Our Vietnam/Nuoc Viet Ta: A History of the War 1954-1975 [Hardcover]

A.J. Langguth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2000

"Laos was never really ours after 1954. South Vietnam is and wants to be."
-- McGeorge Bundy, Washington, D.C., 1961

"The Americans thought that Vietnam was a war. We knew that Vietnam was our country."
-- Luu Doan Huynh, Hanoi, 1999

Twenty-five years after its end, with many records and archives newly opened and many participants now willing to testify, historian and journalist A. J. Langguth has written an authoritative, news-making account of the Vietnam War from both the American and Vietnamese perspectives.

Our Vietnam is a sweeping and evenhanded history of the Vietnam War as it was lived by U.S. presidents in Washington and Communist leaders in Hanoi, by American Marines at Khe Sanh and war protesters at home, by Vietcong guerrillas in the Mekong Delta and South Vietnamese troops in the Central Highlands.

Langguth traveled to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Beijing to interview scores of ranking Communist officials as well as those who played significant but lesser-known roles. As a correspondent for The New York Times in South Vietnam in the 1960s, he observed most of the prominent U.S. officials involved in the war, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General William Westmoreland, Ambassador Maxwell Taylor and presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy. He has drawn on recently released documents and secret White House tapes to bring the architects of the war and the events of that time into sharp focus.

Our Vietnam provides a rare look at the secret maneuvering within Hanoi's Politburo, where an implacable southerner named Le Duan emerges as the man -- even more than the famous General Giap -- who shaped the Communist struggle. It reveals the palace intrigues of President Ngo Dinh Diem and his sister-in-law Madame Nhu in Saigon. It takes us inside the waffling and self-deceived White Houses of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and shows how those presidents tried to muzzle the press and deceive the American public. It documents the ineptness and corruption of our South Vietnamese allies, recounts the bravery of soldiers on both sides at Ap Bac and Ia Drang, and explores inhuman behavior at My Lai and within the prison walls of the Hanoi Hilton. It makes vivid again the antiwar demonstrations that led to rioting in Chicago and four dead students at Kent State.

As the struggle shifts to the peace talks in Paris, Langguth contrasts Henry Kissinger's version of the negotiations that led to the withdrawal of American troops with other, more objective firsthand accounts. The frantic evacuation of U.S. diplomats and advisers from Saigon during the Communists' final offensive in April 1975 is the poignant climax to this encompassing story of an enemy's unbroken will and America's fatal miscalculations.

With its broad sweep and keen insights, Our Vietnam brings together the kaleidoscopic events and personalities of the war -- the assassinations and battles, the strategists and soldiers, the reporters and protesters -- into one engrossing and unforgettable narrative.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

By the evidence former New York Times war correspondent A. J. Langguth presents in Our Vietnam, that long conflict can be seen as a steadily accumulating series of missteps, misinterpretations, and mistakes. Some had their origins in earnest attempts to bring scientific method to bear on the business of killing, such as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's belief in the theory of "statistical control," a cost-benefit accounting procedure that, hitherto confined to factories, was applied to the battlefield with tragic result. Some, such as the endless argument at the Paris peace talks over the shape of the conference table, were born in the endless struggle to win the war on the propaganda front. And some, like the CIA's misreading of events that led to the 1963 coup against South Vietnamese leader Diem, arose from an almost willful refusal to recognize the realities of Vietnamese society.

In this thoroughgoing history of America's adventure in Vietnam, Langguth shows a clear appreciation for the war's many ironies--Lyndon Johnson's plan to build a huge dam on the Mekong River while bombing the neighboring countryside into submission, Ho Chi Minh's distress at having to battle the Americans, whose ally he had once been--while charting a clear narrative course through a dauntingly complex series of events. His highly readable book, ranking alongside Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History, promises to become a standard history of the era, and it is superb in every respect. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

The New York Times Vietnam correspondent and sometime Saigon bureau chief during the war, Langguth has since written eight books (including Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution) and now teaches journalism at USC's Annenberg School of Communications. Short on analysis yet with the comprehensiveness of a long-term, slow-cooked project, his new book sets out the politically charged policy-making story of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War completely and seamlessly. Four sections pair leaders from each sideDKennedy and Ho Chi Minh (long); Vo Nguyen Giap and Lyndon Johnson (longer); Nixon and Le Duc Tho; Le Duan and FordDcreating a personality-driven saga via dozens of individual stories. Langguth has interviewed many of the major players and mined the best primary and secondary accounts, but his interviews with lesser known but consequential American and Vietnamese eyewitnesses prove the most revelatory: William Kohlmann of the CIA; Viet Cong Lt. Ta Minh Kham; Foreign Service Officer Paul Kattenburg; former State Department director of intelligence Thomas Hughes; Nguyen Dinh Tu, a one-time South Vietnamese newspaper reporter; and many others. The result is a well-crafted and adroitly balanced account that tells a long, compelling story and sets itself apart from the Vietnam War pack. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Lynn Nesbit. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 770 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684812029
• ISBN-13: 978-0684812021
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #988,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful Exploration Of Origins & Progress Of Vietnam War!, July 14, 2003

