Customer Reviews

Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays (Major Problems in American History (Wadsworth))

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As the book title and "a reader" suggests this is a book with tons and tons of essays on the Vietnam War. These essays cover just about everything that was political or social or anything else about the war. It has topics on Kennedy, Johnson, Eisenhower, Nixon, My Lai, The Tet Offensive, discrimination, the domestic homefront, etc. This book provided a great wealth of sources for a research paper that I had to do. However, unless you are really into the Vietnam War, or that era, this book may be a little dry some times. It does provide a lot of good information, such as facts and figures, but it is just a bunch of peoples, the scholars who wrote the essays, opinions; as well as some Vietnam Vets accounts of the war itself, coming home, etc.

I am giving it four out of five because of the dryness that sometimes occurs. Yet, it does remain a really good source for material, if one has to do research or just has general curiosity. Of course, by the end of the book, the reader will begin to see the lessons learned from Vietnam.

This book has a lot of good information in it. Through the essays you gain a deep understanding of some of the events that influenced the course of the war that other books cover only slightly or omit all together.

There are a couple HORRIBLE essays that seem to drag for a long long time. Each chapter concludes with 2 essays that either have differing points of view or cover different aspects of the chapter in more detail.

The blessing of this book is that it has a lot of information that comes directly from the Vietnamese, including some translations of South Vietnamese army members as they consider their defeat and flee Saigon after the North takes it over.

Over all, I like this book. At least one of the essays in the very beginning is bad enough that I almost put the book down and didn't pick it back up, but once you get past that, you are in for a good read!

I was required to read this book as part of a class, and unless you enjoy reading the same information repeated over and over you will not enjoy this book.

Some of the sources are decent reads, but the majority of the book's essays are long and dry.

If you're looking for a book on Vietnam I'd recommend you look some where else. Vietnam An American Ordeal by George Moss wasn't a bad read

this book is such a waste of time, it tells you only the point of view of one's man ego and his denial of america's defeat by the north vietnamese. throughout the whole war,the u.s miltary only rely on body counts for there victory ,hoping the north vietnamese would fear the u.s army and surrender ,but in the end ,they were wrong ,the nva and viet cong were determine to fight to the death.

face it,even though the u.s military won many battles,the united states lost the war and retreated . the whole world is aware of this defeat but only some american citizen like this author denies this.

many of the vc casualty are infact innocent civilians ,that the u.s military has covered up by placing nva /vc uniforms and weapons on dead civilians ,then taking photographic pictures of it.

the united states gain nothing from the war ,with 60,000 + dead u.s soldiers ,thousands m.i.a (s) ,150,000 billion dollars down the drain ,over 100,000 seriously injured soldiers including amputees (missing legs,arms , body parts) ,and handicaps ,torn the country apart during the 60's and 70's ,fail to stop communism,fail to protect south vietnam,fail to stop an army that is 10 time smaller then u.s army,and fail to justified the war in rightious context,basically the united states gave up and retreated.

the north vietnamese suffered high casualty by fighting u.s army,australian army ,arvn army,south korean army,and new zealand all by them self ,but fighting to regain there country for a better vietnam in the future was a well justified reason to die just like anyother civil war (compared this to american civil war casualties).

so one's man ego and his obsession of denial will not change the world's view on why people should think who really won the war,everybody knows who won this war,and media wasnt wrong at all.