Kolko's groundbreaking and widely cited study of the Vietnam War, with a new postscript by the author.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Opening with an account of the rise of Vietnamese communism and ending with the fall of Saigon, this encompassing study reveals how "one side's human, ideological, and organizational resources led it to victory under conditions of vast material inferiority." Kolko, a historian who now teaches in Canada, examines in depth issues such as land reform, the social system in South Vietnam, the ideological foundations of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the economic impact of the war on the United States. He contends that our policymakers ("with certain reservations and lapses") never considered an outright military victory possible, and he pointedly draws a connection between the Washington-Saigon alliance and the "current dilemma of the U.S.'s relationship to all of its Third World clients, on which it has become fatally dependent as instruments for applying its foreign policy." A notable aspect of the book is the author's admiration for the flexibility and inventiveness of the North Vietnamese, contrasted with his disdain for the doggedly unrealistic countermeasures of the Americans and South Vietnamese. January 20
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In this detailed and provocative study, Kolko analyzes the U.S.-Vietnamese war on two levels: first, as a protracted collision between two dynamic and changing social systems; and second, as a crisis in the U.S. attempt to extend its social and political order. Viewing the war as a violent social and political process, Kolko examines the several structural forces that shaped the behavior of the Vietnamese Communist revolutionaries, U.S. policymakers, and America's Saigon clients. He sees their conflict as a three-sided struggle, played out within a highly complex international arena and against the unexpected volatility of U.S. domestic politics. Essentially unconcerned with individuals, Kolko concentrates on the inherent dilemmas and contradictions that faced different collective actors, and his approach makes for stiff and stilted reading. Yet it is worth the effort, for this work should stand as the most sophisticated Marxist explication of the war and its significance for some time to come. Charles DeBenedetti, History Dept., Univ. of Toledo, Ohio
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In "Anatomy of a War" author Gabriel Kolko has done an impeccable job of revealing the truth behind America's involvement in Indochina. Kolko lucidly illustrates how by 1948 the US has recognized that the Viet Minh, the anti-French resistance led by Ho Chi Minh, was not only the national movement of Vietnam, but that the Viet Minh favored independent development and ignored the interests of foreign investors and was therefor deemed "the enemy" by US policy planners.
Kolko adroitly elucidates how the US blocked all attempts at political settlement of the conflict, installed a Latin American-style terror state in South Vietnam, and blocked free, democratic elections in Vietnam because it was obvious the Viet Minh was going to win. "Anatomy of a War" illustrates how American war planners escalated the attack against South Vietnam from massive state terror to outright aggression and expanded the war to all of Indochina. A compelling and chilling account of one America's more depraved acts this century.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
By John Miller
Format:Paperback
Kolko writes from the point of view of the Vietnamese, the real victims and the real heroes of the Indochina anticolonial wars. This is a perspective unavailable in any other volume. It is an excellent antidote for the rampant revisionism now afoot regarding this disgraceful episode in our history.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Another brillant work of Scholorship by Kolko. His material on N. Vietnam motivation is particulary interesting
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
One sided
You see the war from the aggressor's point of view. You see the horrid war machine - fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, tanks, personnel carriers, napalm, white phosphorus,... Read more
Published 2 months ago by eagleeyepete
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Prose is Unintelligable
If you happen to be a professor of literature you can use this book in your classes to demonstrate how NOT to write a book. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Putter Maker Bo
1.0 out of 5 stars
One-sided leftist claptrap
Found the book in the used section, was quite surprised at the unremitting whitewash of anti-RVN forces, but at least the dated Marxist terminology was quite entertaining to parse. Read more
Published on July 3, 1999 by Troy Dawson
5.0 out of 5 stars
A first-rate work that should be updated to the year 1998.
In my previous review I erred in thinking there were no notes for the Postscript. A minute after sending off that review, I found out that the notes for the Postscript were... Read more
Published on August 24, 1998
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