Making sense of the Vietnam wars : local, national, and transnational perspectives / edited by Mark Philip Bradley and Marilyn B. Young.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bradley, Mark, 1961-

Young, Marilyn Blatt.

Series:

Reinterpreting history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indochinese War, 1946-1954.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

Vietnam--History--1945-1975.

Vietnam.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 318 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Pt. 1. American intervention and the Cold War consensus. Explaining the early decisions / Mark Atwood Lawrence

"No place to fight a war" / Seth Jacobs

Explaining the Vietnam War / Gareth Porter

"There ain't no daylight" / Fredrik Logevall

Pt. 2. The coming of war in Vietnam. Through a glass darkly / Sophie Quinn-Judge

Vision, power, and agency / Edward Miller

Taking notice of the everyday / David Hunt

Co so cach mang and the social network of war / Heonik Kwon

Pt. 3. War's end and endless wars. Cold War contradictions / Lien-Hang T. Nguyen

"Help us tell the truth about Vietnam" / Michael J. Allen

Official history, revisionist history, and wild history / David W.P. Elliott.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-308) and index.

ISBN:

9780195315134

0195315138

9780195315141

0195315146

OCLC:

156902355