Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War Hardcover – November 2, 1995

Superb, both to read and as a reference work. Additionally this book has an excruciatingly thorough bibliography.

Adds a new dimension sorely lacking in other good books about Vietnam. Good historical coverage all the way back to pre-history, sharp clear graphics and comprehensive coverage. I was there in 1968-69 and think this book is a valuable addition to anyone's Vietnam collection -- or a fine place to start if you are just learning about this country and its wars. Kudos to Colonel Summers, the author, for producing such a fine atlas.

Enjoyed.

Great job! Everything was as described and the packing was fabulous! Thanks!

Just an outstanding reference! A complicated war needs a good atlas of maps to help the student fully understand the geographic relationships. An excellent atlas will also inform the student about the population, culture, ethnicity, vegetation, and climate. A truly exceptional historical atlas of the Vietnam War will include sections covering the First Indochina War, the French colonial period and pre-colonial Vietnam. Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr has produced a truly exceptional historical atlas!

This is really a concise history of the Vietnam wars with beautiful maps and photographs. Divided into seven sections, or parts, this book begins with the setting and moves on to the history from 500 BCE to the end of WWII. The third part covers the First Indochina War followed by the history from 1954 to the 1963 assignation of Diem. Part V is the largest and covers the Americanization of the war to the Cambodian incursion in 1970. The next part is just outstanding and covers Vietnamization. Each part is divided into chapters and the chapters in the Vietnamization section cover: RVNAF from 1955 to 1975; the US withdrawal from 1969 to 1973; Lam Son 719; the Easter Offensive of 1972; the Christmas bombing of 1972; ending with the 1973 Peace Accords. The final section is also exceptional with chapters covering the fall of Saigon, Cambodia and Laos concluding with the Sino-Vietnam War of 1979.

I am very grateful for Colonel Summers’ efforts to help explain what happened in Vietnam. This atlas is his last published work on the Vietnam War and his body of work has greatly benefited the study of that war. Colonel Summers led troops in Korea and Vietnam. Along with being a respected Vietnam War historian he was a Distinguished Fellow at the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College, and was on the team of negotiators working to get our POWs released. Colonel Summers was also the founding editor of Vietnam Magazine. I stumbled upon his book On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War and was transformed. Here was a concise and very detailed critique and analysis of the strategy adopted by the US in Vietnam and of the factors that led to defeat. That book contains an annotated bibliography that pointed me to other authors. Many historians and other reviewers have asserted that Summers either explicitly or implicitly claims that a better strategy would have ended with victory for SVN and the US. That is not the case. In a 1996 interview with Harry Kreisler he says, “I am not convinced that the war was militarily unwinnable. I think there were military strategies that had the potential to succeed.” Potential, not a certainty. That is what Colonel dedicated his life to do, examine what happened and, as a professional military strategist, critique the outcome and propose alternatives.

The historiography of the Vietnam War has, over the years, become very convoluted. There are many differing interpretations of what happened. Many of these interpretations are founded on constructing a counterfactual conditional statement. For instance: If the US had employed the correct strategy then the war would have been won. Some have argued that Colonel Summers, along with a few other authors, has said just that. Of course that is so completely wrong as to become ridiculous. Since Colonel Summers work, On Strategy, is so widely read and so overwhelmingly well received he has become the figurehead author for those who argue thusly. I think it a great shame that he should be lumped in with others who have explicitly based their work on counterfactuals.

Stanley Karnow wrote the introduction and the afterword for Colonel Summers’ historical atlas and they are an added benefit that comes with this text. Karnow covered the entire war from 1959 to 1974 for such media outlets as Time, Life, Washington Post and NBC News among others. He is the author of the highly regarded 1983 book, Vietnam: A History. His synopsis of the war in the forward is a first rate summary of what happened and provides an excellent introduction to Colonel Summers’ book. The afterword provides a wonderful conclusion to the war and illustrates the developments in Vietnam since the Communist victory.

If you are interested in having the maps to help you follow the historical narrative of the war this is the book for you. You will also enjoy the enlightening and succinct story Colonel Summers tells.

Too many things are shown in the wrong places on the maps.
The most hilarious example is on page 97. Laos had two capital cities: the royal capital of Luang Prabang, where the (purely ceremonial) king lived, and the administrative capital of Vientiane, where there was an actual government. On this map, Luang Prabang has been moved across the border into North Vietnam (a very strange place for the royal capital of Laos), while Vientiane has been moved across the other border into Thailand. The same map also has the town of Vinh, in North Vietnam, shifted westward from its actual location near the coast; it appears on this map to be closer to the Laotian border than to the sea.
Flip one page back to look at the map on page 95, which shows the Tonkin Gulf Incidents and the U.S. air strikes of August 5, 1964. This map has Vinh in the right place, but Hanoi has been mislocated; it is shown as being southwest of Haipong (Hanoi is actually northwest of Haiphong). More important, the map shows Hon Gai, one of the targets of the U.S. air strikes, as being right next to the Chinese border. Hon Gai is actually well to the southwest of the location shown; if it had been close to the Chinese border, Lyndon Johnson would not have approved the strike against it in this operation. The location shown for the aircraft carrier Constellation, which launched the planes for the strike against Hon Gai, is also seriously inaccurate.
A small inset map on page 95 shows the tracks of the two U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy, on the night of August 4, 1964, and the tracks of objects that appeared on their radar, believed to be torpedo boats attacking them. The track shown for the supposed torpedo boat designated V2 bears no resemblance to any track that shows in the records of the destroyers, and the track shown for V1 does not bear a close resemblance to any track that shows in the records of the destroyers.
I have not found so many errors in other maps in this atlas, but I have found more than I liked. The one thing an atlas is absolutely supposed to do is show things in the correct locations on the maps.