Vietnam Wars, 1945-90 [Hardcover]

Marilyn Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 1991

The first book to give equal weight to the Vietnamese and American sides of the Vietnam war.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this dark account of the political and diplomatic sides of the Vietnam wars and the psychic aftermath, the author contends that the Indochina experience refuted (temporarily) the simplistic assumptions that in foreign policy America always "meant well" and that communism was always "bad." The epithets popularly employed to characterize the enemy in Vietnam--"indifferent to human life," "dishonest," "ruthless"--came to characterize our own actions as well. From counterinsurgency expert Edward Lansdale's "cheerful brutalization of democratic values" to President Nixon's attempt to "make war look like peace," the moral breakdown is assessed here in disturbing detail. Young goes on to argue that more recent U.S. intervention in Lebanon, Libya, Grenada and Panama suggests that few lessons were learned in Vietnam--indeed, that the past decade has seen a dangerous resurgence of native faith in the benevolence of American foreign meddling. This, she maintains, goes hand in hand with a renewed commitment to use force in a global crusade against Third World revolutions and governments. Young, a history professor at New York University, paints a grim picture of our part in the Indochina war and its excoriating effects on the nation. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Two new books join the many which try to summarize and analyze the Vietnam War, its precedents, and its epilog, with differing approaches and results. Young (history, NYU) coauthored, along with William G. Rosenberg, Transforming Russia & China ( LJ 1/1/82). Her current study focuses on the American experience, while touching on the periods before and after direct American involvement. She provides some useful insights, and details debates among American leaders, but she draws predominantly on published sources and offers little new information. More significantly, her arguments are heavily biased (she seems to think that only the American and South Vietnamese military and governments demonstrated cruelty, corruption, deception, and destruction), leading to some troubling conclusions (e.g., that U.S. bombing of Cambodia may have been responsible for the later horrors of the Khmer Rouge), and leaving the reader unable to place events in any kind of valid historical perspective. In stark contrast to Young's black-and-white picture, Olson and Roberts (history, Sam Houston State Univ. and Purdue Univ., respectively) paint a picture of many colors. This successful popular history of the war is less scholarly, less detailed than The Vietnam Wars , but the better-balanced coverage throughout yields a more insightful, instructive history. At times the authors' emotionalism (e.g., the account of the My Lai massacre) clouds their presentation, and the otherwise fascinating discussion of the postwar media's depiction of the war is not up to date, but general readers will find their book to be a helpful and accessible introduction to the complexities of the Vietnam experience.
- Kenneth W. Berger, Duke Univ. Lib., Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Grafton; 1st edition (August 8, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060165537
• ISBN-13: 978-0060165536
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,190,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good (but biased) popular history, March 2, 2005

By 

Urobolos - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 (Paperback)

You'll notice that the reviews posted so far for Marilyn Young's "Vietnam Wars" are quite polarized (1 star vs. 5 stars). Some complain of Young's agenda and anti-American viewpoint, while others find her tone appropriate and the book revealing; all of these points are valid. This book is biased, frustratingly so at times, but it is also informative and a good read.

"Vietnam Wars" covers the Vietnamese struggle for independence from France, the war with the US, and the war with China, naturally focusing on the American war. The substance of the book is a mix of details of the actual war and the politics concerning it, with ample, though not exhaustive, footnotes and plenty of fascinating anecdotes. The level of detail is perfect for a popular history.

The tone of the book is distinctly anti-American, partly because of the author's own bias, but also partly because of the information available. The details of North Vietnam's motivations, actions, etc. are lacking, I imagine because there are so few sources. As a result, the viewpoint is American, and the mistakes made by the US are on full display; I found these to be the most interesting aspects of the war, e.g., the astounding naiveness of Psy Ops.

