Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Vietnam War

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Having gained an interest in the war nobody seems willing to discuss, I started reading about the Vietnam war about a year ago. During this time I've read some pretty heavy books and some very moving personal accounts, yet found it difficult to recieve an overall picture of the war. This book does a great job of giving that background story and very general sort of history from which to build on. I must admit that I find the comments that the book may not be entirely accurate somewhat unsettling, but I still think that the book has great value. In High School and even college I recieved virtually no instruction on the Vietnam war, and having to start from scratch I found this book very valuable. In the end, it may not be the definative history of the Vietnam war, but if you take it for what it is it doesn't have to be.

The other books in this series are quite good -- this is a bizarre disappointment. I am not sure what the author is getting at -- 8 pages of coverage of Indonesia, including the downing of CIA pilot Allen Pope? This is an interesting story but has about as much to do with Vietnam as whether Margaret Thatcher prefers martinis to manhattans. The author completely mangles the significance of the Tet offensive -- a military rout but a propaganda victory for the North -- and actually claims the North Vietnamese were not interested in domestic American political reaction!! (It's how they won the war, as they are currently the first to tell you). The leftist bias shows too -- lots of coverage of the "antiwar" movement but one searches in vain for any stories about GIs. Can't even find any mention of General Hershey or the draft, or the building of the Wall (one tiny mention on p. 4 in the context of discussing how many women served in Nam!), downplaying of the NVA/VC massacre in Hue of 3-5,000 innocent people and their families but lots of discussion of My Lai, etc., etc. Not a good introduction to the subject. Not good at all. Almost any other book on Vietnam is a better place to start, including Stewart O'Nan's college anthology or his novel The Names of the Dead, or COL Harry Summers Atlas of the Vietnam War.

And, yes, I know whereof I speak -- served in Vietnam in the US Army in 1968-69.

overall, i was a little disappointed when i finished this book. I wanted a book on the vietman war itself. Of course, the history and the background of the country will be involved. but the book rarely goes into detail of actual combat in vietnam. it mostly discussed the decision making among gov't officials, lies, deceit and the presidential elections. Vietnamization was covered well, but didn't talk about how the troop withdrawls were being conducted. No major or lesser known battles were discussed except the tet offensive. Then, it jumps to watergate, president ford and normalization. There is a chapter on vietnam movies. it was a nice but-not-needed chapter. I agree with the other reviewers that are 3 stars or less. I'll need to but a better book on actual battles there. For being a political war, I understand that Maga covered the politial topics, but cover more battles, too.!! If you want a book that covers what i talked about, then this book is for you. If you want actual Vietnam battles and strategies look elsewhere.

On Page 239, the part about Hamburger Hill, the author says the Marines were fired upon from heavily dug in NVA. This was an 101st Airborne Battle, not the Marine Corps. The 3rd Brigade,and units of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st fought in this battle. I hope the rest of this book isn't as poorly researched as Page 239. I was a member of D/2/501 Inf, 101st Airborne Div., so I know about what I speak.

This isn't a book that Henry Kissinger needs to read. It's a book for those of us who feel like we don't know what happened during the Vietnam era and who want to be able to converse halfway intelligently about it.

I did not find the approach bizarre at all. The section on Indonesia, for example, was one of the book's best parts in that it attempted to show the the US's view of Vietnam involvement was based upon its (America's) experience with Indonesia. This section compared Indonesia and Vietnam in a variety of ways in order to show that American involvement in Vietnam, while ultimately disastrous, may have been partly motivated by our hope that events would unfold the same way there as they had in Indonesia.

A lot of books, movies, commentaries, editorials, etc. have been written about the Vietnam War (or American War, as called by the Vietnamese), but each only covered some aspects, perspectives, or periods, of this long, multi-faceted 30-year military conflict, obviously one of the longest conflict of the 20th century, and the most divisive in American history. The problem is a lot of them were written with hindsight in mind, assessing the situation-then with what we know now, building upon certain myths or legends that never really took place. Most of these books are not necessarily accurate, true accounts of historical events - in the context, mood and thinking of the time - but rather interpretations of what happened under their own biased, political prism. Obviously, all these books, movies, or novels have some personal political agendas in mind.

Contrary to all these books, I think Dr. Maga's book is a very erudite and scholarly written piece of work, covering the Vietnam War from its very origins, in the early 1940's, all the way to its conclusion in 1975, and a little beyond. The credit that we should give to Dr. Maga is he has astonishingly succeeded in bringing us back in time, to those decades, years and months, right after World War II, going deep into the political mood, pulse and thinking of that early era, in an effort to explain why certain crucial decisions were made by the different political players. And he has done all this with humor and candor, as well as a deep understanding of the political culture and all the different political persuasions and nuances of yore. Some of those turning-point decisions may look "goofy" right now, but at that time, the majority or mainstream might not think it that way.