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975 (Paperback)

One can now add this interesting and informative book to the growing list of recent tomes adding to our understanding of how we can so inextricably drawn into the unfortunate miasma called Vietnam. Certainly, according to able historian A. J. Langguth, there is more than enough culpability in the stream of administrations stretching back as far as the Eisenhower years to add to the coals on the slowly spreading conflagration it eventually became. According to the author, there is little doubt that the Vietnam War wound up being the single most divisive war since the Civil war more than 100 years before. The reasons it split the country into two angry and warring camps were related to its very causes, namely the arrogance and hubris of the WWII generation of those believing in their un power and invulnerability, the so called "best and brightest" that David Halberstam described so beautifully in his book of the same name.

Langguth employs a treasure-trove of new material to examine the way sin which the various administrations made decisions leading us along the deceptive path that led to ever deeper and deeper involvement in Vietnam. And although Eisenhower had warned about the dangers of relying on the wisdom and purposes of the rising clique of the "military-industrial'' complex, he made decisions that facilitated the further extension of policy into Vietnam by the young and relatively unwary president who followed him. Yet it was through Kennedy's reliance on old cold warriors for advice and counsel that led him into a deepening commitment. Indeed, increasingly Kennedy fell under the charismatic influence of defense Secretary Robert McNamara charismatic appeals to escalate the conflict, using euphemistic ideas such as like statistical control and other cost-benefit analysis techniques to seemingly rationalize the process of making decisions into a business decision mentality, rather than recognizing it was men's lives and deaths they were discussing. In such a way, the movement down the path toward ever greater engagement in Vietnam can be viewed as a series of series of tragic mistakes, a series of decision points involving misinterpretations of what was happening and what it meant.

Of course, later in the war, a number of mistakes were made as the domestic political considerations in terms of the associated political advantage or liability of any particular military decision added further complications to the decision making process. Finally, attempts to win the war through the use of propaganda and manipulation of the facts released to the American public disregarded the evidence in favor of further distortions. This had the terrible and politically indefensible policy of leaving the American soldiers at risk in order to gain political advantage both across the negotiating table with the Hanoi regime as well as lying about the conduct and progress of the war to the American public. In essence, the political superstructure here at home became more and more concerned with the self-contained political universe they operated in, and more and more oblivious to the realities of the situation on the ground for American forces in Vietnam. Indeed, they often seemed to being engaging in a willful denial of the basic realities of the military situation and the cultural facts of life in South Vietnam.

This is a very carefully written and quite comprehensive book, one in which the author clearly demonstrates a true appreciation for the unintended consequence and irony of the war. This is easily the best of a spate of recent books published on the subject, and ranks favorably on the same shelf as Stanley Karnow's masterful presentation of the war's overall history in "Vietnam: A History". It also shares an appreciation for the complexities of the war and the ways in which our descent into the madness was triggered by the arrogance, stupidity, and callousness of American politicians. In this sense it share s the perspective of two other fairly recent books, "American Tragedy" by David Kaiser, and "Choosing War" by Frederik Logevall.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Power and failure, May 27, 2003

By 

E. Grabianowski "zeppelined" (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975 (Paperback)

This work shows exactly how the United states gradually became involved in Vietnam from the details on up. Other reviews have commented on Langguth's objectivity and accuracy. I will mention the most lasting impression this book left on me:
Most of us have the perception that the great men of power throughout history are made of something different from ourselves. We only see them on the world's stage, made up and prepared; speeches rehearsed; ceremony and station lending gravity to their every word and action. We don't think of them sleepless; with a bit of popcorn stuck in their teeth; complaining to their wives; or any of the other everyday situations that even these men of power experience. And so we assume their minds are always bent to grand designs. We think they hold a certain wisdom that lets them maneuver through politics and war, making decisions based on facts or morality.
Langguth's tale tells a different story. Decisions that cost tens of thousands of lives and reshape the world are made by men as sweaty and itchy as you and I. Wars are started because of ego, petty squabbles, and job security. Elections! How many have died so that one man could keep his job? So we see Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon, and all the well-dressed men around them, chewing their lips and eyeing one and other with mistrust, stabbing one and other in the back, lying and cheating, making mistakes.
Wars are started all because we make the mistake of investing such power in mere humans.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revelations, August 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Our Vietnam/Nuoc Viet Ta: A History of the War 1954-1975 (Hardcover)

I lived through that war and now I see from this book how so many US politicians put their political/election interests above what needed to be done. Langguth clearly spells it out, and I kept reading and reading. The photographs were great. I wish there were a few more maps. And Kissinger!! -- what a terrible manipulative "advisor" repeatedly going after his own glory for the history books; sucking up to the presidents one day and laughing at them behind their backs the next. And then the book shows the military deliberately giving wrong information to the White House. No wonder it was a mess. And the people and soldiers suffered terribly. This book is really valuable. Special thanks to the author. Now I want to read more books about this tragic war.