The author's bias is irritating, though thankfully clear. While she does not engage in outright revisionism (her facts are supported by references), she does selectively emphasize information. For example, while civilian deaths inflicted by US firepower are mentioned repeatedly, over many pages, atrocities commited by the North are downplayed, in oneliners along the lines of "Only 15-thousand Vietnamese civilians were executed by the VC, not 500-thousand, as claimed in US propaganda!". Despite this selectivity, sufficient facts are presented to convey the moral ambiguity that surrounds the conflict.

Read skeptically, Marilyn Young's "Vietnam Wars" is an excellent starting point for understanding Vietnam.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Herioc-Tragedy of Vietnam, April 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 (Paperback)

Herein lies the terrible tragedy of Vietnam. Marilyn Young covers the First Indochina War, through the Second (the Vietnam War to Americans), and the Third. Written mostly from the American and foreign point of view, she narrates the events as they occurred without rancor or judgment or obvious bias. Yet one gets the distinct feeling that this account is anti-American, but how else could it be? The facts she lays out with no value judgment, messy opinions, or biased reporting unerringly points to the mistakes and false assumptions that America had about Vietnam. How these mistakes lead to the tragic war, a senseless war, that laid waste to an entire nation.

There is a famous saying in Vietnam, "At no time has Vietnam lacked heroes." The unsaid, but implicit understanding is that at no time has Vietnam lacked aggressors. What America at the time could not realize was that she was following in the footsteps of previous conquerors in Vietnam's past. America, though filled with good intentions, was simply another in a long line of overwhelming enemies like China, the Mongols, France, and Japan. In all honesty, at certain points I could not help laughing out loud. Not in amusement, but at the sheer, overwhelming stupidity and arrogance that compounded mistake after mistake by the foreign powers and every chance for peace was dashed because of Cold War politics and ignorance. France, the once mighty empire, was now an impotent, senile power that still clung to the trappings of imperial might. And the U.S., caught up in the Red Scare, failed to realize that the growth of Communism in Vietnam was an outgrowth of nationalism against imperialistic powers like France. To the U.S., it was a fight against Communism. To the average Vietnamese peasant, it was a war, in a long line of wars, for freedom.

I think that this is definitely a good book to read to familiarize oneself with the wars that Vietnam has fought. Though it covers all three of the Indochina wars, it only moderate covers the first, glosses over the last, and mostly details the second from the American perspective. In this area, I find the book is lacking because while it accurately describes what, how, and why the Americans did what they did, she did not pay enough attention to the first half of the equation, the Vietnamese. A fuller appreciation and understanding of the events would require us to have an accounting from the Vietnamese perspective, from Hanoi, to the average bo dai (grunt), and the peasant. It also is rather lacking in details and events that occurred during World War II and the Japanese occupation. Still, the harsh and unrelenting look that it gives us of American policy, practice, and presidents coupled with an easy to read yet grippingly eloquent prose makes this a book a must have for anyone wanting to better understand Vietnam and her wars for freedom.

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Bias"? Please . . ., January 10, 2006

By 

P. Landau (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 (Paperback)

Young's book is the best single volume detailing the American interventions in Vietnam. Unlike many, Young actually knows something about Vietnam as a country, and unlike many, she meticulously supplies references for her facts almost all of which are to accessible and checkable sources. But my real point in writing this is the idea, put forward by so many outside the profession of history (I am a University prof in a big state school history department) that grasping the disaster of Vietnam for what it was is an example of "bias." Is Young against killing peasants? You bet. Does she think US operations were failures? Sure. They were. It is hard to think rosy thoughts about fighting communism and so forth if you grasp how things went down in Vietnam itself, which is what this book supplies. BTW Young is not pro-North Vietnam and in my opinion feels (rightly) that the US destroyed the NLF ("VC"), a southern-based mass movement, with brutal means, which was a disaster. That and the support for dictators and not elections created the country we see today: run from the north, beholden to the north, yet (of course) ready to tackle capitalism. Will we repeat our inane dry-up-the-sea policies in Iraq?