A Companion to the Vietnam War (Blackwell Companions to American History) [Hardcover]

Marilyn B. Young (Editor), Robert Buzzanco (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2002 | ISBN-10: 063121013X | ISBN-13: 978-0631210139 | Edition: 1

A Companion to the Vietnam War contains twenty-four definitive essays on America's longest and most divisive foreign conflict. It represents the best current scholarship on this controversial and influential episode in modern American history.

• Highlights issues of nationalism, culture, gender, and race.
  
• Covers the breadth of Vietnam War history, including American war policies, the Vietnamese perspective, the antiwar movement, and the American home front.
  
• Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
  
• Includes a select bibliography to guide further research.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Overall, this collection will inform and challenge readers, who will discover stimulating perspectives that deliver on Young and Buzzanco’s claims, comprising a welcome addition to the literature.” History: Reviews of New Books

"The quality of the essays... make it an easy recommendation to those looking at the war."
Journal of American Studies

“This terrific collection of twenty-four original articles is as valuable for the teacher as for the student of the Vietnam War. The contributors, who universally rank among the foremost experts on both the War and Southeast Asian history, utilize diverse frameworks and diverse sources to produce diverse perspectives. Young and Buzzanco warrant praise and thanks for assembling a volume sure to become mandatory reading.” Richard Immerman, Temple University

“These stimulating essays on both the Southeast Asian and American sides of the war contribute valuable new insights into old debates, such as presidential decisions, and leading-edge investigations into new issues, such as ethnicity, gender, and memory.” David L. Anderson, University of Indianapolis

From the Back Cover

A Companion to the Vietnam War contains twenty-four definitive essays on America’s longest and most divisive foreign conflict. These historiographical and narrative essays by leading historians examine the war in its most important contexts. The broad thematic coverage of the book includes the political strategy of three American presidents, the American military tactics and their consequences, the adjoining wars in Laos and Cambodia, the American home front and antiwar movement, and the intersections of race, class, and gender in both America and Vietnam.

This volume represents the best current scholarship on one of the most controversial and influential episodes in modern American history. It also contains an expanded bibliography of hundreds of secondary sources to guide further research. For students, scholars, and general readers of Vietnam War studies, this Companion is a vital resource.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (November 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 063121013X
• ISBN-13: 978-0631210139
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,224,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent portable seminar on the Vietnam War, August 9, 2003

By 

John J. Fitzgerald (Longmeadow, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Companion to the Vietnam War (Blackwell Companions to American History) (Hardcover)

This is a first rate collection of definitive, state of the art essays on just about all aspects of the Vietnam War. Buzzanco and Young have put together an outstanding collection of essays on the Vietnam War by an impressive cast of the leading scholars in the field. The war itself may have been created by the "best and the brightest" of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations, but this book shows that the "best and the brightest" can be brought together to do justice to a complicated and controversial period of American and world history. This book should be on the shelf of every serious student of the war and it certainly deserves a place in every public and college library. Buzzanco and Young deserve our thanks for collecting such an excellent crew of scholars.
Yours truly, John J. Fitzgerald Longmeadow, MA
Vietnam Veteran and student of the Vietnam War.