The only reservation I have is the title of the book. Even though it's title is "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Vietnam War", but the book delves very deep into discussions about political and military strategies, US foreign policy debates and formulation. And all of these topics were from a primarily US (government, executive administration & political culture) observational vantage point. Very few sections talked about the perspectives and sequence of events as seen and interpreted by the South Vietnamese or North Vietnamese ("the enemy" at that time), which were the main players, at least towards the end of the conflict. In this regard, the book is somewhat lop-sided. But the author did go into painstakingly detail about all of the politics - sometimes really twisted, convoluted, and ugly - behind the scenes, thanks to the more and more, now-declassified government documents of the National Archives. Consequently, this book should be a great document for any political science and history major, who wants to see a glimpse of the "real political landscape" at the highest echelon of the US government at work.

After finish reading the book, these seem to be the general conclusions that the author wanted to make (which you may agree or disagree):
1/ the Red Scare, communist threat and "Domino theory", which started in the late 1940's and was part of the Truman doctrine, was somewhat exaggerated and overblown by the US administrations right after World War II; the reality was most communist factions in South-East Asia only thought and operated locally, within their small country, even though they did receive a lot of aid from the Soviet Union and China.
2/ the previous Kennedy-Johnson-McNamara administrations had make bold, risky decisions which eventually turned into colossal, irreversible blunders - both politically and militarily - that later administrations (i.e Nixon and Ford) were never able to correct or recover from
3/ South Vietnam, as an ally, was too much - if not totally dependent - on America to fight its war; once the Americans pulled out, the country was never able to stand on its own and defend for itself.
[ And the reason why South Vietnam was too much dependent on America, is because its political leaders have blindly accepted America to encroach deep into its political, socio-economic life, and even take the lead in military strategy and tactics; instead of being patient, flexible, and restrained in this arena, the American political leaders at that time were somewhat over-ambitious, over-zealous, and impatient; they insisted on conducting the War, with their troops, and in their own way, opting for a swift and decisive military victory; with no long-term vision and plan for the small, fragile nation of South Vietnam ].
4/ in the end, America's patience ran out, the tide of US public opinion has turned against the war, and the US had to abandon and betray its faithful ally in one of the most humiliating and most publicized defeat of US military history

All in all, I think this book is a very good book, and a good starting point for anyone who wants to study and understand more about this long-gone war of the last century, that still lingers on in the American psyche.

Despite its unfortunate title, this is the best guide to the history of the Vietnam war available. Dr. Maga has mastered the sources and fully understands the various interpretations regarding the war. As a result this book is an expert synthesis of original and earlier scholarship which is of value to both the expert and the general reader. Two aspects of this study are worthy of special note. First is Dr. Maga's view of the war as "America's Thirty-Years War", which allows him to take in a more comprehensive, longer-range view of the conflict. Second, his placing the war in the context of US relations with east Asia generally is a valuable reminder of the greater regional issues at stake in America's Vietnam efforts. As our leading scholar of post-World War II relations between the US and East Asia, Dr. Maga is uniquely qualified to provide this vital perspective. The fact that the Vietnam War still rages in some minds is proven by the earlier reviews of this fine book. There seems to be general agreement that the Vietnam War was a failure for the US. Paths diverge over the reasons for this failure. Some, such as the earlier reviewers, seem to take the position that Vietnam was a praiseworthy effort sabotaged by traitors in the press and on the streets and anyone who disagrees with this analysis must be some sort of "leftist" himself. But Dr. Maga is no leftist; he is a realist. He understands the essential truth of our Vietnam experience: that it was a mistake based upon our sometimes willful ignorance of the circumstances and situation in Southeast Asia itself. There is nothing in this book that suggests that Dr. Maga does not believe communism was not worth opposing. The strategy was sound but the tactics failed. The US never confronted communism by force everywhere. We did not do so in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, or effectively in Cuba at any time. We picked our spots. In Vietnam, we picked the wrong one. Dr. Maga's admirable book shows how and why we made such a horrible mistake and I highly recommend it to everybody especially for use in college survey and specialized courses.

I liked this book because it is easy to read and it really puts the history regarding this war into prospective. This book basically covers from the last bit of Japanese occupation to the normalization of US relations with Vietnam in the 1990s.

I think this book should talked more about the air war over North Vietnam during operations Rolling Thunder and Linebacker I/II. I know that most of the fighting, when not being thought up in the White House, was being done in the South Vietnamese interior, but the bombing of North Vietnam, the way targets were selected and by whom, and the effects it had should have gone much further into detail.

This book provides a very good, if abridged, overview of the entire Vietnam War. It begins with French colonialism and follows through all the way to modern cultural and political influences which survive the war. It is insightful and easy to read. Most importantly, it is interesting.

There are some drawbacks.

About every second page Dr. Maga has included the kiss of death of writers everywhere: the cliché. I'm sure Maga didn't notice it when he was writing the book, but neglecting a decent copy edit is truly the kiss of death of what could have been a very good book. Yes, by writing "the kiss of death of" so very, very often, Maga has given himself the kiss of death. Kiss of death, kiss of death, kiss of death.

Hopefully the next version will be improved.

Overall the book is terrible. As Guernsey noted, the author follows the incorrect conventional view on the war. The war was a mistake, we overacted, the North Vietnamese were really the good guys, blah blah blah blah.

The only redeeming quality is the little exerpts the can be found on almost every page. These blurbs (which go by various titles) contain some very interesting facts on the war. This book may be useful for an experienced scholar on the war. However, the overall bias makes the book useless for its target audience.