Thayer, Carlyle A., War By Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam, 1954–1960 (Sydney, 1989)

Duiker, William, The Communist Road to Power, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO, 1996)

Long, Ngo Vinh, Before the Revolution (New York, 1981)

Catton, Philip, Diem’s Final Failure: Prelude to America’s War in Vietnam (Lawrence, KS, 2002)

Chapman, Jessica, Cauldron of Resistance (Ithaca, NY 2012)

Masur, Matthew, “Exhibiting Signs of Resistance: South Vietnam’s Struggle for Legitimacy, 1954–1960,” Diplomatic History 33 (April 2009): 671–703Google Scholar

Miller, Ed, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA, 2012)

Hoang, Tuan, “The Early South Vietnamese Critique of Communism,” in Vu, Tuong and Wongsurawat, Wasana (eds.), Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia: Ideology, Identity, and Culture (London, 2009), 15–32

Moyar, Mark, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (New York, 2006)

Wiest, Andrew, Vietnam’s Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (New York, 2007)

Brigham, Robert K., ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army (Lawrence, KS, 2006)

Biggs, David, Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta (Seattle, WA, 2011) and “Problematic Progress: Reading Environmental and Social Change on the Vinh Te Canal in the Western Mekong Delta,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34 (February 2003): 77–96

Carter, James M., Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954–1968 (New York, 2008)

Samson, Robert, The Economics of Insurgency in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam (Cambridge, 1970)

Dieu, Nguyen Thi, The Mekong River and the Struggle for Indochina (New York, 1999)

McAllister, James, “Only Religions Count in Vietnam: Thich Tri Quang and the Vietnam War,” Modern Asian Studies 42 (2008): 751–82Google Scholar

Topmiller, Robert, The Lotus Unleashed (Lexington, KY, 2006)

Thu, Nguyen Tai, et al., A History of Vietnamese Buddhism (Hanoi, 1992)

Elliott, Mai, Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (New York, 2000)

Pike, Douglas, Viet Cong: The Organization and Technique of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Cambridge, 1966) and War, Peace, and the Viet Cong (Cambridge, 1969)

Hunt, David, Vietnam’s Southern Revolution (Amherst, MA, 2010)

Elliott, David, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975 (Armonk, NY, 2002)

Colby, William, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago, 1989)

Hunt, Richard A., Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds (Boulder, 1998)

Andrade, Dale, Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War (Lanham, MD, 1990)

Moyar, Mark, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (Lincoln, 2007)

Kalyvas, Stathis and Adam, Matthew, “The Dynamics of Violence in Vietnam,” Peace Research 46 (May 2009): 335–55Google Scholar

Huntington, Samuel P., “The Bases of Accommodation,” Foreign Affairs 46 (July 1968): 642–56Google Scholar

Goodman, Allen and Franks, Lawrence, “The Dynamics of Migration to Saigon,” Pacific Affairs 48 (Summer 1975) 199–214Google Scholar

Daddis, Colonel Greg, No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War (New York, 2011)

Adams, Sam, War of Numbers (South Royalton, VT, 1994)

Blaufarb, Douglas, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance, 1950 to the Present (New York, 1977)

Hilsman, Roger, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (New York, 1967)

Phillips, Rufus, Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned (Annapolis, MD, 2008)

Shafer, D. Michael, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton, NJ, 1989)

Race, Jeffrey, War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province, Revised and Expanded Edition (Berkeley, CA, 2010)

Andrews, William, The Village War: Vietnamese Communist Revolutionary Activities in Dinh Tuong Province, 1960–1964 (Columbia, Missouri, 1973)

Bergerud, Eric, The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province (Boulder, CO, 1993)

Trullinger, James, Village at War: An Account of Conflict in Vietnam (New York, 1980)

Krepenivich, Andrew, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD, 1988)

Nagl, John, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago, 2005)

Stanton, Shelby, The Rise and Fall of an American Army (Novato, CA, 2003)

Gentile, Colonel Gian, “Think Again: Counterinsurgency,” Foreign Policy (January 2009)Google Scholar

Buzzanco, Robert, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (New York, 1997)

McMaster, H. R., Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam (New York, 1998)

Summers, Harry, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA, 1995)

Spector, Ronald, Advise and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C., 2005)

Clarke, Jeffrey, The Final Years: The U.S. Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C., 1988)

Spector, Ronald, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York, 1994)

Appy, Christian, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (New York, 2004)

Terry, Wallace, Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (New York, 1985)

Balaban, John, Remembering Heaven’s Face: A Story of Rescue in Wartime Vietnam (Athens, 2002)

Longley, Kyle, Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam (Armonk, NY, 2008)

Lockhart, Greg, Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People’s Army of Vietnam (Sydney, 1989)

Pribbenow, Merle, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam (Lawrence, KS, 2002)

Gosha, Christopher, “Building Force: Asian Origins of 20th Century Military Science in Vietnam, (1905–1954),” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34 (2003): 535–60 and “The Maritime Nature of the Wars for Vietnam: (1945–75): A Geo-Historical Reflection,” War & Society 24 (November 2005): 53–92Google Scholar

