The War for South Viet Nam [Hardcover]

Anthony James Joes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0275931625 | ISBN-13: 978-0275931629 | Publication Date: January 1, 1989

"Joes's presentation is dispassionate, clear, and plausible, as he takes the reader quickly and skillfully from the Viet Minh War in 1954 to the fall of Saigon in March 1975. The moderate level of detail he employs makes the book ideal for classroom use."
ORBIS
In this volume, Joes addresses a side not often studied in the range of texts available on the Vietnam War. Written for a nonmilitary audience, this book chronicles and analyzes the 20-year struggle to maintain South Vietnamese independence. Joes tells the story with a sympathetic focus on South Vietnam and is highly critical of U.S. military strategy and tactics in fighting the war. He claims that the fall of South Vietnam was not inevitable, that an abrupt and public termination of U.S. aid provoked a crisis of confidence inside South Vietnam that led to its destruction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book fills a niche in the increasing number of texts on the Vietnam War as it provides a short, readable volume for the novice student written from a `revisionist' (i.e., centrist/conservative) perspective. Among its many strengths are: (1) it is accessible to the nonspecialist, (2) it provides the background in Vietnamese history and politics and the long origins of the conflict necessary to understand the context of American involvement, (3) it affords balanced insight into the contending military forces without romanticizing the Communist guerillas, (4) it incisively critiques inadequate American military strategy and tactics, (5) it assesses honestly the problems, successes, and failures of building a viable political order in South Vietnam, and (6) it daringly challenges the `prevailing wisdom' on a wide range of issues and offers a provocative conclusion. . . . This is a very useful book in line with new revisionist writings such as Phillip B. Davidson's Vietnam at War and F. Charles Parker's Vietnam: Strategy for a Stalemate (1989). A good volume for high school and public libraries as well as academic collections." -- Choice

About the Author

ANTHONY JAMES JOES is the Director of the International Relations Program at St. Joseph's University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Praeger Publishers (January 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275931625
• ISBN-13: 978-0275931629
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,058,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview of U.S. Involvement in South Viet Nam, March 30, 2009

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Joe (Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The War for South Viet Nam, 1954-1975: Revised Edition (Hardcover)

This book by Professor Anthony Joes of St. Joseph University in Pennsylvania provides a good brief (just under 160 pages of text) overview of the United States' two decades of military involvement in South Viet Nam. Dr. Joes is appropriately critical of the strategic and tactical errors made by the political/military leaders of the United States and South Viet Nam (the assassination of Diem, failure to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail, difficulty of defending Hue and Da Nang, etc.) without romanticizing either the southern Viet Cong/NLF terrorist guerrillas or the totalitarian Stalinist regime of North Viet Nam. Dr. Joes' expressed sympathy for the plight of South Viet Nam and its people--the vast majority of whom did not want to be governed by a brutal and economically backward communist regime--is rare in works about the Viet Nam War. It is interesting to note that, but for the Watergate Scandal which prevented Presidents Nixon and, later, Ford from honoring U.S. committments to South Viet Nam after January 1973, there might still be an independent South Viet Nam today.

My only (and minor) criticism of Dr. Joes' book is the relative sparsity of the endnotes, which is unusual for academic writing about a subject as controversial and well-commented about as the Viet Nam War.