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Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History

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I was born into the post-Vietnam generation. My original impressions of that war were Gerald Ford, down-and-out vets, Army surplus stores, Dad's safely hidden .45 Browning, and a friend whose dad served time in jail as a prominent activst. I'd lived in a few different places in the developing world. I'd watched the entire PBS series, Vietnam: A Television History, a few times through. I'd read a good number of eye-opening accounts that offered many different vantage points, ranging from Argument without End, to Bao Ninh's autobiographical novel, to Duong Thu Huong's historical fictionalization. But the long, slow death knell of this disaster still never made real sense.

A lot of discussions of Vietnam compress the entire sweep of that war into a single blot on our country's record. It's easy enough to psychologize the war's outcome: There's the gallery of monumental 'egos', there's the bank of 'fog'. But it seems to me that amounts to the what-if approach, and it hardly resembles a whole generation's experiences with this war. So, then, what really made this war unwinnable? For that, you need to rewind to the beginning, and recount events from a variety of angles, to see what it was that people individually could accomplish, and what was out of reach of any one of them. And when you weren't there yourself, you really need many people's wisdom for guidance.

You can safely let Spencer Tucker's work guide you, no matter how much you already know and understand about the war. Tucker, a military historian of the first rank, assembled an international network of specialists (including both military and civilian historians) to contribute to this volume. Part of what made this project enduring and indispensable is the sheer number of entries -- just "search inside" the book and browse the index. Most of those terms you find there are likely to be separate entries in the Encyclopedia. There is exemplary coverage of events of significance to the Vietnamese themselves and to the French, as well as generous coverage of Americans who shaped the homefront.

Another reason this project succeeded was its exacting standards. The entries range from about a quarter page to eight pages, in very compact type, and each comes with a choice selection of further readings. In even the shortest of its entries, I invariably learned some important element of the story that I'd never seen raised in any other discussion of the topic.

Finally, every key concept in this encyclopedia cross-references other entries. If you begin with even a short entry, and follow every other cross-reference from then on, you'll find yourself lying back on a couch and completely absorbed in the jigsaw puzzle of the narrative for hours at a time. This is the sort of reference work that you might have the urge to read cover to cover. The only hitch is, it would take you a good month to finish.

In the vast tableau of events that this Tucker's team surveys, a reader quickly gets a stronger sense of the depth of the problems that can unfold in any occupation, intervention, or counterinsurgency -- and why snafus in the national chain of command remain at most a minor drama in that saga. This is one of the most enlightening books on American policy that you can own.