Pike, Douglas, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (Boston, 1991)

Tin, Bui, Following Ho Chi Minh (Honolulu, 1999)

Prados, John, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (New York, 2000)

Laurence, John, The Cat from Hue (New York, 2002)

Maraniss, David, They Marched into Sunlight (New York, 2004)

Karnow, Stanley, Vietnam: A History, 2nd ed. (New York, 1997)

Prochnau, William, Once Upon a Distant War (New York, 1996)

Wyatt, Clarence, Paper Soldiers (Chicago, 1995)

Hammond, William, Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War (Lawrence, KS, 1998)

Braestrup, Peter, Big Story (Novato, CA, 1994)

Oberdorfer, Don, Tet! (Baltimore, MD, 2001)

Young, Marilyn (ed.), Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959–1975 (New York, 1998)

Pach, Chester, “We Need to Get a Better Story to the American People’: LBJ, the Progress Campaign, and the Vietnam War on Television” in Osgood, Kenneth and Frank, Andrew K., eds. Selling War in a Media Age (Gainesville, FL, 2010) and “Our Worst Enemy Seems to Be the Press”: TV News, the Nixon Administration, and U.S. Withdrawal from Vietnam, 1969–1973,” Diplomatic History 34 (June 2010): 555–65

Mueller, John, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York, 1973)

DeBenedetti, Charles and Chatfield, Charles, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY, 1990)

Wells, Tom, The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley, CA, 1994)

Anderson, Terry, The Movement and the Sixties (New York, 1996)

Hall, Mitch, Because of Their Faith (New York, 1990)

Small, Melvin, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (New Brunswick, New Brunswick, NJ, 1988)

Kimball, Jeffrey, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence, KS, 2002)

Berman, Larry, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York, 2001)

Johns, Andrew, Vietnam’s Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the War (Lexington, KY, 2010)

Scanlon, Sandra, “The Conservative Lobby and Nixon’s Peace With Honor in Vietnam,” Journal of American Studies 43 (August 2009): 255–76Google Scholar

Hanhimaki, Jussi, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York, 2004)

Hanhimaki, Jussi, “Some More Smoking Guns,” Passport volume 4 (December 2001) 25–27Google Scholar

Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War (New York, 2007)

Jian, Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000)

Zhai, Qiang, China and the Vietnam Wars (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000)

Gaiduk, Ilya, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago, 1996)

Olsen, Mari, Soviet-Vietnamese Relations and the Role of China (London, 2006)

Suri, Jeremi, Power and Protest: Global Revolution in the Age of Détente (Cambridge, 2005) and Henry Kissinger and the American Dream (Cambridge, 2009)

Isaac, Arnold, Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia (Baltimore, 1998)

Isaacson, Walter, Kissinger (New York, 2005)

Porter, Gareth, A Peace Denied (Bloomington, IN, 1976)

Thies, Wallace, When Governments Collide (Berkeley, CA, 1982)

Herring, George C. (ed.), The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers (Austin, TX, 1983)

Loi, Luu Van and Vu, Nguyen Anh, Le Duc Tho-Kissinger Negotiations in Paris (Hanoi, 1996)

Asselin, Pierre, A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007)

Nguyen, Lien Hang, “Waging War on All Fronts: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War, 1969–1972” in Logevall, Fredrik and Preston, Andrew (eds.), Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969–1977 (New York, 2008): 185–203

Quinn-Judge, Sophie and Westad, Odd Arne, (eds.), The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–1979 (London, 2006): 12–32

Gardner, Lloyd and Gittinger, Ted, The Search for Peace in Vietnam (College Station, Texas, 2004)

Sachs, Dana, The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam (New York, 2010)

Butler, David, The Fall of Saigon (New York, 1985)

Willbanks, James, Abandoning Vietnam (Lawrence, KS, 2008)

Jespersen, Christopher, “Kissinger, Ford, and Congress: The Very Bitter End in Vietnam,” Pacific Historical Review 71 (August 2002): 439–73Google Scholar

Martini, Edwin, Invisible Enemies: The American War on Vietnam, 1975–2000 (Amherst, MA, 2007)

Neu, Charles, After Vietnam: Legacies of a Lost War (Baltimore, MD, 2000)

Allen, Michael, Until the Last Man Comes Home: POWs, MIAs, and the Unending Vietnam War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009)

Herring, George C., America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 4th ed. (New York, 2001)

Young, Marilyn, The Vietnam Wars (New York, 1991)

Neu, Charles, America’s Lost War (Arlington Heights, Illinois, 2005)

Langguth, Jack, Our Vietnam (New York, 2002)

Prados, John, Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War (Lawrence, KS, 2009)

Schulzinger, Robert, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam (New York, 1999)

Turley, William S., The Second Indochina War, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO, 2008)

McMahon, Robert, Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War, 4th ed. (Boston, 2007)

Bradley, Mark P., Brigham, Robert K., and Nguyen, Lien-Hang, The Wars for Vietnam: An International History of the Vietnam War (Boston, 2015)

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Why this information is here

This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this chapter is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.