Vietnam [Hardcover]

Spencer C. Tucker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1999

" This fascinating study provides a comprehensive overview of warfare throughout Vietnamese history, from the early efforts of the Vietnamese to establish their own state and free themselves from Chinese domination, down through the Indo-China and Vietnam Wars, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, to the present. Vietnam provides an overview of the causes, course, and effects of the numerous wars in Vietnamese history, many of them not generally known to Westerners, such as the Black Flag/Tonkin Wars and the Franco-Thai War. Concentrating on the period after the Second World War, it treats matters from the Vietnamese perspective as much as from the French and American, and seeks to clarify the missed opportunities and false perceptions that led to warfare. Encompassing socio-political, economic, diplomatic, and cultural issues, Vietnam provides an excellent introduction to Vietnamese history as well as an in-depth look at the long record of warfare in that country. The Vietnam War was a traumatic event for America and a lesson for Americans on the limits of power. For the Vietnamese, however, it was but the most recent in a series of struggles against foreign domination.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

paper 0-8131-0966-3 A concise, analytical survey of Vietnamese military history that concentrates on the French and American 20th-century wars. Former US Army captain Tucker (Military History/Virginia Military Institute) presents a readable, fact-filled examination of the military history of Vietnam. He begins with a brief history of the Southeast Asian nation, starting with its legendary founding in the third century b.c. Tucker clearly shows that the dominant feature of Vietnam's first thousand years was nationalist rebellion against Chinese domination. Tucker offers detailed examinations of the French colonization of Vietnam and the 19461954 French Indochina Wartwo areas that most American Vietnam War histories treat perfunctorily at best. His treatment of the American war takes up more than half the book. Tucker sticks mainly to military matters in his analysis of that controversial, highly political war. He makes a case that, from the beginning, the American military strategy was flawed because it focused on conventional warfare and paid too little attention to counterinsurgency. The ``inability'' of the American military establishment ``to forecast the [guerrilla] military threat'' in the late 1950s ``was the first great US military mistake in Vietnam,'' he says. Tucker strongly criticizes commanding general William Westmoreland and ``officials in Washington''especially President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissingerfor drastically underestimating the will of the North Vietnamese. Westmoreland's attrition strategy, Tucker says, was particularly ill suited against ``the Communist strategy of protracted warfare.'' Tucker uses a good deal of statistical information throughout this well-documented book. A military historian's approach to Vietnam's wars. (maps, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

“A concise and well organized assessment of the major military conflicts in post-colonial Vietnam.” -- International Migration Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky; 1St Edition edition (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813121213
• ISBN-13: 978-0813121215
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,504,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Military History of Vietnam, June 12, 2002

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vietnam (Paperback)

The history of Vietnam is obscure to most Westerners, at least prior to the Indo-China war of the fifties. This book attempts to fill that gap, and provide a short overview of the history of the nation over the last thousand years or so. Given that it's a short book (text runs to just over 200 pages) it does a good job.

Vietnam has been wracked by wars and conquests during most of the period covered by the book, and make no mistake, that's the author's focus. There's nothing about culture, literature, art, science, or ordinary life in this book: it's about politics, and warfare. The author spends one chapter dealing with the period pre-French conquest, and a second covering the period of French colonialism. The rest of the book covers the Vietnam Wars from 1946-1975, with a brief chapter after chronicling the country's history since the end of the war.

This is a good book, given its limited scope. The author has much to say about the war, most of it critical of American and South Vietnamese leadership. Hey, they did lose the war! The book also doesn't flinch from recounting atrocities by both sides, recounting them judiciously, and not taking sides.

If I have a criticism of the book, it's that it's too short. Two hundred pages doesn't do justice to the history of the war at less than an overview level, and trying to fit the last thousand years in there too was perhaps a bit much. I found myself wishing for more.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview of Military History, July 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Vietnam (Paperback)

As someone who grew up during the Vietnam era, I wanted to read a book that would give me some understanding of what went on during the Vietnam war. I was a bit too young to really comprehend the current events as they were happening but too old for the Vietnam war to be covered in the history books I studied in school.

This book provides a good, succinct overview of the military aspects of the war. While there are allusions to events outside the military realm (the protests back in the U.S., Kennedy's assasination, etc.) the focus is definitely on the war itself. While the main focus is on the period in which the U.S. was involved in Vietnam, a significant part of the book is devoted to setting the context for that period (wars in Vietnam during ancient times and, especially the French Indo-China wars). There is also a short section on what happened after the U.S. left Vietnam. This context is interesting since the author points out how many of the mistakes made by the U.S. had been made by others during earlier times.

The book is quite brief (204 pages), so the author does not go into great depth on anything. For example, the My Lai massacre takes up only a very brief paragraph. If you're looking for an in depth analysis of the war, you would probably be better off with another book. However, as a brief overview, I thought the book was quite well done.